Crossbows vs. Longbows

[BigDaddy]

Originally Posted by Maerlande

I've given this more consideration. Sadly that was a waste of my time because it appears that most of you didn't understand a thing I said. Who gives a rat's behind whether a crossbow was banned by the church. It's not like people didn't do many things banned by the church. For example, the fornication of boys by priests is no allowed by the church but that sure didn't stop it.

The simple engineering is that a longbow has very GOOD penetration of armour. And a horking big crossbow also has very good penetrations.

However, a longbow can be fired as fast as it can be drawn. A high pull crossbow takes longer. Anyone can do the math.

And eat my shorts. I'm right and you are wrong. Since I'm always right.

The Catholic Church was essentially half the law back in the day, all across europe, so, if they wrote a law about this or that, considering what it was written for is like wondering why France wrote a particular law, except for its far reacing influence, which makes the consideration more important. Most 'general' legal systems are strongly influenced by working with and against the Catholic Church over the past 2000 years.

It was tough for Joe Blow to kill a professional officer of the state with a long bow, but not so much with a crossbow. I think this exact fact is the one that gives the crossbow the less than accurate depiction of the x-bow as extra powerful... When clearly the long bow was similar but larger and flex more, so it was almost assuredly more powerful (today, we might be able to find a fancy high speed energy release material).

[Knai]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

I'm not convinced about the slingers really. That wiki has obviously been made by someone fond about sling (as will the wiki's of all weapons probably) but to me.. I look at it practically.

In midevil times shepards had slings in wide use, IF they where so much better overall (better range etc) then they would never have started using the more expensive arrows.

I think the main point of it is that sling bullets aren't AP..

Slings actually did out range bows, and had a comparable rate of fire. As for armor, plate was really effective against either of them, and mail and lighter were less effective against slings, due to the layers of padding; the only reason Agincourt went down as it did was because the french cavalry were trying to ride over thick mud, and horses don't get along well with thick mud. Then the horses started dying, and the people had to walk through thick mud while getting pelted, and by the time they actually reached the archers they had taken a bunch of minor bruises through the armor, fallen off a horse, and acquired a bunch of mud. Against troops that were basically fresh. And this is assuming that they didn't fall down in the mud and have lousy vision and excess weight at this point as well.

However, Bows have an obvious advantage. They are much easier to aim, and if you need to do anything fancier than put a stone in a general direction with a snapping sound (which will direct animals, and scare others off), you are going to be spending a long time practicing. Where the bow is an aim then shoot weapon, the sling is an aim while shooting weapon. Making arrows, particularly fletching, is not as demanding as previous posts state, and they could be cranked out, although not anywhere near the level one could do that with a sling or gun bullet. The difference in training needed to get accuracy is immense.

Furthermore, a slinger requires more space than an archer to operate a weapon. While it out ranges the bow, the ranks will naturally stretch further back quickly (tripled or so), and the effective range of the weapon isn't good enough to mitigate that, as the difference in range isn't very pronounced until you get to people who are very good in both weapons, as the slings range is highly determined by skill level, and the skill level needed for the maximum range is absurd at a troop training level. Meaning that, in a mass troop situation, the slings effective range is nullified, and it is a simple matter of weapon and ammunition cost against training time.

Which brings me to my next point. Longbows are hard to acquire, so ex soldiers and such couldn't get a hold of them easily, and be a threat. Manufacturing is enough of a process to make it difficult to get high powered bows as well. By contrast, the sling is easy to manufacture, either the two strings and a pouch design, or various woven designs. Leather and wool are not hard to acquire, and you really don't want recruits who are not full time soldiers (which they wouldn't have been in the medieval era) having a weapon like that.

Originally Posted by Endoperez

Actually, if the arrows is fired higher up it will come down nearer to the archer, not farther away. It took me some time to find the term, but "clout shooting" or "clout practice" describes the act of firing inside an area marked on the ground. With enough practice, a longbowman would at least be less likely to miss, especially if he wasn't aiming at a lone soldier but, say, a group of cavalry.

Inaccurate. Or rather, inaccurate some of the time. A 45 degree angle with have the longest horizontal distance, although that is obviously modified by wind. If you lift it past that, or not quite to that then range decreases, but going from 0 degrees up to 45 is constant increase.

[Knai]

Bows and Crossbows are being addressed here, to keep posts reasonable. Also, I can't seem to find the edit button.

