The initial Tinkering release featuring Crossbow and Bolt crafting is now live in Test if you'd like to play with it. A few notes about the new system -
The base ingredient for Crossbows is of course, wood. Wood affinities were expanded so Shortbow = Arbalest, Longbow = Heavy Crossbow, and Composite bow = Light crossbow.
Tinkered items usually require mechanisms as one of the ingredients. These can be made from a GEAR PRESS tool in the crafting halls. They are made by pushing/pulling the device with an ingot, and the resulting mechanisms can stack. Metal has a new ductility attribute you can observe by appraising it carefully. High ductility mechanisms will bonus the crossbow's balance. Very low ductility mechanisms will greatly penalize balance, but provide a small boost to power.
Old crossbow stats did not change. Nor did their damage significantly.
New crossbows have new power/balance/draw_strength stats appropriately balanced for their RTs. They are NOT comparable with old crossbows. They are NOT comparable with stick bows. Stickbows spanned the range of power levels, so it wasn't possible to add crossbows/arbs on top of that. There just wasn't enough range leftover :(
New light and heavy crossbows should do more damage than the old ones with the same RT, but in general the new crossbows feature reduced RTs.
New crossbows do not benefit from strength/skill RT reductions. This was necessary so crossbows weren't "handicapped" compared to stick bows and other weapon types. Let's get through balance testing and we can see if it makes sense to somehow throw in somewhere.
Arbalests should now feature much lower RTs for loading. The damage will be a bit lower due to the faster loading RTs, but appropriate on a pure math-based DPS calculation.
Crossbow bolt crafting works very similar to arrow crafting. You must now specify which type of shaft to craft when shaping it. SHAPE LUMBER INTO BOLT SHAFT or ARROW SHAFT. It uses the same animal parts for now. That may change if I find a few weeks to expand the associated systems more.
That should cover the important parts. Please discuss it over in the appropriate Lore folder for now.
Thanks!
"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes
