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xizor
Ok I have noticed that there is a big difference between a long bow and a crossbow in shadow run

The difference is:
Crossbows have a set strength minimum and damage. There does not seem to be any way to change it.

They can never ever have a higher strength minimum or better damage code. Except by using special bolts.

Why is that?
By the ranges there should be some way to get a better crossbow. However by the five pound cannon there is not.
KillaJ
I would imagine the same techniques used in the construction of the Ranger-X bow could also be applied to a crossbow. I can't think of many applications for it that another device wouldn't be better suited for, but if all you are looking for is some logical way to improve crossbows in your game that might be something to look into.
I Eat Time
I'm not 100% clear on how crossbows work differently in real life than normal bows, and I imagine FASA folks didn't either, so that's why they came up with this rule. It makes sense to me, with mediocre knowledge.

So a bow fires with as much power as you put into it, and you have to HOLD the bolt while you're aiming at whatever power you want, or close to it. Farther you pull it back, harder it's gonna hit.

Crossbows are pulled back to notches, aimed, and fired like a gun. The notches or whatever controls the power, not how hard you pulled it. So it's like a delay-action bow, the benefit being you don't have to have a strength minimum to fire it, the downside being that the power's not nearly so 'customizable'.
Austere Emancipator
A bow has an absolute power limit just like a crossbow has. If you pull it back further you'll just strain yourself without putting any more power to it, or break the bow. You can't achieve that anyway unless you have arms much longer than an average human.

When there are Str Min 20 Longbows, there should also be ballistae. Or, actually, there shouldn't be any Str Min 20 Longbows, but there should still be ballistae.
otomik
*in south park martin jefferson voice* "thats ignorant, they're ignorant."

yes indeed FASA is ignorant on this.
the stopping power caused by bows and crossbows isn't comparable to that caused by bullets, a good hit with a arrow won't drop a deer the same way a bullet does. in many cases a deer will just stand there for a second trying to figure out what happened while a arrow is sticking in them, then start to run off and you just gotta follow the blood trail and hope you got a good enough hit so that they pass out from blood loss soon. (ohio law doesn't allow you to carry a pistol to finish them off quickly, but it's a popular way to go)

crossbows are more powerful than bows generally but really you just gotta check things out for yourself, i think the most powerful are composite crossbows some with draw weights of 300 pounds.

but in the end crossbows don't really do anything bows can't do, they're just easier to fire accurately and more powerful in a smaller package (this fact is balanced by the quicker firing of bows). remember that many crossbows have pulleys to crank back the drawstring so you're not as limited by your own muscle strength. there's no reason not to go high-tech though because arrows are like bullets against magical foes.
Diesel
How would arrows effect a magical (I'm guessing you mean spirit / materialized whatever) target more effectively than bullets? They're both more seperated in terms of personal beatdown by the launcher. Bow to arrow, crossbow to bolt, pistol and rifle to bullet, shotgun to slug - to target. All that as opposed to fist - to face. If there's some rule, that'd be awesome, I'm just curious.
Lantzer
Um, I think the two of you agree. He just said that there was not any real difference between arrows and bullets, as far as spirits and the like are concerned.

And that's true. The primary reasons one of my characters would carry a bow would be style, followed by stealth of use.

Of course, they're not as concealable as pistols.... which is why I like to go with tasers for quiet, semi-public jobs.
Lilt
Heh. It depends on what you've stuck on the pistol. An Ares Predator III with a silencer slapped on is as concealable as a Str Min 20 Ranger-X bow... eek.gif
Raptor1033
actually that brings up an interesting point. if you get ahold of some wooden arrows without metal heads, just sharpened tips, would that count as elemental wood and a spirits immunity to normal weapons not work against it? of course power would have to be lowered a little, maybe -2 or -3 because of the less effective point. anyone else think of this for a spirit killer?
shadd4d
I don't see how this counts as elemental wood. It's just wood, which isn't a defined element in the game (leave Earthdawn at the door momentarily).

