Silfren wrote...
Sanunes wrote...
Honestly the orginal firearms aren't that effective, but what made them seem to be effective is a person who isn't trained was able to use a firearm better then a bow and arrow and it was faster to reload then a crossbow. Most of the time the person died from wounds other then being shot such as infection or the internal damage, but who knows how the Darkspawn would react to something like that.
As far as being an equalizer for the mages, I could see the Arcane Duelist being kinda OP.
Bows were more efficient than early guns, more accurate and better at piercing armor, and with less chance of malfunctioning to injure the shooter. So I don't know that early guns could have seemed to be more effective, despite the differences in skill training. It hardly matters if unskilled people are able to use guns more easily than bows and arrows, if said guns are crap weapons compared to bows, and there are skilled archers available.
Not to rain on your parade, but early guns were far better than bows and crossbows in almost every category: accuracy, effective range, ease of training and use, armor penetration, etc. (By early firearms I'm referring to matchlock long guns, which appeared ~1450.)
I went over all the reasons for this on the Project Eternity Forums awhile back, so I'll just paste a few of my posts over to here. (If it seems a little disjointed it's because I was too tired to go through and weld the whole thing into a coherent whole at 3:20AM)
::MASSIVE INFODUMP::
There is a long-standing argument amongst historians about how effective
the longbow actually was against plate armor. A big part of this
debate is that we don't really know how powerful the things were. A
particular point to keep in mind is that an arrow loses a large amount
of its velocity over range, while a musket ball doesn't lose as much
(the arrow has more drag due to its surface area). I did some quick
research into weights and velocities of muskets vs an English Longbow.
It seems like a 75 pound draw longbow could shoot an arrow weighing one
ounce at around 185 fps. This gives us an initial energy of 45 joules.
A more powerful bow (100 pounds) is estimated to shoot a 1.5 ounce
arrow at the same velocity, for an initial energy of 68 joules. If we
totally abandon the evidence, and increase the longbow's numbers to some
of the most ridiculous claims (2.5 ounce arrow at 250 fps), we still
only get 206 joules. An arquebus ball of .80 caliber weighed about 1.77
ounces and traveled between 650 and 750 fps. That's an initial energy
of between 987 and 1315 joules. (calculator used:
http://billstclair.com/energy.html)
As you can see, there's just no comparison in the punch of the longbow
and the arquebus. Even if you ramp up the English longbow's numbers to
the level of the most absurd claims, there's still no competition.
Now
let's look at crossbows. An important thing to remember about the
crossbow is that while many of them had impressive draw weights of 1000
pounds or so, the distance across which they applied that force to the
bolt was much shorter than a bow, so the transfer of energy wasn't
nearly as efficient. They applied greater acceleration, but over less
distance (and therefore time). I found one test of a powerful crossbow
that provided both bolt mass and fps. It was a 780 pound draw arbalest,
firing a 4.5 ounce bolt at 159fps. this comes out to an initial energy
of 150 joules. Again, this is far weaker than the arquebus. Even if
we give a more powerful crossbow very generous numbers (I chose a 6
ounce bolt at 200 fps), we still only get 317 joules, which is less than
a third of the lower estimate for the arquebus.
Regarding
accuracy: It is difficult to find reliable accuracy data for medieval
bows and crossbows. However, there are a few points of info that will
help us get a crude idea. An important fact to consider is that the slower your projectile
is traveling, the higher angle it has to be fired at in order to prevent
it from hitting the ground. Projectiles fall towards the ground at the
same rate no matter how fast they're traveling horizontally. If you
fired the crossbow I mentioned above, from eye level (~5'6" for a 5'11"
person) at an enemy's head 100 yards away, but you didn't elevate it at
all, the bolt would strike the ground less than halfway to the target.
(This is disregarding air resistance, which would make it fall even
faster, but is hard to calculate) The longbow fired in the same
situation would go slightly farther, but still fall pathetically short.
The lower range arquebus shot fired in the same circumstances would
still be about three feet from the ground, and impact the poor sod in
his dangly bits if it flew true. Also, increased velocity makes it
easier to hit a moving target, since the target won't have as much time
to get out of the way. (Projectile drop calculations from
http://hyperphysics....e/grav.html#bul)
Let's look at the specific angles you would need to shoot to hit a
person's head with these three weapons. To make that shot with the
crossbow, you must elevate to 11.2 degrees. With the longbow, it's 8.2
degree. With the low end arquebus, it's only .65 degrees.
(calculations from the section titled "angle of launch" at
http://hyperphysics....traj.html#tra16)
Greater projectile velocity = a much flatter trajectory = a much
easier shot. Also, a steeper angle of shot means the projectile will
spend much more of its flight above the height of your enemy, giving you
less wiggle room in estimating the range. Basically, the steeper the
angle, the less you can afford to be wrong by. Also, when the angle
gets really steep, people become smaller targets. A projectile
traveling fairly flat has a much larger target to hit than a projectile
plunging downwards, because people are much taller than they are wide.
Not to mention the fact that making a bolt or arrow is a craft which
requires skill, while anyone with a mold and a fire can produce many
musket balls, and anyone can be taught to mix black powder.
I didn't mean to exclude the point of the projectile, I just forgot to type that bit up.
Basically, if an arrowhead is going to punch through a piece of plate
armor and all the padding underneath it, deep enough to kill, the shaft
has to penetrate at least partially. According to the longbow stats I
used, the shafts were 3/8th of an inch wide. 68 joules distributed
across a shaft 3/8ths of an inch wide equates to roughly 483 joules per
square inch. 987 joules distributed across a musket ball .8 inch in
diameter gives you 1542 joules per square inch, and that's with the
lower numbers for the arquebus. You still have more force relative to
the area of the projectile that is trying to pass through the armor.
Crossbows and bows are not more accurate than a smoothbore gun. They
have similar deflection-at-origin problems (not traveling in a perfectly
straight line from the barrel/stock/bow when fired). In addition to
this, the higher angles of fire and slower projectile trajectories make
accurate shooting of bows and crossbows more difficult.
There isn't any well documented test of a heavy crossbow versus properly
hardened steel and padding that I know of. (One of the reasons I'd
like to do a serious test some day) The closest I've seen is this:
www.youtube.com/watchWhich is a video of a test that unfortunately has lost its
documentation. It's a video I've had for awhile and uploaded to YouTube
to help answer your question. I'll just paste the video description
here to explain it:
"This is a video which has appeared on
several Medieval forums. It is supposedly the testing of a 900-950 lbs
crossbow at short range against a properly heat treated chestplate and
another piece of properly heat treated metal. I say supposedly because
all of the accompanying documentation has vanished, and I located a
solitary claim that it was in fact a 500 lbs crossbow. It's always
possible that the first shot was from a 900lbs crossbow and the latter
was from a 500lbs crossbow. In any case, both the plate and steel sheet
are in the upper range of thickness of armors actually found from the
Middle Ages. The manner of securing (wood behind the plate and some
sort of firm securing for the chestplate), as well as the lack of proper
padding likely negate the advantage of the thicker armor, however."
Remember
also that crossbow power is frequently overrated. They had much
greater draw weights than bows, but that force was applied over a much
shorter distance, greatly reducing the energy transfer. Crossbows
didn't actually have a whole lot more "umph" than heavy bows, at least
according to some tests that have been done (which I referenced on my
post earlier).
Modifié par Swagger7, 10 mai 2013 - 10:30 .
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