Crossbows

[Themadlad94]

Now I know that some of my ideas can be far-fetched, but I have been thinking about this idea for a while now.  A crossbow that is a mix between the hunting rifle and the bow. The crossbow can only be found in a select few regions, mostly urban places like desolation point, Milton, and bleak inlet. The crossbow would be modern, which is likely to bring up some concerns because modern items couldn’t get to Great Bear easily because of its remote location and the collapse, but do you think medieval crossbows are going to be in Great Bear either? The ammunition for the crossbow would be broad heads, and you will most likely find one with the crossbow. Broad heads don’t go as fast or far as a normal bow arrow, but when it hits an animal, it will cause the animal to bleed out faster and make bigger blood spots, which will make for easier tracking. You could argue that it’s already easy tracking an animal, but sometimes I will be following a blood trail and it will suddenly disappear or pick up somewhere else, or that might just be me. The bolts do have higher base damage than the rifle though. The crossbow has a very slow reload speed, which means that it should only be used as a hunting weapon and not for self defense. The iron sight is small, which makes aiming harder than firearms and when you count ballistics, landing a hit is a hard task. Since the crossbow has some similar mechanisms as a gun, a cleaning kit could be used to give back condition, but not nearly as much as cleaning the rifle. It can also be repaired at the milling station. Maintaining the bolts on the other hand is much harder. You can use a whetstone to sharpen them, but not much condition is given. If you take them to a forge however, you can repair them much easier. You will need a hammer and some scrap metal though. When scrapped, it will give 3 scrap metal and 1 cured leather. Your probably thinking right now “I wouldn’t pick that up at all, it has so many cons” but when you think about it, every weapon has its trade-offs. With the bow, you can make arrows easily and craft the bow itself, but it’s one shot at a time, aiming is difficult, and the arrows can break. The rifle is good for hunting and it’s ammo can be made, but it’s much harder to make and the rifle takes time to chamber rounds and must be properly maintained, which could mean the difference between life and death. The revolver has a good fire rate and is a great defense weapon, but good luck trying to stop a charging moose. So what is the purpose of the crossbow? Well since it does more damage than a rifle and bow, it is good at stopping bigger animals like bears and moose. This is a real game changer in my opinion because it can take multiple shots to stop a charging animal, but the crossbow has enough stopping power to make that bear running at you second guess itself. Tell me what you think about this as an addition to the game.

[UTC-10]

I think that the assortment of weapons available does a generally good enough job. The whole point of the game is story mode so taking the time to craft a crossbow or more modern style bow or firearm does not fit the premise of the game.  So, for now, the devs probably do not see adding even more weapons, particularly crafted weapons, to be adding to the story.  

I have said in the past that the concept of an item or action would be the easy part. The graphics would be easy.  The animations probably comparatively easy.  How it affects the environment and player, and the consequences resulting from that interaction would be much more difficult and time consuming.  I suppose I would add that they would likely make the crossbow be less capable than what might be imagined.  People would ask, "why can't I crouch and use a crossbow, I can do that with a rifle or a revolver" and they'd probably think, "I don't want to have to deal with that". 

If survival mode of TLD continues development post story-mode, so things would not be constrained by it, then we may well see other things start to show up.

[odizzido]

I am in the realism crowd so I don't like the idea of the crossbow doing more damage than a rifle. It wouldn't even be close.

What could be done, since crossbows work with a trigger, is it could effectively be a bow that you can aim with without getting tired like you do with a bow. Plus it would be ready to shoot very quickly. No drawing or anything. It would still have advantages that way. Crossbows are good because people who aren't good with a bow can use them and be effective but they suffer in many ways. Perhaps that could be in the game, a crossbow is relatively good if your archery sucks, but drops off as archery improves.

Of course you could also switch the crossbow out at that point for a compound bow which I think would be much more common. They can be held ready to fire much easier than a typical bow. Regular bows, drawn out, are not easy to hold for any length at all.

What's funny though is our person can full draw a bow for quite some time but struggles to hold up a few pounds with the rifle. It's totally the opposite of what it would actually be.