It's still a normal weapon; it hasn't changed and isn't being driven by the force of a person. OTOH, anchor a spell to the tip and then you've got something, like slay spirit or something of that nature.

Don
Thistledown
Other reasons to use crossbows in some cases. If you're going some place with a high likelyhood of cooking off your ammo, you don't have to worry. One of my characters has massive electricity problems, so he has to use one. Another uses emps and other gear a lot, so he choses to play it safe and go with a nice stable bolt instead of potentially hazardous bullets.

Then of course, there's the cake ammo spell (saw it in some suplement), and all the wonderful secondary effects from elemental manipulations. (Fireball may burn your bolts, depending on material, but it isn't going to make them explode.)

And of course, another big plus for crossbows is that the ammunition is re-useable. Just take it out of the body when you're done, and fire again.
Fahr
as someone who shoots a Compound bow, I thought I would throw out some defenitions and explaations that might make this a little clearer.

first, a bows power comes from the amount of force imparted to the arrow working through a sharpened surface (broadhead) bow strength is measured in pounds of draw, basically how many pound would you have to hang on the string if you were shooting the ceiling to pull the bo back. for long bows and recurves, these also are accompanied by a draw length, as the length of draw varies by shooter and the force varies as well. as a rule of thumbe I learned in archery class, every 1" or draw adds about 2# to a bow in the 30-50# range

Long Bow == straight stick of rather long length (usually aroun 4-5') linear poundage progression, ie you pull it back 26" it has 40#, 28" is 44# 30" is 48#
these are big and harder to aim than more modern designs, but can be made relatively easy our of the right kinds of wood.

Recurve Bow == bow which curves away from the shooter so the limbs look a little like a flattened S bad ascii art to follow
CODE

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these bows also have a linear poundage progression like a long bow, but are generally much shorter in height 3-4'.

Compund bow = a very short bow that uses a pully system to get mechanical advantage on the string. these bows have a set draw length, you just can't draw them any furhter. they also have a set poundage, usually moderm bows of this type are in the 60-70# range. the other advantage to this design is "let off" basically full draw weight occurs somewhere in the middle of the movement to draw the bow, rather than at the end when where you hold it, so the full draw is easier to hold than other "straight" bows. this is usually measured as a % let off. my 68# compound has a 30% let off, which means at full draw it only feels like I am holding about 49# allowing me to have more power at less strain.

Crossbows can use any of the above mechanisms, but they are moving to the compound style in most hunting crossbows now. the draw weights are usually above 125# up to 400#. they almost always have either a lever, or crank to load the string with. these take a while to get ready but have more force than you can shake a stick at. IRL here in Texas, if you are not disabled you may not use a crossbow in bow hunting season, they are treated like rifles. you can use them for varmint hunting all you want though.

Modern arrows are usually aluminum, or carbon. they are not re-usable as the impact almost always warps the shaft when used on a real target (you can re-use them in practice because the targets slow the arrows down so as to not destroy them). wooden arrows can and will shatter if shot out of a significantly powerfull enough bow, the compunds in particular accelerate the arrow very fast and can shatter them. arrows must be matched to the bow being fired ro it can damge the bow or make the arrow inaccurate.

there... them's the basics of archery today.

-Mike R
mfb
in answer to the question about wood vs spirts, the answer is yes if you consider wu-jen elements to be effective against spirits the same way that the classic elements are. however, if you're allowing wu-jen, then there's no point in removing the metal tip, as metal is one of the five wu-jen elements.
Raptor1033
does it have to be a pure metal or can an alloy count to be elemental?
broho_pcp
well, la-de-frikin' da, I might as well just use bullets, cause they are METAL. hmmm... I do not think wood or metal would count as a "elemental effect." But wood will be good against vampires, so it can be useful. (note: on re-reading of post I noticed I was being insulting, I am sorry and do not mean it smile.gif)
Herald of Verjigorm
If you accept as an elemental weapon everything listed on the elemental effects (MitS spell design guide), lead is not valid but iron is.
That's everyone's cue to start making iron bullet house rules.
Austere Emancipator
-1 Power, x0.75 Ranges, 2x Price (to represent rarity more than actual cost of manufacturing), +2/48hrs Avail, only as a "modification" of Regular Ammo.

