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Range still increases a bit. Furthermore you can shoot more precisely.

You can't shoot more precisely. It has no effect whatsoever. The adjustable sights on a rifle (or scope) have settings you can change depending on the range, which accounts for bullet drop; windage, which accounts for wind. There are no calculations for...hillage. Find any site that details that info and post it.

Altitude has an effect on drag and pressure, but that's not going to change shooting up or down unless you're shooting a cruise missile.

Shooting Uphill/Downhill

Bullet drop does not change very much when shooting uphill/downhill. But the rifle will appear to shoot high. In fact it shoots high by almost the same amount whether you are shooting up or down. Therefore you must adjust your hold or change your scope when taking shots at high angle, especially as range increases. If you know what the drop (d) is for your bullet at any given range, you can use the following table to calculate the amount your bullet will shoot high, in inches.

Think about a 600 yd shot downhill at 40 degrees -- Instead of a 50" correction we are talking about a 40" correction. Check your tables or ballistics program for your rifle. If you would like to know what it is right now, then try JBM's online ballistics calculator!

 sebster wrote:

DukeRustfield wrote:
Yes, and I'm sure they were statistically insignificant. Even up to our own Civil War, where I got dragged to a bazillion battlefields they weren't even 5 degree slopes. And I'm fairly certain they didn't mass bulldoze/grade the terrain after the fact. I just saw a documentary on a few really important battles that ended in massacres because one side retreated to like...a hill, and the other side thought that was a good place to charge up. For simple logistic reasons, you didn't have mass terrain because they were communicating with their army visually. Further, it's a damn hard place to fight.

You can be as sure as you want, but you're just wrong. Completely, 100% wrong. And there's actually a lot of battlefields that don't exist in the form they did when the war took place - the ridge at Waterloo has eroded over time so that going there today you can't get a sense for how Wellington used it to obscure the strength of his position. And oh look, Waterloo... that's another famous battle where varying terrain heights played a crucial role.

Add Austerlitz, the Crimean War and the Siege of Sevastopol in WWII to that list (amusingly enough using the same battlefield twice).

DukeRustfield wrote:
You can't shoot more precisely. It has no effect whatsoever. The adjustable sights on a rifle (or scope) have settings you can change depending on the range, which accounts for bullet drop; windage, which accounts for wind. There are no calculations for...hillage. Find any site that details that info and post it.

Altitude has an effect on drag and pressure, but that's not going to change shooting up or down unless you're shooting a cruise missile.

Shooting Uphill/Downhill

Bullet drop does not change very much when shooting uphill/downhill. But the rifle will appear to shoot high. In fact it shoots high by almost the same amount whether you are shooting up or down. Therefore you must adjust your hold or change your scope when taking shots at high angle, especially as range increases. If you know what the drop (d) is for your bullet at any given range, you can use the following table to calculate the amount your bullet will shoot high, in inches.

Think about a 600 yd shot downhill at 40 degrees -- Instead of a 50" correction we are talking about a 40" correction. Check your tables or ballistics program for your rifle. If you would like to know what it is right now, then try JBM's online ballistics calculator!

That's true for a bullet, but a projectile that fires in an arc (or a steeper arc anyway) is going to be affect by hills. An arrow fired down a hill is going to cruise on an ideal lethal path longer than an arrow fired up a hill.
Math to follow, toddler has to go potty.

-Matt

All projectiles file in arcs. Go pythagorean theorem on it to see how miniscule the height difference is.

DukeRustfield wrote:
All projectiles file in arcs. Go pythagorean theorem on it to see how miniscule the height difference is.

But the steepness of the arc is more extreme the slower the projectile becomes.
Firing down hill is much more effective with a bow than it is with a gun, and better for a primitive shortbow than it would be for a modern compound high performance bow.
If you think of the sweet spot of a target, center mass, or a strike zone from stomach to chest, then the longer the distance a projectile can cover in this zone increases the likely hood of a hit.
A slope that declines with the natural drop of a projectile is ideal.
A unit of archers firing down on an enemy formation advancing uphill is going to be measurable more effective than the reverse.

