Bow can be used underwater, but crossbow can't?

[Xain]

As the title says, why is this a thing?

[SteelFire]

LOL. Well, that explains a thing or three. I just figured in almost all the vids I saw that no one used crossbows because the bolts required a smithy, rather than being able to be made on the fly like arrows. But, this would be a bigger reason to avoid crossbows.

[Xaton]

well you have the spear gun for underwater cross bow

[SteelFire]

Originally posted by Xaton:

well you have the spear gun for underwater cross bow

That's a valid point and perhaps why they made the crossbow unusable underwater, else people wouldn't bother making a more expensive spear gun. Of course, in that case I'd also expect the bow wouldn't be usable underwater either.

[Xaton]

and bolts may be heavyer thus sink and thus slower bulkyer thus more resistance thus no damage. but if shoot from surface you can still hit enemies in water though. but you have to guess where to fire and predict where they will be

[Liatni]

hrmm, out of all the bows, I would think that the compound bow would work best under water. Single bow and crossbow seem like not a good fit , though.

Crossbow are more complicated that pulling a string back and releasing it, though.. always thought is silly that a bow would work under water.. glad they didn't make the crossbow the
same.. Love my speargun though, Very nice.
Well both may work but, would too much force both against the firing and the arrow/bolt.
I say compound only because it has a very powerful snap to it so in my opinion maybe would work ok, under water. :P maybe?

[MightyMonte88]

It's logic that kind've carried over from ark lol. I've never had a problem with it, just thought it was the way it was. On the subject of making sense of it, technically a bow would work dramatically less than a crossbow underwater. A. bolts are heavier and will travel farther, and the crossbow can supply more force. I've literally fired a crossbow underwater haha, it kinda works. Firing a bow underwater wouldn't work at all.

[Liatni]

What about the compound Bow? think it would work or do you think, my logic on the way each fire and how the fire is way off? lol.. Not a bow expert but have fired all of them before.

[MightyMonte88]

Originally posted by Liatni:

What about the compound Bow? think it would work or do you think, my logic on the way each fire and how the fire is way off? lol.. Not a bow expert but have fired all of them before.

The only reason i don't think even a compound bow would work underwater is because unlike a crossbow, there's more....not sure how to word this, moveable parts in a sense, or larger parts i should say, the "limb" of the crossbow is typically allot smaller, so it doesn't have as much drag on it underwater, my 2 cents lol. Then again, i wonder what would happen if you fired a spear/harpoon like project from a bow underwater...

[Liatni]

After this convo I decided to go look if there was any info out on it, real life. Found this! lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0xprof2Jzo

[MightyMonte88]

Hmm, so i wonder if with a heavier more hydrodynamic projectile, if a bow could be effective underwater. When i shot my 155 test crossbow underwater the bolt went pretty far lol, at the time i was going to take a job cleaning boat bottoms in the water, and i wanted to see if my crossbow would work underwater in a pinch situation haha

[Singrave]

the thing is that devs just confused bow's and crossbow's variables in their code.

[Liatni]

Well, that is a Compound bow, that guy is using and it didnt shoot very far under water/going through the soft target. If that was not under water and he shot the same target it would go through the balloon and keep on going for a while :P looked neat though!

[MightyMonte88]

I almost want to try this now haha, even if you just filled the shaft of the arrow with leadshot, the added even distributed weight might help the arrow keep momentum underwater

[SteelFire]

Adding weight to the arrow wouldn't help, it would actually make it drop off faster. I don't know what the weight distribution is like on arrows/bolts but I suspect it's already pretty evenly distributed, which is what you want.

The key is all in the initial force. Since the viscosity of water is about 50x that of air, even the bow itself isn't imparting as much force to the arrow, due to resistance against the water during release. That's why adding weight to the arrow/bolt would decrease range, because it would increase the amount of drag during release.

If you watch that video, it kinda helps explain - Notice that the arrow drops off, meaning it's losing momentum and slowing down. The force/velocity is overcoming the resistance of the water, but drag is reducing momentum quickly. If the arrow was too light, then it would nose up because the force/velocity wouldn't be able to overcome the resistance. If that arrow in the vid hadn't gone through the balloon and had a little further to travel, that's what you would see as it slowed enough; the point would either have nosed down enough to effectively start flipping over or it would nose back up and start to flip backwards, as resistance overcame velocity. The balloon served a purpose beyond looking cool though, that release of air and it's rush toward the surface was a counter-force to help kill the forward momentum of the arrow by pushing the back end upward.