How's that?
Thistledown
I know nothing about actually making bullets. Why would an iron bullet have less power, etc, than lead? Isn't lead heavyer and softer?
Austere Emancipator
That's pretty much it. Iron is lighter, and in general making a bullet lighter is counterproductive to doing more damage with it. It certainly reduces ranges -- the bullet is still as large, ie as much friction, but decelerates a lot faster, thus shorter range.

Iron is also less likely to deform/fragment than anything that would count as Regular Ammo, which means an iron bullet would cause less tissue damage. Combined with lower mass and lower energy (right at the muzzle it'd probably have as much energy as normal bullets, but beyond that the energy would go away faster), you get less damage. And it still won't penetrate very well, because iron will flatten/fragment if it hits something very hard, such as body armor.

You could make a fragmenting iron bullet, which should use something like the Flechette rules, except double Ballistic armor. -1 Power might still be called for. Or you could concentrate on the shorter range and forget about the Power, but I figured you'd want some extra penalties for firing iron bullets because of the bonuses you'd be getting (Elemental Iron attack).
Arethusa
Is .75 enough? We are talking about a bullet with 1/4th the weight of a normal lead round. Personally, I'd give it -2 power and 30% reduction in range. I wouldn't allow frangible, either.

Also, hell, while we're at it, any suggestions for silver? I'm thinking -1 power, 20% reduction in range, +3/+1 week availability and x4 price (materials and market rarity).
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (Arethusa)
We are talking about a bullet with 1/4th the weight of a normal lead round.

Nope, we're talking about a bullet with 0.6925x the weight of a pure lead round. The density of iron is 7.86 grams/cm^3 in room temperature, the density of lead is 11.35 grams/cm^3.

If you're doing them at home, making them fragment might be a bit difficult but possible. Do them in a mold that is shaped like a hollowpoint and has tiny "walls" separating small sections on a hit.

Silver weighs 10.5 g/cm^3, not significantly less than lead. The hardness of lead is 1.5, silver is 2.5, iron is 4.0. Not only is silver heavy enough to be effective bullet material, it's malleable enough for many uses. I think neither range nor Power should be reduced with silver rounds. Your Availability and Price estimations are as good as any.
Arethusa
Well, that'll teach me to pay attention when I'm staring at a periodic table at 12 in the morning. Accidentally looked at nuclear mass instead of density and somehow didn't realize that a density of 200g/cm^3 might be a bit strange. Guess I'll never live that down.

In any case, looking at the right numbers, I agree. No change for silver and -1 for iron is about right. Personally, though, I'd stick with a 20% reduction in range. Easier to calculate on the fly, and possibly more realistic. Not a big deal, in any case.

One addendum, though: I think x6 or x8 for silver rounds might be better, but I don't know canon's costs for a simple Heavy Pistol round. I'm just thinking that a silver pistol round should weigh in at around 6-10¥ a piece.

[edit: typo]
Kagetenshi
Canon cost for ammo, 10 rounds: ¥20. Hence, ¥2 per bullet.

~J
Arethusa
Well, that's silly. In that case, x4 or x5 would do just fine.
Austere Emancipator
It's much better than the canon weight of ammo, though, which is the equivalent of a medium-light 12G shotgun round.
Kagetenshi
Well, given that there are no fractional nuyen in the game, the bullet prices are almost as low as they can possibly be within the system…

~J
Austere Emancipator
They're always bought in batches of 10, so the price could be anything down to 1 nuyen.gif. Tracer ammo is already 7.5 nuyen.gif each, 75 nuyen.gif for 10.
Cray74
QUOTE (Austere Emancipator)
If you're doing them at home, making them fragment might be a bit difficult but possible. Do them in a mold that is shaped like a hollowpoint and has tiny "walls" separating small sections on a hit.


You might also try casting the bullet fragments separately, then joining them together with some soft binder (a weak solder, glue, or just compression) rather than trying to manufacture some very fine scale separating walls. There's also the "glazer" (I think that's the term) approach, where you fill a plastic bullet with very fine beads.

