Howdy folks. As a result of Shaping and bowcrafting, I'm having to re-evaluate bow stats. Time to finally make their stats do something and to add Tiers to make everyone's lives easier.
Old bow stats are a mess. The stats that really differentiate a composite bow from a short bow are "hidden" from the appraise, and the suitability stat doesn't do much of anything. There are also no damage modifiers for bows with reduced / increased RTs.
The change I am working on will...
- Add a combat damage multiplier directly proportional to the bow's Suitability (also known as Power) stat
- Increase the OF modifier from balance and add fumbling chance
- Add draw strength. This will determine the base RT, power and balance, and % chance for a RT increase/decrease
- Create new bow templates that mathematically scale power/damage in relation to the loading RT from draw strength
Just at a glance, a composite bow with a cycle time of time of 12 seconds (6 load, 5 aim, 1 fire) would be doing about 60% more damage than a short bow with a cycle time of 8 seconds (2 load, 5 aim, 1 fire). 12/8 = 50% bonus mathematically, and we add another 10% to compensate for player perception that lower RTs are king. If using full aim, the DPS of heavier bows pulls even further away from the smaller ones.
Now the question of what to do with old bows has consumed the past few months of my life. From the current calculations, I shouldn't have to do a conversion of most old bows, and only a few old crossbows. Though in general you'll find old capped bows equivalent to about new capped "steel". I think this "nerf" to old weapons is important. Much like it was with Weaponsmithing 3.0. It gives me room to properly balance the stats and not compromise on game balance. We'll also have different and better ammo available which will help bring old bows back up to par.
Crossbows kind of fall apart with the rewrite because some of them have 0 power. This will be fixed automatically with the new system. Repeaters will keep their current damage, but non-repeating crossbows will get a damage boost to make up for the incredible advantage repeaters have.
The recently-auctioned energy bows will also get special stats assigned to bring them back up to T6 status. If there are any special bows that come up later, we can handle them on a case-by-case basis. But even if new bows end up with a higher stat cap, it won't make your older bows useless by far...
I imagine that crafted crossbow RTs will be lowered when Tinkering comes out. 10-20 second load RTs make balancing the damage impossible. I'd rather see them vary from 6-12, picking up where stick bows leave off.
This has been quite a process. Please let me know what you think!
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