Crossbow Machine Gun

[Dabor]

So get a guy with extra bags and 1 free weapon swap a turn, and your first 2 turns can go like this:

Turn 1: Fire xbow, free swap to 2nd xbow, fire xbow, swap to 3rd xbow

Turn 2: Fire xbow, free swap to 4th xbow, fire xbow (2 spaces to move at any point during this turn)

You can always delay your two double-xbow turns and just fire and reload until you see the whites of their eyes.

On one hand, it's really cool something like this is possible, and it's obviously accounteed for with the "one free swap a turn" limit.

On the other hand, I think you'd be an idiot to have anyone who uses a crossbow not do this. Being able to output 2 bolts on 2 turns of your choice is a massive advantage, and in theory only costs you those 2 perks points. Even without those perks, carrying a second crossbow to be able to "shoot swap shoot" would still be a big deal.

Also, I think an "unloaded" icon on crossbows would be a nice little addition. You can check by mousing over them and being told you have to reload (or telling from the weapon degredation) but it's that topping of polish.

Just curious what people think about this. Is this the intended use for crossbows? Do any other weapons have a similar ability to be rapid fired via swapping?

[Sarissofoi]

Its get even better.
Close combat archer give +50% to dmg when shot at close distance and Killing Frenzy give another 50% when xbowmen kill somebody.
Berserker give +4AP when xbowmen kill so you can get 3 shoots on 1st turn if lucky.

[willsama974]

And with perfect focus+battle flow and a captain you can shoot like 8 bolts WITHOUT swaping weapon on a turn ^^

[Dabor]

So back to the question. Why would you ever carry only one crossbow?

[Sarissofoi]

Immersion.
I take Belt&Bags only for some minor fatigue boost. Main reason why I take weaponmaster perk.
It just so silly imagine guys going to battle with 5 xbows or 2 billhoks greatsword and 2 pikes.

[Dabor]

It's not really that weird to have them. It's weird to carry them, but there's no reason they wouldn't transport extra xbows and decide to pre-load them as they come into combat so they can grab and shoot them quickly. It's not conventional, but I don't think it's the dumbest thing you could ever do.

One thing the game needs for immersion is variable weapon switching costs. Something like "throw down your pike and pull out a shortsword" should be very quick, whereas "put your crossbow away and take out a greatsword" should take most of a turn. Ultimately, immersion is a matter of a game supporting realistic strategies. People in real life did carry many flintlock pistols for the exact same reason we'd do it with xbows here, and even in the modern day, a police officer could prefer to carry 2 handguns so as to have a quicker option than reloading his first.

If, rather than '4 AP for any switch" it was "2 AP to put away something 2 handed, 1 AP to put away something 1 handed, 2 AP to equip a 2H, 1 AP to equip a 1H, 1AP to throw a 2H to the ground, 0AP to throw a 1H to the ground, 3AP to take a 2H from the ground, 2AP to take a 1H from the ground." it'd be more practical to have empty hands. For example, right now, switching from a shield to a net is the same as switching from an empty hand to a net. Switching between 2 pikes is 4 AP, but switching from a pike to a sword and shield is 8 AP.

Throwing weapons would realistically hold the role of "quick to switch out of as you engage" because, having thrown them, you have an empty hand with which to quickly draw a close weapon. But I digress.

[Drewsko]

great tip!

[speedingdeath]

I've considered this strategy before, but I wouldn't recommend it for the following reasons;

Most of the enemies who are vulnerable to crossbow fire aren't that threatening; the only really tough enemies tend to have shields that increase their defense against ranged, and they like to get up close to your front line, and often bash through to the rear lines, so there will usually be a friendly-fire risk against them, meaning an opportunity to just lay out a full payload safely will be rare, and usually mispent.

Enemies who are vulnerable to crossbow fire tend to get overwhelmed even without extra bows; this may be because I play with 3 men using impalers, so when the enemies get within range, they tend to get knocked back out of range, forcing me to change target, until I run out. Waiting until they get closer often means they're already in melee. Certainly, with perfect focus on 3 impalers, and a captain, I tend to stem the tide for at least a round, with no one getting close aside from units with high ranged defense and push pack immunity.