QUOTE
Silver weighs 10.5 g/cm^3, not significantly less than lead. The hardness of lead is 1.5, silver is 2.5, iron is 4.0.


That's the Mohs hardness scale? I can't comment on lead and silver, but I know you can vary the hardness of iron significantly with variable heat and mechanical treatments, enough to show up within even the low resolution of the Mohs scale. You can take bits of iron from the exact same ingot and, depending on how you heat treat the chunks (quenching, tempering, etc.) and mechanically work it (roll it, hammer it, forge it, head butt it) get wildly different hardnesses. Actually, you can also see hardness and strength variations within one ingot due to chemical variations in the ingot.

Trace (under 0.5%) additions of elements, including carbon (hard to avoid when refining iron from ore), will amplify iron's hardenability. A small dose of carbon (0.1%, say) will give you a decent, workable metal. Is 0.1% too much alloying to leave something as a "pure element" for SR magical purposes?
Austere Emancipator
A glazer round filled with iron beads would be pretty horrible, ballistics-wise. The main problem is that it wouldn't weigh a damn, combining the low density with the construction of a glazer round that causes a lot of air pockets in the bullet. Good call on the binder material, however.

I had no idea what hardness scale it was, but apparently Wikipedia.Org uses the Mohs scale, yes. Could you make iron significantly softer with that sort of treatment? If yes, then maybe just cutting the ranges by some large amount would be enough and no reduction in Power would be necessary. It should get a -1 Power against anything armored, however. Or the other way around: -1 Power, +1 against unarmored targets. Same end result, use which ever seems a more logical denotation to you.

Won't comment on "pure elements". I guess that's always up to the GM anyway.
Arethusa
QUOTE (Kagetenshi @ May 4 2004, 04:15 PM)
Well, given that there are no fractional nuyen in the game, the bullet prices are almost as low as they can possibly be within the system…

~J

Whoah, whoah, whoah. Yes there are. There have to be. And since money is digital, there's nothing to stop that from happening to an infinite level.

Besides, how are you going to run a stock market or a bank or interest or anything without dividing nuyen? Seriously, come on.
Austere Emancipator
He just meant that there are no prices given anywhere in the sourcebooks in fractions of nuyen. Thus there couldn't be a table entry for the price of 1 round at 0.5 nuyen.gif. However, there's nothing wrong with the table giving 5 nuyen.gif as the price of 10 rounds of ammunition, because the Tracer Ammo already sets a precedent for that.
Shrike30
I always just sold ammo at those prices for a box of 100 instead of 10. Made more sense, to me.
Cray74
QUOTE (Austere Emancipator)
A glazer round filled with iron beads would be pretty horrible, ballistics-wise. The main problem is that it wouldn't weigh a damn, combining the low density with the construction of a glazer round that causes a lot of air pockets in the bullet.

A glazer round might fly badly and might have trouble penetrating a T-shirt, but then again, it's one way of producing a "soft," high damage iron round.

Speaking of multiple projectile per cartridge approaches, I've also seen a "bullet" that looked like it was made of a stack of interlocking hockey pucks or coasters. You only got 2-4 fragments out of it.

QUOTE
Could you make iron significantly softer with that sort of treatment?

I believe the softest iron you could get would be very, very pure iron (get all the carbon out, lots of trips through a vacuum arc furnace) that was annealed until the cows came home. You want very big grains for softness and the longer you anneal, the bigger they get.

If you don't mind impurities, adding lead to iron is one of getting steels and irons that machine well. IIRC, the lead segregates from the iron around the iron's grain boundries so you end up with (on a microscopic scale) something like those solder-bound multiple projectiles I mentioned earlier.

Another impurity (well, separate chunk of core material) to improve the ballistic performance of an iron bullet might be a lump of tungsten somewhere in the bullet. (Toward the nose, I guess - bullets stay on course better with heavier noses, right?) Tungsten's a good 19.3 grams per cubic inch, close to twice that of lead. You could make up for iron's reduced density with a little tungsten (30% by volume).
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (Cray74)
A glazer round might fly badly and might have trouble penetrating a T-shirt, but then again, it's one way of producing a "soft," high damage iron round.

