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Old 04-18-2012, 02:14 AM   #95
DouglasCole
Doctor of GURPS Ballistics
 
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Lakeville, MN
Default Re: Why short bow instead of long bow?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
May indicate a problem with the spreadsheet then, depending on how it defines a short and long bow. Or it might just be an issue of resolution -- at fixed draw weight, a longer bow only gives a significant advantage if it allows a longer draw length, and even if it does, a 50% increase in bow length gives maybe a 10-20% increase in GURPS damage.
The "realistic" scale for damage is pretty flat in the regime of interest, and does scale with the square root of KE. Even in my article, I did basically what Flyndarin did . . . a shorter bow (regular vs longbow, I think) that had the same damage as a longbow (both ST 16 with 28-30" draw). I believe I mostly had to tweak out the bow shape, because the longbow wasn't approaching any sort of design limit (but the shorter bow was).

For a true shortbow, I suspect he had to work pretty hard. Very wide, thin limbs, maybe a non-working handle to get draw length up while keeping efficiency reasonable, and perhaps tweaking out material selection. Usually REALLY short bows can only reach design draw targets equivalent to 30" on a human by using the miracle-materials: horn, sinew, or modern composites.
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