Knights and Merchants.net Forum

Guys...
What if the xbows were made double this accurate? Bolts missing the target also causes them to be less "useful" or powerful. Making them as manoeuvrable as bowmen isn't a solution, that way the latter would become useless again imo. "Why making something that is half that powerful and shoots just as fast as the one which deals damage on the double percentage?" Sorry if I have misunderstood something

They wont be manoeuvrable because shoot-forward/back option for xbow is blocked - you can do it only with archers now. So you will get only one fast shot from xbows - attack speed and attack power will be the same.

I don't like the idea of making crossbowmen faster firing/better at being micromanaged. That makes them the same as bowmen, and we'd be back to the state where nobody ever makes bowmen. I think it's good to keep a different between the units, archers are good at being micromanaged, and crossbowmen aren't. This makes sense because crossbows are heavy and take longer to reload, bows are light and can be reloaded and fired very quickly by skilled soldiers.

So I think crossbowmen should be left as the slow firing and less manoeuvrable ranged units, but they should do much more damage than bowmen.

If we made crossbowmen fast firing and easy to micromanage why would anybody make bowmen? The only change we made to ranged units since the last public release was to make bowmen slightly faster at aiming/reloading. The purpose of that change was to make bowmen useful, since previously nobody used bowmen when crossbowmen were 2x better in every way. Maybe the best solution to this problem would be to slightly increase bowmen aiming time, to make them closer to what it was in the last release. Our initial change might have gone too far so we can scale it back slightly. That involves the minimum change from the last public release.

I'm also kind of confused about why this suddenly became a massive issue in the past few weeks, when the bowmen changes were made in early December, over 6 months ago

I'm also kind of confused about why this suddenly became a massive issue in the past few weeks, when the bowmen changes were made in early December, over 6 months ago

Personally I don't think Xbows are extremely weak and useless... Maybe they need a small boost, but wanting the so broken and abusive 'halt and shoot' back is the worst solution of all.

Personally I don't think Xbows are extremely weak and useless... Maybe they need a small boost, but wanting the so broken and abusive 'halt and shoot' back is the worst solution of all.

Personally I don't think Xbows are extremely weak and useless... Maybe they need a small boost, but wanting the so broken and abusive 'halt and shoot' back is the worst solution of all.

Noone wants halt and shoot back that was just a big big abuse.
My idea is giving this small boost , x-bows will take aim as fast as bowmen , so they won´t get easily outmicroed by bowmen , because at the moment bowmen aim twice as fast as x-bows , which gives x-bows really no chance in those frontlinefights. The actual strength of x-bow won´t be changed by this change , only the reactiontime will be higher .
So bowmen will still have a place in the game as main support range units, while x-bow do the microjob. As i said before , before the rangefix came archers and x-bows were in use because x-bows could still stand against bowmen because they had a good chance at challenging bowmen in microfights. So at that point every unit was in use and thats how it should be. Ofcourse we shouldn´t bring shoot and halt back but we can give the x-bows more micropotential so they are useful again, like they were in the prefix-releases.

What is wrong with my idea that people dislike it ? Is it because im always talking about micro ? ( I really can´t find another word to describe it ) It would be nice if someone can disprove my idea or something ...
Let 30 swordfighters, 15 militia and 30 bows fight against 30 axefighters and 45 x-bows ( same costs )
Swords will win that fight and that x-bows will shoot their first shot faster won´t make a big difference - So i can´t see why people are saying that noone will build bowmen anymore with that little change.

This change will make x-bows handy in fights again without touching the balance of units.

Just thought of something easy.
How about making the crosbow bolts much faster? I mean an animation. This way thy will shoot with same speed overall, but probably more accurately against moving targets, and also the bolt might catch archers trying hit and run tactics. I wonder if it can make a difference, yet I always noticed how gracefuly and slow those missles fly, maybe we can take advantage fixin that. Bow arrows can still fly slower since bowman shoot at much higher arc, while crossbowman aim more straight-foward.