Thirdly, the best archers are wasted on pure archery; I probably have a skill selection close to yours, getting up to weapon master in the utility tree, along with the equipment carrying skills, and otherwise into perfect focus on the offense tree. These guys are all sellswords with great melee skill, however, so why waste that other strength? Even with a tough front line, ♥♥♥♥ goes wrong sometimes, and you get into melee fights with your archers. So my archers carry their bow (impaler), a pike, a flail, a bandit lord mace (most versatile melee weapon imo), and a tower shield for when they need to avoid enemy archer fire. With this gear, even if a big orc busts through to reach the archers, they can pull out an appropriate melee weapon, hit perfect focus, and eviscerate him far better than even a bow could do.

So, I agree that the multiple crossbow trick gets some nifty damage bursts, but in my opinion, it makes them too good at something they don't need to be better at. Rather make them more versatile so that they're also deadly in other situations. I frequently have rounds where my crossbowman will get two or three kills with his bow, run out of good archery targets, then take out a billhook and cleave more heads of front line enemies.

Also, my archers fire fast enough that they run out of arrows in a few rounds, so I'd rather have back up quivers than back up bows.

Just my experience. Perhaps your strategy is more suitable when you have just one archer who really sucks at melee, or it's early game and he doesn't have perfect focus.

[Porkie]

Multiple crossbows is the single most powerful and useful trick in this game right now :)
It's also extra interesting because there's really no logical way to nerf it. I imagine if I was a smart xbowman I would indeed carry as many 1-use shots as I can on me. Maybe even on a cart behind me, on a rack or something :)
(btw a loaded crossbow doesn't necessarily have the bolt in it, so it's safe. The muscle work is pulling back the string (with a crank or a windlass), but putting in the bolt and firing it is exactly 2 seconds)

Also, the poster above me is wrong about most things:
all the stuff he says about "archers getting in close combat sometimes", ignore that --- if you have a crossbowman with 2 loaded crossbows, whatever's in close combat with you is now DEAD. You don't need any other weapons on them". You even have +50% damage or something from one of the perks leading up to perfect focus (which you always want on archers), leading to usually instakill xbows. So forget about meleeing archers.

Also he writes that perfect focus on 3 guys with polearms is good --- it is not, really. perfect focus is only useful for archers. any other guy will run out of stamina too quickly and be a turd when they're supposed to hold and fight, while with your archers you WANT to use up all their stamina right away before their vision is blocked by your own guys, so always take perfect focus on them and use them up completely before close combat happens. If you're perfect-focusing your polearms then you're already losing or taking losses.

[speedingdeath]

Originally posted by Huggles `:

Also, the poster above me is wrong about most things: ...
Also he writes that perfect focus on 3 guys with polearms is good --- it is not, really. perfect focus is only useful for archers. any other guy will run out of stamina too quickly and be a turd when they're supposed to hold and fight...If you're perfect-focusing your polearms then you're already losing or taking losses.

I see you have a particularly condescending way of expressing your opinions, which is curious considering they're demonstrably wrong.

Let's first highlight how absurb it is to suggest perfect focus is not good on a twohander: What do you even mean by 'hold and fight'? Any two-hander, whose sole purpose is to deal damage, will really be doing one thing every turn; attacking. With weapon master, a two hander will spend 12 fatigue to make his attack, and restore 15, meaning his 6 ap attack will be able to happen every turn. If he get's a kill, and earns more ap, he will only not have the fatigue to attack again if he has already spent all of his fatigue - ON ATTACKING. Not getting perfect focus on a two-hander means you're ensuring you can only ever spend a fraction of the available fatigue on a turn, and only get a second attack IF you get a kill, meanwhile, my two-handers have already made 8 attacks, and these each do more than crossbows. Sure, maybe he can only make one attack next turn (although I have a captain, so he can rally and make more), but even if you made 2, I'd still be up many attacks, and mine happened first, meaning I killed enemies before they did damage. There is no 'hold and fight' for 2 handers; they aren't spending stamina on a shield wall. That's what the tanks are for. The two handers will still attack once or twice every turn, doing their job just as fast as yours, but having gotten two or three kills already.