-Matt

Nope. If you are lobbing something, it no longer has kill power. You are merely trying to get distance. A gun trying to get distance has to be fired at the same arc as a bow, that's just physics. And it will be several miles of range vs. hundreds of yards. The reason anyone can hit anything at those "extreme" bow angles is because they can still see it. You can't see something 2.5 miles away to try and angle your rifle and shoot it, but that's what you're doing with a bow.

You didn't do the Pythagorean theorem like I said. The olympics use 70m using the highest quality modern bows. That's pretty damn far, about 200 feet. A castle wall is say 50 feet or 15ish meters (or being elevated up a hill 50 feet)--pretty damn high up, about 5 stories. Using Pythagorean, that flat 70m shot turns into a 71.58910531638176m shot. The difference is negligible and that's at the very very very far end of what any WHFB archer could put killing force behind.

If you are making volley shots down a hill, you can't shoot anything nearby cuz you have to arch it over them. You have a double decline going (triple, if you want to be a douche and count the curvature of the earth but only missiles and layz0rz worry about that stuff). Killing shots are fired straight. You are aiming literally inches at max range over your target. If you have to aim more than that higher, your arrow will not have the power to hurt your target when it arrives. Volley shots are a different animal. But to volley shot to someone on a hill, you'd have to aim at some insane angle like 80 degrees. The hill makes it massively worse because they are too close.

I didn't use Pythagorean, because it isn't an angle, it's a curve. If you're shooting in an angle, you're going to miss, unless you are firing near point blank.

Ideally, the only thing that effects how much an arrow drops is how long it's in the air. That amount of time (t) in seconds goes into the following formula...
(t x t x 32.2) x 6 = drop in inches
All you need to do is figure out the time of flight and plug it in the formula.

Reading on bows and ancient bows, most fired at the 150 to 200 feet per second. A very powerful bow firing at 200 feet per seconds is in the air for half a second firing on a target at 100 feet. Plugging in a half second of flight time, you'll find that gravity has pulled my arrow down 48" (4 FEET) is half a second. If I aimed at your heart, I'm striking your shin.
Firing on a target 100 yards away, gravity has a 32 foot pull on the arrow during the 1.5 second flight.

The the ground your advancing on drops 32 feet over 100 yards (~10% grade), my flat shot starts at heart height, and 1.5 seconds later, is still at heart height.
By being on higher ground the flight path of my shot is in the kill zone. If the guy 10 feet in front of you ducks, it's still on a kill path.
Using height of the shooter to counter the drop of the shot, the shooters is left dealing more with right to left corrections and less with up/down. That's an increase in accuracy.

A 10% grade over 100 yards isn't an impossible hill.

Now, compare that to a bullet (600 to 5,000 fps) and you're seeing significantly less drop; because the bullet reaches the range in a fraction of the time.

I'm not sure where you're getting your stats from, but most of them are wrong.

This is how bows work: a straight line. That's how you shoot. A bow is just a slow gun. Take all the parabola stuff and throw it away because you can't hit anything doing that unless you got 1000 guys raining arrows on 1000 guys.

You do not angle fire to hit. That's something that shows up in movies a lot. And it's represented by volley fire. But you don't "aim" at a 45 degree angle to try and hit a soldier, a deer, or a target. You'd have to be godlike to make that happen.

No bullet is ever going to go 600-5k fps. My shotgun, which is a ridiculously slow firearm, still travels over 1k FPS and a 5.56 (like an M4) travels about 3K fps, which is ridiculously fast. Nothing on earth travels 5k fps. Maybe a railgun.

I've been shooting and hunting for about 3 decades now. Mostly on hills. Because the untapped nature areas are ones that are so hilly they couldn't develop them into anything else. My shotgun is about 4-5x faster than a bow, but it has vastly worse max range. Elevation is meaningless.

You're not shooting a bow at someone 100 yards away. The Olympics don't do that. Drag is the enemy, not gravity. You're shooting a solid object through air. That's what stops an arrow. Or a baseball. Or a soccer ball. Not gravity. A mosquito can defy the gravity of the entire planet earth by merely flapping its wings. That's how weak it is. But if there's a 10mph wind it is helpless.

Break out of whatever you're trying to concoct and find an actual hunting or archery site where people are worried about elevation. There's many thousands of sites on hunting and shooting and the dynamics behind it. There is no difference.

http://forums.bowhunting.com/archive/index.php/t-10777.html

Physics.
9 meters per second per second is gravity.
Convert that to feet per second and drop in inches and you'll get what I posted.

