[cerveza_fiesta]

SE describes the crossbows that marines use almost as having the capability of a shotgun slug. They punch through and explode skulls and helmets, punch through plate armor, spin targets around with the force of their impact, knock people clear off their horses, so on and so forth. Definitely not the kind of " *thwack*, sink to the knees, yer dead" type of thing you see when people get hit with arrows in movies etc.

Before you get on it...yes I know movies arent real, but its all I have to go on.

My legitimate question though:

Not being an expert on mideval ranged weapons and never having fired a crossbow, I can't really answer this, but are the crossbows the marines use in RG waaaay overpowered or can those babies actually mess people up as bad as SE describes?

[Hume]

Yes.

I dare say SE quite likely did his research into this kind of thing.

[Skywalker]

From what little I know, bows (longbows) were capable of sending arrows that would pierce armor easily - at the battle of Agincourt, the French knights in heavy armor fell in good numbers to the English longbow.

http://en.wikipedia....le_of_Agincourt

One comparison of longbows and crossbows on the web shows that the speed of the quarrel in crossbows/ longbows doesn't differ by much: http://www.thebeckoning.com/medieval/cross...ross_l_v_c.html

Actually, I'll shut up and recommend you read that second link carefully. Should answer your question

EDIT: As regards unseating horsemen, that could be a side effect of the hit - the momentum of the hit alone need not unseat them... they could fall off from the shock of injury, (because the pain disoriented them into falling)

[Gem Windcaster]

And then the marines use crossbows, not regular bows. Which enhances damage and speed quite a bit. For instance Fiddler's is more like a gun than a bow

[Chance]

Long since I read them but I always got the impression it wasnt medival crossbows they used but rather a later heavier variant...

And fiddlers must be something more akin to a portable stonethrower...

[The Tyrant Lizard]

when you see people on films getting blown through the air with guns, it's usually with a low velocity weapon, like a shot gun. High velocity bullets - like fired from a sniper's rifle - pass straight through bodies without moving them much at all.

So speed may not count so much, rather power and weight would move a body physically.

[cerveza_fiesta]

@chance, yeah...fid's cusser launcher is a different thing entirely. Needs to be assembled onsite iirc.

@sky_walker

Thanks dude (rep for the links) that was educational actually. I always thought the longbow far exceeded the xbow in both range and accuracy, but the xbow had a hotter muzzle velocity better punch on armor. Turns out the inefficiency of the energy transfer between the bow and arrow in a xbow is waaaay less than in a longbow, so the quarrel really doesn't go much faster. Due to its light weight then, it would realistically have a harder time punching through armor at the same speed as an arrow.

I also liked the point in there about the xbow's advantage in training time. The xbow is much more of a gun, allowing any old idiot to aim and fire one semi-accurately since you don't need a hand to hold back the string. The bow is a different story, where an untrained longbowman literally would have a hard time hitting the broad side of a barn at 60 paces.

soo....despite reading that, I'm still not convinced that a quarrel would do the damage SE describes. The crossbows the marines use are hand-loaded...not the winch-style that really packs a punch. A quarrel just doesn't seem like it would have enough momentum to truly knock a person off his/her feet/horse, even if it did pierce armor. I dunno...anybody been hit by an arrow before?

[cerveza_fiesta]

The Tyrant Lizard;221911 said:

when you see people on films getting blown through the air with guns, it's usually with a low velocity weapon, like a shot gun. High velocity bullets - like fired from a sniper's rifle - pass straight through bodies without moving them much at all.

So speed may not count so much, rather power and weight would move a body physically.

I think an xbow would be considered a low velocity weapon compared even to a shotgun blast

[Ishael]

I think another thing to bare in mind is that,especially in RG, the marines usually springing an ambush so were quite close to the enemy hence the power being that much more.

[cerveza_fiesta]

to get all scientific-ey on you here and give you a perspective on the physics,

Its a question of a sticky momentum transfer. Momentum is equal to mass multiplied by velocity. A body having High mass and low velocity can have the same momentum as a body having low mass and high velocity. During an interaction between two colliding bodies, momentum is always (theoretically) conserved.
=================
Sooooo...You have two bodies, one with large mass and no velocity (tiste edur standing around) and aonther with relatively little mass and huge velocity (quarrel). At this instant, the Edur has momentum of zero and the quarrel has momentum equal to its mass times velocity

Quarrel impacts the tiste edur and sticks into him without exiting the other side. This means all of the momentum of the quarrel is instantly transferred to the stationary edur. The momentum of the edur just after he's hit is equal to his mass, plus the mass of the quarrel (cause its attached) times their final velocity.

Now, since overall momentum is conserved, you can say that

(MassEdur+MassQuarrel) x CombinedFinalVelocity = MassQuarrel x QuarrelInitialVelocity

And solving for CombinedFinalVelocity, you find that the Tiste edur after being hit moves at the Quarrel's velocity multiplied by the weight ratio of quarrel and edur. The smaller the quarrel, the faster it must go to achieve the same effect on the edur.

