[Petition] Crossbows Need Some Character

[Vanadium]

First off, crossbows are awesome:

 

What we usually think of when we hear 'crossbow':

 

Greek Crossbow, dated usage ~400 BCE

 

Chinese Repeating Crossbow (kind of like ours):

 

What is this:

 

Da Vinci went big:

 

But our Tenno crossbows aren't. That's a problem.

 

The Ballistica:

 

A fun-looking hand-crossbow, with a sort of interesting shooting mechanic (or an ammo waster to some), perfect for roguish stealth work. Or not, because it's not silent. 

 

The Ballistica also has a lot of recoil on its 4 shot burst. Crossbows do not distribute recoil in the same way that guns do (explosive force exiting the barrel, causing 'climb', because that's the direction of least resistance if held properly [an improperly held gun, or one with a crappy muzzle break, will go in all the directions]). The recoil in a xbow occurs from the release of force vibrating through the prod (the bow part of a crossbow) and back through the stock (but the bolt takes most of it). So though while the sideways recoil is accurate for the Ballistica, it's also a Xbow and not a gun and we're future-super-human-space-ninja-wizards and if the Sybaris and Grinlok have no recoil for us, then a hand xbow shouldn't either. The End.

 

The Attica:

 

Same problems as the Ballistica, only with no fun mechanics. The low-rate of fire is actually true-to-fact. A trained Chinese soldier could empty a 10-bolt magazine in 15 seconds (0.67 bolts/second), which sounds wanting of "deeps" to us, but back then was a pretty big deal (Power Creep is a RL phenomenon). Unfortunately, this is the future. Our Attica has no cocking mechanism because of future tech and should probably shoot faster. The bolt is also a little slow. For the Ballistica this feels acceptable because it has a weaker draw strength, but the Attica, being a full-sized xbow, should be stronger and thus have faster bolts and a flatter trajectory.

 

The Crossbows Us Tenno Deserve:

 

The biggest thing crossbows need (now that they're becoming a "class" of weapons) is consistency of traits (they just need traits in general).

 

Some things:

 

- XBOWS ARE SILENT: It's true that Xbows do make some noise when shot (You only need to watch the first 20secs for the sound):

 

 

So do bows (This one is most applicable to Tenno):

 

 

 

 

For each, it's just a twang or a click. On a noisy, creaky spaceship with a reactor room after every corridor, these sounds are unnoticeable.

 

 

 

With Stealth 2.0 working its way in (slowly and not-so-surely), I don't want to just use my bows/throwns. Sure, I have 100+ Hush mods, but that's not satisfying if I don't also get some fat, future silencer on the end of my gun when I put the mod on. Since this will probably never happen, xbows are a great alternative, or at least they sound like something cool to use.

 

- Xbows should not have a charge mechanic: Controversial, since charge weapons are really good right now (and if they did have one, I would not QQ about it), but the entire point of a xbow was to have a high-penetration, high-power projectile constantly ready to be loosed; it's already charged up. I simply say this so that they don't seem too much like bows, that they are a different class of weapon and not just "not-good bows". "But what about the Ballistica?" Give it a duplex-trigger. It has 2 prods, it should shoot two bolts. With a 16-round mag, just clicking makes it identical to a 2-round burst weapon and if you're not great at the duplex, just click and you'll be fine. The rest of us who are good at duplex will have better CC and the weapon will be great.

 

- Xbows should have innate punch-through: Xbows (compounded later by muskets) lead to the decline of steel armor in Europe after the Low Renaissance, since any conscript or mercenary, after several months of training, could kill a heavily armored knight at ~150 yds (depended on how big the xbow was). So we have puncture damage, and that's good, but if the bows have punch-through, and xbows have a higher draw strength by design, then shouldn't xbows also have punch-through? Better punch-through even?  I think that the Attica having 2.0m punch-through and the Ballistica having 1.0m punch-through would be fair.