Crossbows were more powerful and could pierce armor better than bows, and were more expensive. There were immensely complicated machines, and crossbows weren't among them, but at this point standardized parts didn't exist, so each crossbow had to be built by hand, which made them more expensive than bows. And just like bows, they arc. Meaning that as a sniper weapon, or when one actually needs to go through armor, or, given less training, you just need to shoot one guy and take him out, this is probably the better weapon. For mass battles these were less efficient, although a crossbow volley from close range would be devastating, so a few ranks of crossbowmen up front who made sure to fire in concert (and in a line, since that makes armor piercing that much easier, as everything talked about but the sling bullet loses way too much power to puncture armor effectively if arced significantly) would make the front ranks that much nastier. This just means that you don't have the melee types, or the melee types have the crossbows, and assumes a high archer battlefield, which stops being effective against cavalry on a sunny day without mud unless you have something like a river with a bridge, and troops that can hold the bridge. Pike contingents aren't bad here, but a spear and shield formation similar to the phalanx would be effective as well.

Bows had a higher rate of fire, which made up for quite a lot. Now, to address one particular point that had been made. Arrows would flex significantly when fired, but they would then straighten out and fly straight. The flexing didn't impact accuracy, and was not a problem. Similarly, on bows having one point to draw to. This is accurate for the modern compound bow, and there are distances at which it is much easier to aim than others, but you have a decent variety of draw lengths with any ancient bow.

Now, arrows flexing needs to be looked at a little more, which brings up another relevant weapon. The atlatl. It threw darts that were basically long arrows, and they bent massively, but still straightened out and flew straight. The flexing of the darts was not an issue, and just like the arrows you need a very high speed camera to see this. Both weapons could be very accurate. Now, the bow out-ranges the atlatl significantly, but the atlatl has its place. A nice hunting weapon, always readied, and probably better than just a javelin, although it takes more training. Mictlan should have these, but sadly doesn't. In both cases, with these weapons, armor is a lot more effective than against crossbows, but the bow isn't bad for sheer volume, and the longbow is among the best, not the English bow specifically, but any high draw weight bow which wasn't made in a really shoddy fashion.

Staff slings were also omitted from the above post. They work completely differently from hand slings, and have a lower effective range, but are made for heavier projectiles. These are probably closer to a crossbow in armor effectiveness, as the projectiles had a lot of force. Unlike the sling though, you could not use a shield, although you wouldn't with a sling as it makes reloading difficult, and screws up many styles of aim.


All of this addresses massed formations. Things change rather dramatically without them, which means anywhere cavalry isn't effective. In a large, mountainous area slings are suddenly very efficient, crossbows are upped because you can shoot down a ledge without retaliation and deal with a less significant problem from armor, and the atlatl remains a big game weapon.

[rdonj]

Alas, this thread was started quite some time ago. Endoperez hasn't posted in several months, and aezeal even longer. They may never read your post :P

As for the edit button, this forum only lets you edit posts for a maximum of 30 minutes after posting them. Except for the first post of a thread, which can be edited forever.

[BigDaddy]

I've never had a problem with necroing thread that are like this one. If someone want to discuss this type of thing, this can just as easily be the clearinghouse of information.

I am not a bow expert, but it is not difficult, for me at least, to understand penetration as a mixture between projectile mass and velocity and strike area, which yields power delivered per unit area. If I understand basic bowcraft, you get more overall stopping power from a large (higher grain) arrow than a small arrow, but less accurracy. This means that loading the projectile with energy is a function of some kind, and not just a gross number as in you get such and such joules or watt/hours or whatever, per pull (also, the last inches of pull seem to load more, so longer arrows seem to have more power).

So, most bows of whatever type should have fine penetration.

There was not a great deal of variety in materials for bows in medieval times, and crossbows were generally not 5 feet wide, as a long bow might be tall. From what I have seen, long bows also flexed quite a bit more. This would generally seem to favor the long bow for loading capacity over the crossbow, even if it take more weight to pull back the string. Modern crossbows, though still often narrow, flex like crazy, to a point I've never seen anyone do with a bow. Compound bows still seem superior however. Though it's likely there is a comparative crossbow variety as well. Most compound bows are composite of some sort and so are crossbows, but compound bows seem to be more wood like, whereas crossbows seem to be more like metal springs. I haven't a clue which is necessarily more powerful, becaue the compound bow is generally much larger, and crossbow remains nocked. Thus, there is not much of a clue from user interface. My assumption is that at the high end of penetration in the modern world are sophisticated compound crossbows that are quite large and are pulled back with a mechanical device. This seems like the most reason and sane way a person could load a projectile with as much force as can be reasonably accomplished.