If you know you won't have to engage anyone wearing body armor or at ranges longer than 15 meters, it might work. Otherwise, just solid iron is likely to be better.

QUOTE (Cray74)
I've also seen a "bullet" that looked like it was made of a stack of interlocking hockey pucks or coasters.

You sure that wasn't a shotgun round? I've seen several of those, meant for riot control, but I've never seen that system used in a pistol or rifle caliber cartridge. It's another great way to increase tissue damage caused at the price of guaranteed zero penetration of anything hard and the effective range of a BB gun.

Although... Maybe you really should go with iron ammo for shotguns. That oughta be plenty powerful enough at short-mid ranges, all things considered.

A really good point about adding tungsten. The round could even be mostly tungsten -- shapeshifters are allergic to silver-coated swords, aren't they? I really don't know that much about ballistics so I can't say anything else about where you should place the tungsten in the bullet other than It Depends. Probably you'd go for as rear-heavy as the rifling on the gun in question would allow.

You still might want the tungsten to be placed so that the tip of the "penetrator" is the tip of the bullet, to allow the round to be effective against armored non-spirit baddies.
mcb
Small caliber firearms use projectiles that are the diameter of the groves of the barrels and the entire round is swage into the barrel when fired with he lands pressing grooves into the bullet. Large guns 20mm and above the projectile is made to the land diameter of the barrel and the grooves are usually filled with one or more relatively thin rings around the projectile that fill the groves and seal the projectile in the barrel. In large guns usually 40mm and up it is common to use annealed iron band to create these gas seals. So it is very possible to make iron gun barrel friendly.

mcb
Arethusa
I'd like to point out that while you can process, temper, and smelt iron to get a hell of a lot of different results, you're kind of defeating the point of doing elemental damage with it.
Austere Emancipator
As long as the main source of damage to the target is pure iron, I don't think there's a problem. There could be a minimal discharging sabot if you're really worried about your barrel, and the projectile itself would consist mostly of pure iron with a tungsten carbide penetrator. Apart from a very small area at the point of the bullet, all of the contact surfaces would be pure iron.
Cray74
QUOTE (Arethusa)
I'd like to point out that while you can process, temper, and smelt iron to get a hell of a lot of different results, you're kind of defeating the point of doing elemental damage with it.

I'm not sure I agree. Part of iron's elemental properties are its responses to heat treating and impurities. Pure, pure iron heat treated to pure iron softness is a fine example of...pure iron.

QUOTE (Austere Emancipator)
You sure that wasn't a shotgun round?


.40 caliber sticks out in my mind for some reason. I'm still digging out my old Guns & Ammo magazines from storage (Hah! .357 EIGHT-shot revolvers. Take that, Cannon Companion!) so I can't find the exact calibers, but I do recall the example calibers were for pistols.

QUOTE
A really good point about adding tungsten. The round could even be mostly tungsten -- shapeshifters are allergic to silver-coated swords, aren't they?


Well, if a coating will do, you could probably used iron-tipped or iron-jacketed lead bullets, right? Maybe just an iron nugget in the hollow of a standard hollow-point lead bullet?
cutter07
QUOTE
A bow has an absolute power limit just like a crossbow has. If you pull it back further you'll just strain yourself without putting any more power to it, or break the bow. You can't achieve that anyway unless you have arms much longer than an average human.


Your only half right. First off if you pull a bow back further then its designed it starts "stacking" which means your power is max'd and you start damaging the bow. This is right before the bow breaks (wood/fiberglass/compound/etc).

Second power generated from a bow whether its crossbow or not is static when pulled a certain distance. IRL crossbows are generally stronger. IE I can pull a 75 lb longbow but a 200lb crossbow will always outdamage me. Then again I don't have a 13 strength either. You compare a strength 3 using a bow in SR and you see how a crossbow makes sense. But its for a chromed troll then a bow makes sense. But imagine that bow, probably something like an ungodly 500lb pull on it. In reality the arrows would have to be titanium to withstand the sudden force change though as. Normal arrows (aluminum, graphite, wood) would probably just implode.