Drag may slow the arrow, but it's gravity that brings it to the ground. A mosquito is a speck, so the lift to weight ratio is easy to meet. A mosquito has a bigger problem, viscosity. If you make a mosquito 100 times bigger with 100 times the strength and 100 times the weight, it won't fly. Viscosity greatly affects very small objects and flight.

Olympic shooting isn't the end all be all of archery, nor does it represent a warbow firing a war arrow.

When you look through a scope and use mil-dots, you're aiming in an arc, not strait.

As for speed of bullets:
.220 Swift - 4213 fps with 40 grain bullet.
.22-250 - 4,224 fps with 40 grain bullet.
6.53 Lazzeroni Scramjet - 4000 fps with 85 grain bullet.
7.21 Lazzeroni Firebird - 3900 fps with 120 grain bullet.
7.21 Lazzeroni Tomahawk - 3563 fps with 120 grain bullet.
7.62 Lazzeroni Warbird - 3775 fps with 150 grain bullet.
8.59 Lazzeroni Titan - 3550 fps with 185 grain bullet.

Most of these are ~30 years old, so I'm guessing that 4,224 isn't the top end right now.

http://margo.student.utwente.nl/sagi/artikel/longbow/longbow.html
A bow of the strength described by Stayner and Paterson would project a war arrow a long distance. But here again, no one is sure how far: Stayner believes the war arrow had an effective range of 180 yards;11 Paterson maintains a slightly further distance of 200 yards;12 and Bartelot estimates a useful range of 249 yards.13 Captain George Burnet, Secretary to the Royal Scottish Archers, notes that the members of the Queen's Body Guard for Scotland, who still shoot, use six foot long self yew bows of 55 to 60 pounds draw weight. The range of these modern bows is 180-200 yards shooting light target shafts.14

What's more, firing at an steep angle, I've seen archers hit man sized target and very long ranges. Due to the time in the air, all the target need do is change the direction he's walking in to be missed, so not knowing your being fired upon is key.


What's interesting is an ancient atlatl replicated and tested at University of Iriving had a surprising range of ~150 yards by an untrained test subject (my archeology professor and me). With practice, shots out to 280 meters have been recorded. In the test we did, we hit and penetrated a leather target (1.5 meter diameter) at 90 meters. The leather was 3cm thick. The test was to see if we thought it possible for early natives to hunt the local elephants. 2 hours of practice (and a few beers) let us score a couple of hits that would do serious to lethal damage (20cm of penetration through 3cm of skin).

The issue is ranges. If you're shooting your bow at ~30 to 40 yards, the range is so short and the time in the air so little, that odds are good you're barely noticing drop. Double the range, and you quadrouple the drop. 3x the range is 9 times the drop.


-Matt

You can come up with custom ammo that will blow apart a gun and say, zomg it's 4000fps. But no one uses it. That ammo is more expensive than target .50 cal rifle rounds by about 2-300%. If you put that ammo in a modern FAL, which is 7.62, it would simply destroy the chamber. You can always make a tungsten(!) or somesuch gun and load it with as much gunpowder as you like.

--hmm, guess i can't hotlink that image--

The problem with your gravity issues you aren't taking into consideration how insanely fast these things are going. You write it in your last sentence but seem to have forgotten it in everything else you wrote. Even a sucky medieval bow is going like 140mph. M4 ball ammo is going about 2K mph. That's why you get the crack from the ammo even if it's suppressed, because it's breaking the sound barrier. They cross the point of them becoming non-lethal extremely fast.

This video, which isn't that interesting, shows a modern pistol round dropping 3-4 feet after ~300 feet in distance. But at that point it merely skims paper on the ground, rolls a foot and comes to a stop. It might not even break skin at that range.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9wQVIEdKh8

So the point is, if you can hit something, and it be lethal, it's going to be crossed incredibly fast.

Single bows firing at steep angles aren't going to hit anything unless there is no wind. Wind changes direction with altitude and (ir)regularly at distance. Which is why in long range shooting competitions they set up flags every 10 feet so you can see the wind and try and make some calculation. But a bullet is a lot faster and smaller than an arrow.