But what about slings? I looked around at sling information, and it seems that slings remained effective for a very long time. Even now they have their harrasment value with certain irregulars. They use a blunt object, so the object needs to be very heavy or very dense. Indeed, when there was metal armor, the slings used lead shot, which was quite deadly, on the Romans.

However, the ranks of slingers dwindled, and this is likely to be due to skill and culture limitations. I've never used a sling, but they aren't and obvious as a bow, and certainly no were near as obvious as a crossbow.

In ancient Israel, they have found a lot of sling stones, some quite large (fist size!). There is some evidence that the Ancient people of the region used slings to achieve great results (also explaining why other nations came up against them with calvalry and chariots). One -could- assume that sling use was a sort of national pass time in the region. This would explain the various size and sling projectiles as well, and the skill involved. Contemporary persons skilled with the sling are quite effective and accurate. I would concede that such a situation could easily be like that with English Longbowmen, only, it seems, on a grander scale, as all the peasantry use the sling. I can picture granny giving the little ones their first sling lesson, because the men are to busy seeing who can sling the 3 pound monster stone the farthest.

[TwoBits]

When debating bows, x-bows, and/or slings, be sure to keep in mind the effectiveness of the Cretan archers. With their pyromancers in tow to cast Flaming Arrows, their composite bows could slay Carthaginians or Cyclopses with equal ease! No wonder the Romans used Cretan mercenaries in great numbers when they conquered Marverni and C'tis.

Yeah, sure, the Balearic Island slingers had their day against unarmored Spanish barbarians unsupported by wyverns, but when used as mercs in the east against the Seleucids and their flying elephants (courtesy of Seleucid Oreiads of course), well, they didn't do so hot there, did they?

And you know, all that's a historical fact, cause I read all about it in the Lives of the Pantakrators, by Plutarch, the famous necromancer.

[sector24]

Originally Posted by BigDaddy

If I understand basic bowcraft, you get more overall stopping power from a large (higher grain) arrow than a small arrow, but less accurracy.

This is not really the case in modern archery. The characteristics of the bow determines what kind of arrow you can fire. If you try to shoot an arrow too heavy or too light for your bow, it will not fly straight. Frequently when your arrows are fishtailing (left/right) or porpoising (up/down) it's because the arrow is the wrong weight for the bow.

Technically you are correct though. If you fire an arrow too heavy for your bow, it may increase its stopping power and will definitely decrease its accuracy. But that's probably not what you meant.

[BigDaddy]

Originally Posted by sector24

This is not really the case in modern archery. The characteristics of the bow determines what kind of arrow you can fire. If you try to shoot an arrow too heavy or too light for your bow, it will not fly straight. Frequently when your arrows are fishtailing (left/right) or porpoising (up/down) it's because the arrow is the wrong weight for the bow.

Technically you are correct though. If you fire an arrow too heavy for your bow, it may increase its stopping power and will definitely decrease its accuracy. But that's probably not what you meant.

I actually got that from an archery magazine. If I understand correctly, assuming you are correct, and I bet you are, and I'll add that I didn't say different, that a certain bow can handles several kinds and legnths of arrows with a variety of heads. Typically only refered to as length and weight in grains. I think the variation in lengths a bow can handle doesn't vary -that- much, but you can certainly use heavier arrows to obtain more stopping power, but generally sacrifice accuracy and range.

I'm not an expert, but I have poked around reading things from people who are. So, I'm trying to understand how a few sources here actually agree. A bow might come with a reccomended arrow weight, but that isn't a number that can't be adjusted for circumstance and archer, if I understand correctly.

[Knai]

Originally Posted by BigDaddy

I've never had a problem with necroing thread that are like this one. If someone want to discuss this type of thing, this can just as easily be the clearinghouse of information.

I am not a bow expert, but it is not difficult, for me at least, to understand penetration as a mixture between projectile mass and velocity and strike area, which yields power delivered per unit area. If I understand basic bowcraft, you get more overall stopping power from a large (higher grain) arrow than a small arrow, but less accurracy. This means that loading the projectile with energy is a function of some kind, and not just a gross number as in you get such and such joules or watt/hours or whatever, per pull (also, the last inches of pull seem to load more, so longer arrows seem to have more power).

So, most bows of whatever type should have fine penetration.