Your claim about the value of the close combat perk is reliant on the enemy being precisely within the 2 blocks of its effect; how can you possibly force this (hint - you can't)? Get it wrong, and your archers are toast. Even if you are able to position yourself for the first enemies to reach exactly 2 blocks from your archers, there can only be a few enemies in this position. You can't possibly kill their entire army in this way, because they can't all reach within that range - there are no more than 3 blocks available per archer if you only had a few and they were optimally spread out, and probably only a few of these spots will be filled, and by weak, fast enemies, assuming you positioned as to prevent any melee engagement. Once your gambit ends, you're stuck with archers who have to reload and reposition, and are now useless - your extra bow effectively just gives you one cheap attack, that won't stem a whole army. Additionally, other enemies will now be within 3 blocks, assuming you positioned perfectly, and in your argument, the melee units are behind your archers, so they have to move two blocks and shield wall. The archers are still in the second row, and so you can't fit billmen (although your billmen can only attack once or twice anyway, so you probably don't realise this is a cost).

So you've spent a whole inventory slot to get one extra attack (going from what, 6 attacks to 7?), and put the fate of your entire squad on the enemy standing perfectly in a line within two blocks of unprotected archers. You can't kill a force of 35 orcs like this. You might get lucky and have a good first turn, after which you have an archer who is either forced into friendly fire, or just dead. If he had melee weapons, he would sacrifice that one shot in the first volley, and then actually be useful later.

The real gain of extra bows is really just one shot per bow, and when you're making 6 or 7 bow attacks per turn, one more is really not that big a gain, considering the versatility you lose.

[talkingmute]

I'd encourage huggles to compare xbows to other weapons and try an encounter or 2 where he'd be out numbered (btw a point blank shot doesn't always hit).

[speedingdeath]

^ Exactly. If you're facing <20 units, and every single brother has an impaler, maybe you can get lucky and kill them all in the first and second turn. Any other scenario, and you can't kill them all before they reach you. If you swapped bows to get more shots in the first round, you can't do it again when they're in melee, and then you have to kill in 1 shot an enemy that might take 4 to die.

[Porkie]

Why spend half a post to prove that using "whites of their eyes" shots is unreliable when, duh, of course it's unreliable. However, it is much better than your suggestion of wasting their pack space with a close range weapon and a shield. That's what I was saying.
It's pointless even making a point on the net, someone will always take what you said as an offhand remark and make it into your "central argument", expanding it into ridiculousness, and expend actual energy counter-arguing it.




Talkingmute: now this has merit. That is exactly why the xbows trick is the win.
Because with just 3 good xbowmen with multi xbows you can generally kill 10+ enemies before they even reach you and without spending almost any stamina (mainly just the cost for perfect focus really). It is, as of now, the best "cheat" in the game, as it is ALWAYS better to kill stuff at a distance rather than come into contact. It's also generally much easier. with the armor pen on these things? heh, and crits on headshots for nearly insta-death?

Test it, then show me your "better solution".

[speedingdeath]

Okay Huggles, let me be clear that you did explicitly make the claim that I was "wrong about most things", that one should "ignore" my suggestions. So instead of rudely making sweeping claims without justification, and then spending half of my post making excuses about "even making a point on the net," as if you being rude and clearly wrong is suddenly excusable because you're on the internet, I will try to answer you meaningfully. It costs me NO energy to point out your obvious errors, and the misinformation you're peddling while you insult me is the precise topic of this discussion, so I will make sure that I argue coherently, even if you choose not to.

That said, let me clear up more apparent ambiguities;

Close Combat Archer is a bad perk in any build - it takes 6 perks to get Perfect Focus, and another 4 to get Weapon Master. If you don't realise that Weapon Master is essential for a good Perfect Focus build, go learn some elementary math - the additional shots this gives you far outweigh any other perk one could get with that point. As for the offense tree, you're obliged to get Bullseye and Berserk at tier 2, otherwise you're missing out on more extra attacks than you're gaining with all your extra bows, or those attacks will miss anyway, making them useless. So really, CCA will probably help you once every 4 or 5 battles, and only if you didn't position properly anyway, so there is no point in this perk.

That said, let's now mathematically compare the damage of a xbow and a billhook, so see what is the best weapon against an enemy 2 blocks away: After taking pierce, armour damage, average damage into account, we have the xbow doing 35 armour damage, 35 hp damage. The BH does 115 armour damage, and 26 hp damage. Now, recall the formula for damage in this game; damage is done to armour, then 10% of the remaining armour mitigates the pierce damage to health. So, with some simple calculus, we obtain the maximum difference between xbows and BH's to occur for enemies with armour equaling that of the BH armour damage amount - 115. Enemies with exactly that much armour take 1 point more HP damage from xbows than from billhooks. Armour values below this, and the Billhook does damage straight to HP, thus quickly dominating the xbow. For armour values above this, the xbox still does 1 more HP damage, however, it will take many more attacks to wreck the enemy armour, so the BH damage per attack will grow far faster as the armour mitigation decreases more rapidly.

Now, this argument is made more complex by certain equipment and feat combinations; having CCA means you may get more damage, but at the cost of more accuracy or attacks at range (from perk opportunity cost), so this would defeat the point of the archer. Impalers increase the xbow damage somewhat, but not really enough to cover the massive armour mitigation difference between xbows and any good melee weapon. Multiple xbows allow additional attacks at that range, but then at the cost of multiple attacks in the earlier round against far enemies, since this trick only works once, so like with CCA, this trick is only better than a melee weapon if you didn't use your full ranged potential - a waste of time. Additionally, consider the dangers of close range archery compared to melee; you can maybe swap multiple xbows for 2 attacks, but you can't perfect focus for many attacks if they are in melee range, while an archer with a melee weapon CAN do this, being far more deadly. Melee also has far better accuracy, so over all, if you CAN reach an enemy with a melee weapon, USE IT.

Arguments about avoiding melee are completely baseless; only a weak team can be totally annihilated by ranged. Considering it takes about 4 impaler bolts to kill a berserker, and more to kill an orc warrior, bandit chief, or orc warlord, even a full regiment of impalers will fail to kill an entire team of greater than 20 before they reach melee - melee combat WILL happen, and when it does, either your archer is helping with melee weapons, or is a liability. Consider goblins as well; their archers outrange your xbowmen, so if you don't have shields on them, they will get focused and killed. Goblin riders have insane dodge, movement and initiative, and take multiple shots to kill due to wolves, so they too can force you into melee fights that xbows can't win.

I hope that's comprehensive enough. Most players I've seen already know this intuitively, or have found it through experience, but hopefully some explicit facts and numbers will clear up any ambiguity.

[willsama974]

Originally posted by speedingdeath:

If you don't realise that Weapon Master is essential for a good Perfect Focus build, go learn some elementary math - the additional shots this gives you far outweigh any other perk one could get with that point.

While i agree that Huggles has already prooven himself tacticaly weak more than once, and also a poor discussion maker, i have to point out that the sentence i just quoted is not totaly right: Battle Flow does deliver better on the fatigue regeneration side, but it doesn't help slowing down the weapon condition degradation occuring during long fights.

[Sarissofoi]

Originally posted by willsama974:

Originally posted by speedingdeath:

If you don't realise that Weapon Master is essential for a good Perfect Focus build, go learn some elementary math - the additional shots this gives you far outweigh any other perk one could get with that point.

While i agree that Huggles has already prooven himself tacticaly weak more than once, and also a poor discussion maker, i have to point out that the sentence i just quoted is not totaly right: Battle Flow does deliver better on the fatigue regeneration side, but it doesn't help slowing down the weapon condition degradation occuring during long fights.

This is less problem when you have Masterwork Bow who has no duralbity. Then Battle Flow is much better(especially whenbase fatigue is high).