But I think we're getting off the point of hills. Hills still don't matter. Altitude does not change gravity. If there's a windage change you still have to compensate for it both ways. You aim at what you're trying to kill, the further out it is compared to your "zero" you aim higher. That works whether you're shooting up or down or sideways or along a hill.

That;s a good video. So ~3-4 feet in drop over 300 yards.

Here's how down hill is more accurate.

Think of it this way:
Hold a sheet of paper at arms length.
Now hold the same sheet at a 30 degree angle.
See how it looks smaller?
This is what's happening at long range. Gravity is pulling the arrow down. If you could put a camera on the tip of an arrow, you'd see a smaller target profile the higher you have to aim. You have to aim above the target to arc it down to the target. Instead of coming right at the target, you're striking it at an angle. This makes the target smaller.
If you're shooting the same arrow down slope, you're flight path is following closer to the ground line, making the target "full size".
Firing uphill is worse, the angle of attack is much steeper, and the strike zone appears much smaller.

On a bullet, that angle isn't much of a difference due to the speed at which it reaches the target. On an arrow, it is.

-Matt

DukeRustfield wrote:
Fourth, the range of a bow of the WHFB universe would drool at being able to hit anything at 100 yards. It would never remotely happen. Indoor pistol ranges, glocks and all, generally top out at 50 yards and that's a hard shot to make. Just a wiki says their effective range is about that, which means pushing further and they won't even penetrate (though paper targets are pretty wussy). Most rifle ranges are 50-100 to start and if you're shooting more you're doing it at a bench/prone with a scope and with a non-wussy caliber. I can speak from many years experience as a bad rifleman in that regards. So yes, if you are in range of any WHFB ranged weapon, even if you're shooting straight up, the elevation doesn't make much difference.

I don't think you realise how many arrows were loosed in order to score a hit. Yeah, at 100 yards you were stretching your effective range and you won't be inflicting many kills for all the arrows you loosed, but that's how it is. Point being to demoralise the opponent, to disrupt his formation, and to force him in to advancing on your position.

I stopped mentioning hills because i don't want to go over the maps of every battlefield that ever existed. I actually started looked at some and I was like, you know, this isn't that interesting. I'm sure I could come up with a thousand really flat battlefields and you could come up with a thousand or maybe three thousand, I don't know--but it would take us a year or so of research. From my understanding mass, multi-thousand assaults in the pre-pre-modern era were not primarily fought among hills and dales.

Now you're just being lazy. It's inane to just go 'oh this guy disagrees with my claim that battles were always on flat ground, therefore he must be arguing that they were always on hilly ground'.

My point, if you'd care to actually, like, read, is that battles have been fought on all kinds of terrain for all kinds of reasons (the ancient Greeks did fight on ground that was very even, as their culture for war was highly ritualised), and when hills were a feature, they were a critical piece of terrain as they offered significant advantage to all kinds of troops, especially ranged troops.

The hills and mountains being a good place to retreat to when you DIDN'T want to fight. I think it was maybe even you who argued this when I said chariots weren't used too much because terrain was too rough and you said no way, terrain is flat the world over.

Nope, you got that wrong. I never said terrain was rough the world over, I simply pointed out to you that chariots were very common where terrain could be expected to be flat, and that in some other places allowances were made (the Celts having chariots light enough that they could be carried by men over rough terrain).

You unfortunately don't remember any of that because, like here, you've set your mind to avoid learning because that would mean admitting you don't know what you're talking about.

If it makes you feel better, I will say that every battle that was every fought was on nothing but hills.

What would make me feel better would be if you listened and learned something for a change. It obviously pains your ego to have this pointed out, but you really know very little about historic warfare, and that's a problem when you just make stuff up. It means when you come across people who know a little about the subject then it's going to annoy them, especially when you then try to stop them explaining how it actually worked.

Just... please listen. Please learn. Please stop this happening over and over again, like it already has. None of us were born knowing everything we'd like to. We actually acquired knowledge by listening to people who knew more, and asking them questions. You can do this too, and when you do this goddamn arguments will stop happening, and you'll end up smarter.

There is no viable reason to have a guy with a gun or a bow on a hill except to make people run up at him in angry defiance of gravity. It's a pretty big reason, however. And it's covered under charges. That and visibility. But that applies to everyone, melee or not, you want to see where your enemy is and a hill gives you the most movement options, because it's easier for you to run down in any direction than them to run up.