There was not a great deal of variety in materials for bows in medieval times, and crossbows were generally not 5 feet wide, as a long bow might be tall. From what I have seen, long bows also flexed quite a bit more. This would generally seem to favor the long bow for loading capacity over the crossbow, even if it take more weight to pull back the string. Modern crossbows, though still often narrow, flex like crazy, to a point I've never seen anyone do with a bow. Compound bows still seem superior however. Though it's likely there is a comparative crossbow variety as well. Most compound bows are composite of some sort and so are crossbows, but compound bows seem to be more wood like, whereas crossbows seem to be more like metal springs. I haven't a clue which is necessarily more powerful, becaue the compound bow is generally much larger, and crossbow remains nocked. Thus, there is not much of a clue from user interface. My assumption is that at the high end of penetration in the modern world are sophisticated compound crossbows that are quite large and are pulled back with a mechanical device. This seems like the most reason and sane way a person could load a projectile with as much force as can be reasonably accomplished.

But what about slings? I looked around at sling information, and it seems that slings remained effective for a very long time. Even now they have their harrasment value with certain irregulars. They use a blunt object, so the object needs to be very heavy or very dense. Indeed, when there was metal armor, the slings used lead shot, which was quite deadly, on the Romans.

However, the ranks of slingers dwindled, and this is likely to be due to skill and culture limitations. I've never used a sling, but they aren't and obvious as a bow, and certainly no were near as obvious as a crossbow.

In ancient Israel, they have found a lot of sling stones, some quite large (fist size!). There is some evidence that the Ancient people of the region used slings to achieve great results (also explaining why other nations came up against them with calvalry and chariots). One -could- assume that sling use was a sort of national pass time in the region. This would explain the various size and sling projectiles as well, and the skill involved. Contemporary persons skilled with the sling are quite effective and accurate. I would concede that such a situation could easily be like that with English Longbowmen, only, it seems, on a grander scale, as all the peasantry use the sling. I can picture granny giving the little ones their first sling lesson, because the men are to busy seeing who can sling the 3 pound monster stone the farthest.

On crossbows. A large part of the reason they were as powerful as they were while as small as they were was the materials involved. They don't bend back as far as a bow in most cases, and are nowhere near as wide. On the other hand, bows aren't made with significant amounts of metal, where the bow part of a crossbow frequently is. As for penetration, it is a combination of a lot of things. Weight, angle, bow power, weather, arrow shape, armor slope, etc, which applies to both bows and crossbows, and makes direct calculations pretty much impossible. Still leaves testing as an option.

On slings, fist sized stones are generally not used, although there are exceptions, and there is always that guy who is actually going to try a 3 pound stone. But generally you are looking at the 1-3 ounces weight (30-100 grams). As for stones, slings are used for sharp objects fairly often. Dart slings are commonplace, poisoned dart slings not commonplace enough. Then of course there is the Apache method, where the projectiles become sharp. Obsidian might be rounded now, but when it hits the rock right next to you the pieces flying at you aren't.

On bows and arrow weights. The weight and length of an arrow are fairly restricted on a per bow basis, although you can swap out heads pretty much as you want, as long as you avoid the kind of stuff that is too impractical for use anyways. It does impact flight, particularly if you try for flaming arrows (where you wrap something just behind the head then light it), but in general you are limited. A few points to the atlatl here, and a few days for me to avoid the word on.

[BigDaddy]

This is like an unending conversation about which crossbow or long bow is more powerful in general?

I've read that medieval crossbows were generally less powerful. So, what am I to make of all this conflicting information? What has likely happened is that musuem quality medieval crossbows are no doubt quite powerful and well made (and no doubt accurate). Given the relative complexities, however, and relative ages...

As far as slings go, I was trying to make the sling seem familiar within the context of ancient societes, were it was a very common weapon.

And as for arrow weight, I'm sure there is a nominal weight for the greatest accuracy and/or maximum range amd/or greatest power.

Edit: Now I just "went shopping" and read a x-bow manual. Use the heaviest arrow or bolt that your launcher can fire and you can fire accurately to take down your game as this is the most humane way of doing so. Using a LIGHTER arrow or bolt is considered dry firing. In some cases the x-bow or bow is not tested using a variety of arrows and using other arrows could void the warranty. Nonetheless, weight in grains on just one sight varied (for the same other specs.) from 6.6 grain/inch to 9.2 grain/inch. Which is a large difference. Enough that the manual reccomends always choosing the heaviest one you can shoot accurately at a reasonable range, so as to be humane. Thanks.