Thanks, Halvgrim, for the quantitative information. It matches some information on ancient Scythian quivers that I found. On the other hand, an artifact from the Mary Rose, a Tudor ship, is considered to be a quiver insert, and has 24 holes. The rate of fire information is in line with what I've been able to dig up.

I did long ago come across a description of English archery contests. The "team" contests were indeed arced fire, and the teams were scored according to how many arrows landed in a roped-off area at a given distance versus how many did not. The distance was called out by a leader, so archer skill also considered the ability to match bow elevation with nominal distance. This kind of contest is purely a test of military archery skill, because it is not effective for a single archer hunting.

Posted By Esoba at 1:54 PM - Thu Jan 25 2018

Posted By Kaynadin at 07:37 AM - Thu Jan 25 2018

Posted By Gunnlang at 04:38 AM - Thu Jan 25 2018

Posted By Lady Grace at 7:40 PM - Thu Jan 25 2018

Horse archery is something that is notoriously hard for MMOs to balance because they tend to be capable of kiting an opponent forever.

Wouldn't worry about that so much here. Not like you have unlimited ammo like most games. Which makes me wonder how many arrows one can carry in general.

And there is no tab targeting or quick swiveling around like you're some kind of turret. And as you noted, the mount can be damaged and killed.

Not to mention that since combat is player skill based. So, if mounts rock or bounce it could be very difficult to actually hit something until you became a true master.

If you become that skilled at archery and horseback riding, it only makes sense it should be difficult to fight you.

But it won't be easy to do.

Posted By Halvgrim at 09:52 AM - Thu Feb 22 2018

How much money does it cost to produce an arrow? How many arrows can a mounted archer realistically carry? I guess there is limit to how long you can kite. (But then again a trison can probably carry a lot of arrows)

If SBS chooses to allow mounted archery, then I hope that they have enough time to playtest this feature before launch.

trison is probably slower then a horse, so you'd be at a disadvantage to light or even heavy cavalry which could just outchase you.

on top of that, mounted archery will be really difficult. Unless you are really good at both horseback riding as well as archery, you'll probably not be able to hit anything unless you're firing into large groups of enemies.

also, whoever mentioned a crossbow, how are you going to reload on horseback?

Posted By Poldano at 07:30 AM - Fri Feb 23 2018

Thanks, Halvgrim, for the quantitative information. It matches some information on ancient Scythian quivers that I found. On the other hand, an artifact from the Mary Rose, a Tudor ship, is considered to be a quiver insert, and has 24 holes. The rate of fire information is in line with what I've been able to dig up.

I did long ago come across a description of English archery contests. The "team" contests were indeed arced fire, and the teams were scored according to how many arrows landed in a roped-off area at a given distance versus how many did not. The distance was called out by a leader, so archer skill also considered the ability to match bow elevation with nominal distance. This kind of contest is purely a test of military archery skill, because it is not effective for a single archer hunting.

I hope the game will use the fact that hunting generally used direct aiming and warfare generally used ballistic aiming, so that good hunters aren't necessarily good military archers. (on top of differences in draw strength).

Posted By Gunnlang at 02:38 AM - Thu Jan 25 2018

Posted By Lady Grace at 7:40 PM - Thu Jan 25 2018

Horse archery is something that is notoriously hard for MMOs to balance because they tend to be capable of kiting an opponent forever.

Wouldn't worry about that so much here. Not like you have unlimited ammo like most games. Which makes me wonder how many arrows one can carry in general.

There is a lot of documentation supporting around 30 arrows per quiver [at least in the case of Persian & Parthian mounted archers]. However, these archers were also recorded as to carry two quivers. I hope these numbers are around the maximum capacity within game.

I'm not sure why the developers would making hunting archery and military archery into two different skill types. While they try to make things feel as realistic as possible, they have stated many times that they do not do so if it is not fun.

So I guess you dont wish your military archers to be very good at supplying meat to the army on the march? You dont want your local hunting force to be very good with the militia? I dont really understand how that kind of limitation adds to the experience of the game. It sounds like it takes much more away than what it would give.

Maybe make it so that both of the archery skills do affect each other much like melee skills affect each other. But not 100%.

As ballistic aiming and direct aiming is definitely a different skill, much like axes and swords are different.

If we are talking about different angles of release, then to me that seems like a player skill issue.

Lars Anderson