You are simply and utterly wrong. Firing ranged weapons from a high point has a basic and undeniable impact on the effectiveness of the weapon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

DukeRustfield wrote:
You can't shoot more precisely. It has no effect whatsoever. The adjustable sights on a rifle (or scope) have settings you can change depending on the range, which accounts for bullet drop; windage, which accounts for wind. There are no calculations for...hillage. Find any site that details that info and post it.

Trying to claim the same effect on arrows fired in volley and super-sonic direct fire rifle rounds is inane.

Seriously, stop this.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

DukeRustfield wrote:
Nope. If you are lobbing something, it no longer has kill power. You are merely trying to get distance. A gun trying to get distance has to be fired at the same arc as a bow, that's just physics.

Not when the deacceleration of the projectile varies. Your understanding of physics is woeful, and you should stop using it to second guess millenia of established military theory.

If you are making volley shots down a hill, you can't shoot anything nearby cuz you have to arch it over them. You have a double decline going (triple, if you want to be a douche and count the curvature of the earth but only missiles and layz0rz worry about that stuff). Killing shots are fired straight. You are aiming literally inches at max range over your target. If you have to aim more than that higher, your arrow will not have the power to hurt your target when it arrives. Volley shots are a different animal. But to volley shot to someone on a hill, you'd have to aim at some insane angle like 80 degrees. The hill makes it massively worse because they are too close.

You don't seem to understand that arrows are not at all like bullets. The arrow is bigger and heavier, and as such when fired in volley operate entirely differently. Unlike a bullet, they actually regain significant velocity on their downward trajectory.

I mean,,, for feth's sake, that's why they were used in indirect fire in a way no-one would ever bother to use a firearm.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

HawaiiMatt wrote:
Reading on bows and ancient bows, most fired at the 150 to 200 feet per second. A very powerful bow firing at 200 feet per seconds is in the air for half a second firing on a target at 100 feet. Plugging in a half second of flight time, you'll find that gravity has pulled my arrow down 48" (4 FEET) is half a second. If I aimed at your heart, I'm striking your shin.
Firing on a target 100 yards away, gravity has a 32 foot pull on the arrow during the 1.5 second flight.

Good point, and one made stronger by considering the arrow deaccelerates massively over the first few yards after release. Travel time therefore isn't half a second but in fact much longer, allowing the shot to alter considerably.

Matt, you're talking visible.

Pistol rounds are subsonic. As are musket rounds. A 38 special, probably the most common gun in the world, shoots 3-4x the speed of a bow. Though the bow has a much greater effective range.

Remember that it is gravity working on the bullet during its flight time that causes it to drop. If you were to shoot straight down, say from a tethered balloon, the bullet would have no curved trajectory, it would travel toward the earth in a straight line, just as if you simply dropped it. Likewise, if you shoot straight up, the bullet travels up in a straight line until its momentum is expended. Again, there is no curved trajectory.

http://www.longrangehunting.com/forums/f17/long-range-incline-declined-angle-shots-66782/

was surprised to hear one of my bowhunting buddies say that you have to aim low if you are shooting uphill. That doesn’t seem right. What is the truth?
Answer:
He was right! Whether you are shooting uphill or downhill you have to aim low. Many newcomers to bowhunting think that you have to aim high when shooting upward. It would seem to make sense intuitively, but actually whenever the force of gravity acts in any plane other than perpendicular to your in-flight shaft, trajectory will be flattened, and you’ll shoot high. For example, with a 30 degree upslope, a 40 yard shot will actually shoot like a 35 yarder. So, even though you know the distance is 40 yards you have to aim as though it were 35. That was a very good question!

http://www.edersbow.com/how-do-you-aim-when-shooting-up-hill/

Just remember that gravity is working on the arrow over the horizontal distance to the target not the actual distance. It would be the base of the triangle not the hypotenuse. You are shooting less distance and need to hold accordingly but you also have to hold lower on the animal to angle the arrow up through the vitals from below and higher to angle down through the vitals from above.

http://sportsmansnews.com/forum/hunting/bow-hunting-shooting-uphill-or-downhill-and/#.UYdVALWG2So

really long one:
http://www.archersadvantage.com/TipSheets/UpDownHill.htm

DukeRustfield wrote:
This is how bows work: a straight line. That's how you shoot. A bow is just a slow gun. Take all the parabola stuff and throw it away because you can't hit anything doing that unless you got 1000 guys raining arrows on 1000 guys.

For much of warfare that's exactly how it worked. I mean, come on man, think a little.

You do not angle fire to hit. That's something that shows up in movies a lot. And it's represented by volley fire. But you don't "aim" at a 45 degree angle to try and hit a soldier, a deer, or a target. You'd have to be godlike to make that happen.

And now you're doing everything you can to think around the issue. No-one is talking about one guy aiming for one guy with an angled shot lik it was a movie. We're talking about mass action against mass targets. You know, formations of archers firing on enemy formations of troops. Why you'd start speculating about any other nonsense is one for the ages.

You're not shooting a bow at someone 100 yards away. The Olympics don't do that. Drag is the enemy, not gravity. You're shooting a solid object through air. That's what stops an arrow.

The Olympics don't do that because they're target firing and scoring individual arrows. Compared to ancient warfare, where they were loosing hundreds or thousands of arrows and expecting only a few effective hits. Once again, you obviously know what volley fire is, so stop making up stupid nonsense to pretend it doesn't exist.

Just fething accept that you used knowledge you do have (firearms) and tried to apply it something you didn't know anything about (the importance of terrain in historial warfare) without considering all the ways in which the two differ (the difference between arrows and bullets, the number of battles in which terrain was a crucial factor).

DukeRustfield wrote:
I'm not sure where you're getting your stats from, but most of them are wrong.

This is how bows work: a straight line. That's how you shoot. A bow is just a slow gun.

I was reading this debate with interest until this point. This is where it became clear that you are either trolling, clutching at straws, or just stubbornly refusing to concede that you are wrong in this argument.

On Topic: I think +1 for under half no modifier for over half would be a positive change, seems weird that these weapons are penalised for being used at the ranges they were designed for.

Just google the word "trajectory".

-Matt

Or read the actual archery sights I linked that detail in excrutiating detail the facts of bow use on hills. I was wrong in that old pythag doesn't matter because the bullet/arrow drop is over the horizontal distance, not the hypotenuse distance. But it holds then that hill shooting is irrelevant other than correcting for visual, because you think it's further than it is, which is why you have to aim low.

DukeRustfield wrote:
Or read the actual archery sights I linked that detail in excrutiating detail the facts of bow use on hills. I was wrong in that old pythag doesn't matter because the bullet/arrow drop is over the horizontal distance, not the hypotenuse distance. But it holds then that hill shooting is irrelevant other than correcting for visual, because you think it's further than it is, which is why you have to aim low.

You aren't aiming low, you just aren't aiming as high as you think you should. That's a result of the curved flight path.
You're also still quoting information with very short ranges. I did glance through your links. They don't represent flight time of ancient projectiles on battle fields.
The shorter the range, and the faster the projectile, the more strait the path becomes. It's why sniper rifles use such high speed rounds. It's more accurate.

You're links are for 30 yard shots from a 150 fps bow, or 200 yard shots on a 1,700 fps bullet.
Going from 30 yards at 150fps to 150 yards at 150 fps generates a very large drop.
You're looking at .6 seconds of flight to 3 seconds of flight.

I'll try and dig up the atlatl publication. I'm pretty sure we had projectile speed and range, and it would be interesting to see. From memory, we were throwing in a 30 degree up arc or so.

-Matt

MarsNZ wrote:
seems weird that these weapons are penalised for being used at the ranges they were designed for.

This is Wisdom, pure and simple.

At first, I thought a point-adjustment was what really needed to happen to most missile troops. But this? This just makes sense . It's much easier to understand, remember, and employ than the current rules. Addition > subtraction, every time.

HawaiiMatt wrote:

You're links are for 30 yard shots from a 150 fps bow, or 200 yard shots on a 1,700 fps bullet.

A medieval longbow was 200fps. That's from the sites I've seen. They said max range was 150-250y. As for 30y, I don't know if you're going to find a lot of data on 200y shots because not a lot of people are doing 200y shots. Certainly not hunting, which is where you're going to encounter up/downhill concerns. Competitive shooters aren't often going to stand on hills (or valleys).

DukeRustfield wrote:

HawaiiMatt wrote:

You're links are for 30 yard shots from a 150 fps bow, or 200 yard shots on a 1,700 fps bullet.

A medieval longbow was 200fps. That's from the sites I've seen. They said max range was 150-250y. As for 30y, I don't know if you're going to find a lot of data on 200y shots because not a lot of people are doing 200y shots. Certainly not hunting, which is where you're going to encounter up/downhill concerns. Competitive shooters aren't often going to stand on hills (or valleys).

Yeah, hard to find, unless you look in say, England.
It is also well known that no practice range was allowed to be less than 220 yds by order of Henry VIII
Oakeshott, R. Ewart (1960). The Archaeology of Weapons. London: Lutterworth Press.

-Matt

MarsNZ wrote:
seems weird that these weapons are penalised for being used at the ranges they were designed for.

This wasn't the range bows were designed for. You didn't hunt a deer by angling your bow at 45 degrees. You'd never hit it unless you had 500 other hunters doing the same. It's an ACCURACY penalty. Which totally makes sense. If you have one archer, gunman, discus thrower, whatever, they are going to be less accurate at long range. I don't know of any projectile on earth where that isn't the case other than like a satellite guided missile. But this is fantasy. Volley fire rules and mass archers weren't accurate. They made up for the innacuracy by throwing a bazillion shafts of wood into the air. Just like early musketeers made up for their innacuracy by having a huge gunline. That stuff didn't change until at least the late 1800s, maybe after.

A bonus at short range still means your worse at long range.
You're just adding a blanket +1 to hit.
Might as well say, take every unit in the game. Add 1 to their ballistic skill.
There, done. Exact same effect.

Anyhow, I've been reading up on velocity and drag, specific to arrows. It's really interesting. Drag isn't constant through the shot, and unlike most modern projectiles war arrows hit harder at the far end of the flight then they do at the apex.
The low trajectory of bullets doesn't allow for much acceleration downward compared to drag.
The higher trajectory of arrows does allow for more acceleration.
You're more likely to survive being shot at 75 yards out standing on top of a 10 story building than you are standing on level ground 150 yards out (if you're hit that is).
Reading reports of the effect of impact of war arrows is a bit scary. Arrow strikes a mounted knight from 180 yards, goes through his leg armor (both sides) through his saddle and kills his horse. Ouch.
If arrow technology was a little better, or if bow training wasn't such an expense, we'd never had seen guns.



-Matt

DukeRustfield. If you want game to be realistic then perhaps we should add +1S for all bows at long range
HawaiiMatt. This sounds interesting. What's the source of the web page assuming you got from web page.

devestator 7777777 wrote:
perhaps we should add +1S for all bows at long range

You know, there's actually some logical appeal here. An arrow fired from a bow is going to hit a lot harder than a guy swinging a mace or sword.
Generalizing all the different types, crossbows and bows have about equal penetrating power. The benefit of the crossbow is that it's much easier to use (and that it's more compact and doesn't require as much physical effort to use). But I guess the only way to represent all that would be to make bows S4 and significantly more expensive. Not worth the effort, but still.

devestator 7777777 wrote:
DukeRustfield. If you want game to be realistic then perhaps we should add +1S for all bows at long range
HawaiiMatt. This sounds interesting. What's the source of the web page assuming you got from web page.

Pulled it out of a university paper when I was looking for the atlatl experiment I was part of.
The paper was measuring drag on an arrow. Because the initial shot compresses the shaft, you get shaft wobble early in flight, which has much higher drag.
Later in flight the shaft wobble has evened out and drag is less.
Since the early part of the flight is up, and the later part down, you end up recovering lost speed. Terminal Speed is higher on the way down due to the reduced drag, and gravity lets you recover some of that speed.
This makes the flight of an arrow a very strange curve.

In all likely hood, it wouldn't make a difference. If you aren't in heavy plate, the arrow at either speed is going to mess you up.
The process of removing the arrow is likely to kill you:
Tie honey and wine soaked cloth to the back of the shaft, and push the shaft through. The honey is reported to act as an antiseptic , as is the wine. In 21 days, the wound will be free of infection, or you'll be are dead.