That help make more sense of it?
mcb
I would say the unless we start factory armor in then a 75# draw bow and a 200# crossbow will do about the same amount of damage to a human size target. Either of those weapons would easily put a arrow or bolt clean through a human size target, short of hitting a major bone like a limb or shoulder blade, ribs would not matter much. The crossbow would certain exit with greater velocity but since arrow/bolt damage is not greatly velocity related it doesn’t matter much how fast that hole is cut through the target. The damage system sort of break down here, a cross bow is certainly should have greater damage to reflect is greater energy to penetrate armor if no armor is present I don’t see crossbow doing significantly more damage than a bow especially modern compound bows.

mcb
Arethusa
QUOTE (Cray74)
QUOTE (Arethusa)
I'd like to point out that while you can process, temper, and smelt iron to get a hell of a lot of different results, you're kind of defeating the point of doing elemental damage with it.

I'm not sure I agree. Part of iron's elemental properties are its responses to heat treating and impurities. Pure, pure iron heat treated to pure iron softness is a fine example of...pure iron.

Maybe if you're talking about Fe. I'm thinking about this in terms of magic, and in that case, natural state found in nature counts more than processed, purified stuff, or so canon seems to indicate. That's really what I've been arguing from, though there's obviously quite a bit of room for disagreement.
cutter07
QUOTE
I would say the unless we start factory armor in then a 75# draw bow and a 200# crossbow will do about the same amount of damage to a human size target. Either of those weapons would easily put a arrow or bolt clean through a human size target,...


Yes considering the minimum bow weight you can use to hunt is 30 lbs for a deer and 40 pounds for a bear in most states last I heard. Technically a 25 pound bow with razortips can probably kill most people first hit (though, like any arrow wound, would probably take awhile unless it hits a vital organ).
Vision
QUOTE (xizor)
Ok I have noticed that there is a big difference between a long bow and a crossbow in shadow run

The difference is:
Crossbows have a set strength minimum and damage. There does not seem to be any way to change it.

They can never ever have a higher strength minimum or better damage code. Except by using special bolts.

Why is that?
By the ranges there should be some way to get a better crossbow. However by the five pound cannon there is not.

Urm... Yes... urm... Hello? Ever taken a look at a crossbow or at some Bow?

A crossbow is not fired with your own strength. You pull back the string and hook it into the Trigger. A real bow is pulled back by your own strength.

You could at most take an heavier version of a crossbow to archive more power (looking at the Bows in SR doesn't make much sense of buying a crossbow anyway, since they are so screwed up that you do not get a better result with mechanik, as if you use your own augumented strength)
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (cutter07)
First off if you pull a bow back further then its designed it starts "stacking" which means your power is max'd and you start damaging the bow. This is right before the bow breaks (wood/fiberglass/compound/etc).

That's what I was trying to say. I didn't mean to say that an undamaged bow will just crack if you try to pull the string any further back than designed.

QUOTE
Second power generated from a bow whether its crossbow or not is static when pulled a certain distance.

I'm pretty sure that's what I said. No more power from pulling it any further.

As for the Iron Bullet thingy, I don't think "natural" forms count, really. There's Elemental Acid, which you won't find in nature. I'd bet Elemental Ice contains pure water ice, unlike natural ice. Etcetera. Against a vulnerability it's pure iron (Fe) anyway.

QUOTE (Cray74)
Well, if a coating will do, you could probably used iron-tipped or iron-jacketed lead bullets, right? Maybe just an iron nugget in the hollow of a standard hollow-point lead bullet?

Personally, I think the coating thing is a bit cheap. That's why I'd like the bullets to be mostly iron at least by volume. If you think an iron coating is all it needs, then coating an APDS tungsten carbide penetrator would be your best bet: no deformation or fragmenting, so the iron coating remains the only contact surface.