Now, back to my point. Given the size of a regular crossbow bolt, it doesn't seem to me that they could wreak the kind of havoc SE describes, since a real shotgun blast doesn't even knock a person back the same way it does in the movies. That's just special effects.
==============
jesus...just realized what a rant about nothing that was, but decided to post it cause its funny in its excessiveness

God, if only fantasy writers coul be be more scientific and real about things...

[Zanth13]

Really Tired but I thought this thread said "Could Squirrels actually do that?"


dont know if that helps the descussion at all but I tried lol....

but the people above seemed to do a good job of discussing it.

[GHOST PALADIN]

In the end this is fantasy so the weps could de what SE likes but as a reinactor with avid interest in this kinda thing can say that there is a lot of myth surrounding arrows punching through palate armour with ease...its crap they did not. Agincourt and crecy are bad examples due to the armour of the period still being mail with bits of plate - wikki has extensive blub on this - type in bodkin arrows and enjoy

[cerveza_fiesta]

GHOST PALADIN;221924 said:

In the end this is fantasy so the weps could de what SE likes but as a reinactor with avid interest in this kinda thing can say that there is a lot of myth surrounding arrows punching through palate armour with ease...its crap they did not. Agincourt and crecy are bad examples due to the armour of the period still being mail with bits of plate - wikki has extensive blub on this - type in bodkin arrows and enjoy

cool man, reps to you too. Informative, definitely another perspective


No doubt SE can make his weapons do whatever the F he wants...I'm just wondering if a real quarrel would do what he describes, not doubting his research or veracity.

[Cougar]

I don't have the time to read through all the links but comparing a cross bow to a long bow is somewhat futile due to different usages, trajectory etc.

Don't want to turn this into some techie thread and far be it from me to question Beer-Partys maths but the calculations don't account for friction between the object being hit (edur) and the ground, the weight distribution of the body, the angle of entry, causal factors in unusual distributions of the force throughout the body etc.

Bottom line I think it would be rare for a crossbow bolt to actually punch you off your feet, knock you over - maybe. Full bore, square in the chest, stationary then OK but otherwise, I have my doubts.

Also we don't have to assume that the crossbows have the same physical make-up as ours would, they could be made of any manner of exotic woods and metals that we don't have in our world. They could be bonded with resins that behave like polymers etc.

[cerveza_fiesta]

@coug

You're right, I don't account for anything but central impact in a straight line.

@all

So the general consensus then is that SE's crossbows are overpowered? I would say based on what folks posted here that he embelishes their punch a bit. That said, it makes for a much more entertaining read and it doesn't actually bother me. SE FTW!!!

[Skywalker]

There is a mention in TB that Fiddler's crossbows are of a different design... maybe that design change accounts for the difference?

[cerveza_fiesta]

sky_walker;221942 said:

There is a mention in TB that Fiddler's crossbows are of a different design... maybe that design change accounts for the difference?

are you talking about the cusser launcher or his personal quarrel shooting model?

[Dolorous Menhir]

Cerveza beat me to the physics, and he has it right. Being hit by a projectile such as we are discussing does not throw you backwards.

An additional point:

Think in terms of the push a projectile gives when it hits something. That push derives from the energy of the projectile. That energy is always lower on impact than when it was fired, due to friction.

Go back to when it was fired: the projectile was given a "push" by the firing mechanism. A corresponding push goes backwards into that mechanism, and the person who used it.

Long story short, the push on the shooter is greater than the push on the shot. So if the shot person is thrown backwards, then the shooter should have been too.

[cerveza_fiesta]

Dolorous Menhir;221964 said:

Cerveza beat me to the physics, and he has it right. Being hit by a projectile such as we are discussing does not throw you backwards.

An additional point:

Think in terms of the push a projectile gives when it hits something. That push derives from the energy of the projectile. That energy is always lower on impact than when it was fired, due to friction.

Go back to when it was fired: the projectile was given a "push" by the firing mechanism. A corresponding push goes backwards into that mechanism, and the person who used it.

Long story short, the push on the shooter is greater than the push on the shot. So if the shot person is thrown backwards, then the shooter should have been too.

good callz on the last part there.

Funny thought. Imagine now that your quarrel is made of a collapsed star. Presuming you could lift it and fire it from a crossbow, it would stay completely stationary while you go rocketing backward.

nyaaah (nerdy laugh)
*pushes glasses up on nose*

[Aptorian]

Somethings just to keep everything going in different directions in this thread.

I saw a Discovery story on Azincourt which contradicts what you say above. yes, yes, I know, first thing we learn in history is never believe anything on Discovery channel, but basically the program argued that an average arrow of the type they were using didn't do much on a direct hit against that times armor. They broke or were bent against the armor.

The difference was made in close combat where the many, lighter and faster archers were able to dispatch the french heavy armored knights.

Combat wise, I've stopped thinking about realism. Just take Kalams fights and you've got cartoon violens aplenty, with out much basis in what's really possible.