Some of the reports on pull of the ancient bows is crazy. Most are putting it in the 70-90 point pull. Some bows recovered from an ancient ship wreck put the pull at 160 pounds. Compared to modern bows at ~40-50 pounds, a 160 pound draw seems nuts. Don't know if the research is wrong, or if the life time of training made those guys super human archers.
What does seem to be agreed upon is an archer packed 60 to 72 arrows, and ammo runts would bring them more. Arrows are expensive and limited and it seems like getting your opponent to blow his load too early was a valid tactic. Worst job was to be arrow fodder.

I can't believe anyone is pulling 160. That's probably humanly impossible. Esp for those dinky little humans back then and their malnourished, non-steroided meat. That's a lot of tricep, back, some chest. I did some tricep pulls at the gym Sun and I was using like 70lbs and that's a lot for me. You have to realize that most people at that time couldn't dead-lift that, i.e., stand between the string and bow with the string on their shoulders and lift with their legs. That was probably like the wood petrifying or something.

I wouldn't mind S4 bows. The new HE book has it. And a bunch of other rules. But it's also shorter range. It's just a matter of balance. I'm not sure who all has bows, but some of the units are really cheap. S4 is an ogre punch. Unfortunately, in a D6(10) world, a little boy is S2 and a 10 foot flab monster is S4.

I think if anything the BS penalty is a better fix. If there was no half range long range crap. Then whatever the ranged weapon is would remain unchanged/balanced.

HawaiiMatt wrote:
A bonus at short range still means your worse at long range.
You're just adding a blanket +1 to hit.
Might as well say, take every unit in the game. Add 1 to their ballistic skill.
There, done. Exact same effect.

Sure, same effect, but given the reality of the game re-writing every army book is not practical, while changing the list of mods in the BRB from -1 at long to +1 at short is a practical rule change.

Also, it's simpler mechanic to add than it is to subtract, and therefore +1 at close range works better than -1 at long range (though its a really, really minor benefit in this instance).

If arrow technology was a little better, or if bow training wasn't such an expense, we'd never had seen guns.

Well, we'd still have seen guns. It was cannon that made archers obselete, not guns. And there's no possible improvement to archery that would make it compete with cannons.


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Warpsolution wrote:
You know, there's actually some logical appeal here. An arrow fired from a bow is going to hit a lot harder than a guy swinging a mace or sword.

There's also the massive difference in circumstance. Standing a 100 yards or more from the enemy and struck with an arrow, a guy is going to go ground and stay there. Wounded men very rarely keep on marching towards the enemy.

But struck with a similar wound in melee combat, well your opponent is still right in front of you and still trying to smash your face in. Even with a very serious wound you're likely to keep on fighting as best you're able - pure self preservation demands it.


I think +1 to Str within close range would simulate that quite well. My only concern would be game balance - bumping up the Str of all those ranged weapons would increase the armour save modifier, and that'd mean heavy cavalry and the like, which already have a fairly marginal role in the game, would struggle even more.

DukeRustfield wrote:
I can't believe anyone is pulling 160. That's probably humanly impossible. Esp for those dinky little humans back then and their malnourished, non-steroided meat. That's a lot of tricep, back, some chest. I did some tricep pulls at the gym Sun and I was using like 70lbs and that's a lot for me. You have to realize that most people at that time couldn't dead-lift that, i.e., stand between the string and bow with the string on their shoulders and lift with their legs. That was probably like the wood petrifying or something.

I wouldn't mind S4 bows. The new HE book has it. And a bunch of other rules. But it's also shorter range. It's just a matter of balance. I'm not sure who all has bows, but some of the units are really cheap. S4 is an ogre punch. Unfortunately, in a D6(10) world, a little boy is S2 and a 10 foot flab monster is S4.

I think if anything the BS penalty is a better fix. If there was no half range long range crap. Then whatever the ranged weapon is would remain unchanged/balanced.

One of the description of drawing a bow said it wasn't pulling with the arms, but with the body. It gave a description that didn't really detail the process all that well.
What is different than a casual shooter is the daily training for years and years with ever increasing bow strengths.

When I ran in college, I was doing a 4:20 1500m. 4 minutes was being done, and broken by a second or two. It was generally agreed that faster than that was humanly impossible.
3:43 is the current world record.
I have a lot more faith in what 10 years of daily training does than I used to.

-Matt