An iron nugget shouldn't be enough. Maybe it could do some very small amount of damage against targets that don't mind the lead part, aroud 4L max.
Cray74
QUOTE (Arethusa)
Maybe if you're talking about Fe. I'm thinking about this in terms of magic, and in that case, natural state found in nature counts more than processed, purified stuff, or so canon seems to indicate. That's really what I've been arguing from, though there's obviously quite a bit of room for disagreement.

...but iron isn't used in it's "natural state." It's natural state (ore) is just rust with fancy names: magnetite (Fe3O4), hematite (Fe2O3), talconite, limonite (bog iron), etc. that have to be refined (see: blast furnace) before you get metallic iron. Metallic iron isn't found on Earth. (And meteoric iron is usually a high nickel alloy).

And even if you found a lump of pure, untouched, raw iron (like a lump of gold in a stream), you're going to beat it & heat it into whatever shape is needed by the bullet (or magical item.) That's no different than the refining and annealing I'm talking about.
Fahr
you could get greater damage on a heavier draw weight by using bigger broadheads (probably mechanical so as to not screw up flight dynamic) that would be about the only way I can see massive strength/draw weight bows making sense to do more damage.

but it does sort of make sense... If I have a 500# draw weight bow (more commonly called a ballista) I am shooting an arrow that is probably either titanium or hardended steel. I probably have a broadhead 3-4 inches across when deployed. that is gonna bleed anything out much faster than my normal 70# draw aluminum arrow with 1 inch wide broadhead.

-Mike R.
Cray74
QUOTE (Fahr)
you could get greater damage on a heavier draw weight by using bigger broadheads (probably mechanical so as to not screw up flight dynamic) that would be about the only way I can see massive strength/draw weight bows making sense to do more damage.

I was watching an episode of modern marvels that mentioned arrows from modern compound bows flew at 300 feet per second / 100 meters per second.

It got me wondering about high-draw crossbows with, I dunno, electric winding motors or some modern leverage-amplifying gears. If you start firing arrows/bolts are 600fps, you're nosing into the "pathetically slow bullet" range, but the arrows are a lot bigger than a bullet. I wonder what sort of hydrostatic shock and flesh cavities a 600fps crossbow bolt could generate.
Kagetenshi
"Yesterday I saw iu'Shee, captain of archers, with a fist full of white arrows five feet long and tipped with fragments of bone. I lost track of who was carrying the Watcher's arm when we fled Silvermines, but I suspect its turned up again."

~J
Austere Emancipator
I'm pretty sure you need to get close to and preferably well above the speed of sound before you start causing a significant hydrostatic shock. Here's a 12G slug. When it first enters the gelatin block at 461m/s, you can see that the diameter of the temporary cavity is about 3x as large as the permanent cavity. Once it has expanded, it quickly slows down and the temporary/permanent ratio starts falling. I'd assume the point where the temporary cavity ends is about 500-600fps.

It's quite unlikely a 600fps crossbow bolt would cause any significant hydrostatic shock effect based on that.

Feel free to prove otherwise if you've got data, anyone. I just figured a 17.6mm across shotgun slug expanding to over an inch (28mm) would be a rather good comparison.

[Edit]Here's a .45ACP shot into gelatin. There it seems the temporary cavity ends much later, perhaps closer to 300-400fps. However, even at ~600fps the temporary cavity is just about 2x the diameter of the permanent cavity.

Looking at the pictures of smaller bullets, like the 9mmP FMJ/Ball, it seems rather likely that the cutting edges of a large broadhead would cause minimal hydrostatic shock. The blunter and larger in diameter the object, the greater the temporary cavity is in relation to the permanent one. A long, sharp arrow would likely cause minimal hydrostatic shock even if it flew at 600fps.

But again, if you've got some data more pertinent to arrows and bolts, I don't mind being shown wrong.[/Edit]
Austere Emancipator
Ironically, to maximize tissue damage to a single living target with an extremely powerful bow, you'd be better off with a thick steel/titanium/tungsten/whatever arrow/bolt with a completely blunt head.
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