 

- Xbows should be high base damage, low-crit: Not for any good reason. What's makes a shot a crit anyway if I can get a crit anywhere on an enemy's hit box? How do I land a crit on their pinky toe? In D&D, when rolling a crit, it's assumed that your character struck a vital organ or the head; undead, aberrations, constructs, and anything else that doesn't have parts vital to their function, are immune to crits. Makes sense. In Warframe, we deal extra damage if we get headshots (seems legit), but we do more damage if we hit the head and get a crit (what). There does seem to be a pattern with crits, though. Weapons that seem like they would require skill to use or are more precise have higher crit chances (snipers and bows), while brute force weapons have generally lower crit chances (shotties and explosives). I don't see xbows as high crit weapons, since they don't require a lot of training to use and even in-game are still pretty easy weapons. But I feel the Attica should have high (around the marelok, maybe even 175) base damage (Ballistica could be buffed to 120). I don't know about status, it seems to be a Grineer thing now. "But won't that make snipers obsolete?" Snipers are getting reworked Soon™. If they get buffed they way the bows did, snipers will be pretty great, too.

 

 

TL;DR: Xbows should be silent, should have punch-through, should have slightly higher base damage with low-ish crit chance, should have no charge mechanic, ballistica should be 2-shot burst or duplex (duplex is identical to 2-shot burst, with added function), and bolts should be faster (Attica's bolts should be fastest and have flatter trajectory).

Edited May 25, 2014 by Go4tfi5h

[Archistopheles]

I'm upvoting your effort alone.

 

Well writ.

[Noble_Cactus]

Oh wow the guy in that crossbow video is the spitting image of Ellis from L4D2, voice, mannerisms, and all. I couldn't help chuckling to myself.

 

Good post, though. Our current xbows are very underwhelming and both feel like incoherent hodgepodges of ideas that, if focused to a single purpose for each weapon, could make them much more fun and effective to use. I still have my Ballistica and Attica in my inventory in the hopes that they will get buffed (and REbecca did say that the Attica was being "looked at"; I can't find the PM but Vargras posted it since it was his).

[KittyDarkling]

all fair and well thought out points. +1

[Noble_Cactus]

Oh, by the way, the images in your OP are broken.

[Vanadium]

Oh, by the way, the images in your OP are broken.

 

Working fine on my side, not sure what might be wrong on your end, though the videos did keep breaking (which is why they're not embedded). If it makes you feel better, it's nothing important and they're all images from Wikipedia's Crossbow article. Just trying to put emphasis on xbow = cool.

[Wolfstorm18]

Another day, another petition. 

 

[Taranis49]

- Xbows should have innate punch-through: Xbows (compounded later by muskets) lead to the decline of steel armor in Europe after the Low Renaissance, since any conscript or mercenary, after several months of training, could kill a heavily armored knight at ~150 yds (depended on how big the xbow was). So we have puncture damage, and that's good, but if the bows have punch-through, and xbows have a higher draw strength by design, then shouldn't xbows also have punch-through? Better punch-through even?  I think that the Attica having 2.0m punch-through and the Ballistica having 1.0m punch-through would be fair.

 

Agreed on all points but this, my inner-military history nerd doesn't like it. The downfall of armored knights had more to do with the rise of effective pike tactics and the rise of the bayonet in particular. Note the prevalence of the Pike and Shot formations during the 1500 and 1600's, in which pikemen had to accompany the gunners in the event they were charged by angry armored dudes on horseback, along with the fact that the etymology of the term "bulletproof" actually comes from a knight's armor (armorers of the period would fire such weapons at their work in front of a client and point to the mark left behind as proof it would stop a round).

 

In truth, steel armor saw effective use all the way up to the 1700's in the form of things like the Cuirass. It wasn't until around the Napoleonic era that it was of debatable effectiveness, though even then it was still apparently capable of deflecting the fire of contemporary muskets at long range as well as most pistol fire (though close-range musket fire and artillery in particular were right out).

 

Anyhoo...

Edited May 26, 2014 by Taranis49