Pyramid #3/33 Bow Worksheet: Still working?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Making cost factors additive shouldn't be an issue. You just take 1+the sum of the applicable cost factors and multiply by that.

Not sure how how that would help anything though.

Well, it wouldn't help things on its own, no, because Fine (Accurate) is handled as a cost multiplier, but Fine(AP), where applicable, is figured into the base prices given for arrowheads.

The result is that, contrary to usual GURPS practice and the letter of the RAW, Fine (Balanced) arrows with a hardened steel arrowhead are significantly more expensive than Fine (Balanced) arrows with the same arrowhead, but made out of unhardened steel, more so than just the added labour of careful matching of shaft to head and painstaking dedication to perfect balance, fletching, etc. would indicate.

While a fairly minor issue, the spreadsheet comes so close to perfection in most ways that it is disappointing when anything in it yields results that don't match what other rules say*. Also, because real fletchers generally used pre-fabricated arrowheads and (shafts as well, but presumably not for Fine(Balanced) arrows), it is a little jarring to to have the cost of Fine arrows jump so exponentially just because the arrowhead that they are using has been hardened.

*That is, in cases where TDS isn't deliberately altering a rule, as it applies specifically to the devices modelled. I'm on board with that, absolutely.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

If you wanted the cost factor for a fine arrow to be separately additive with arrowhead and shaft CFs, you could certainly also do that, you'd just assemble the arrow cost and shaft cost separately, and then put them together.

That might be a good solution. Of course, CFs as such aren't currently featured because there is only one possible axis of cost modifiers, i.e. Cheap or Fine in regards to Acc.

But it might be good to implement them anyway, because some campaign specific modifiers might also be expressed as CFs and it would be nice to have an option of adding an arbitrary CF to represent such, as well as Decorations.

Personally, I would advocate for an equivalent of the Fine(Materials) option, i.e. that choosing certain extreme shapes for a bow or crossbow requires proportionally more work and more wastage of materials than is indicated by the final weight of the product. I would apply this only to bows made with traditional methods and materials, i.e. not ones where the materials already come in prefabricated sheets or rods that are easy to shape into extreme forms. Fortunately, that is easy enough to implement, because the design system currently makes a distinction between working at TL6 or earlier and working with such modern conveniences for other reasons. So if the added CF only applied for TL6 and earlier designs, that would be perfect.

This enhance historical versimilitude, in that it would discourage certain extreme and ahistorical designs that are nevertheless much more efficient, by making them more expensive* if nothing else.

Given that real bows rarely display an N number over 5 or so and crossbows rarely go past 10**, an easy and fairly plausible (to me) way to implement this would be to say that for every whole number of N over 5, add +1 CF, until we reach +5 CF at N 10. Being excel, naturally we could allow partial CFs, but I have no strong opinions on whether we need to. I'll leave that decision to someone who could actually write a formula for either version.

I'd allow N up to 20, where the bow or crossbow would be +15 CF. Granted, I have never seen an example of bow with N 20, but as I said earlier in the thread, I am coming to the conclusion that allowing that is about the only way to model some tiny historical crossbows, like balestrinos, while allowing for the actual draw length of the models. Increasing the TL of steel, while possible, also allows for much thinner and lighter lathes, which isn't what we want. We want a lathe of a certain, historical weight and approximate dimensions, that is capable of flexing more than it could while N is 5 or even 10.

I'm also considering allowing TL5 steel in my TL4 game. I believe that in real history, high-quality steel was possible to produce at pre-industrial tech levels, it was hellishly difficult and a matter for trial-and-error and intuitive feel for the material achieved by long practice as a smith. Thus, high prices.

I thought I'd just follow the standard GURPS rules for higher TL things available at lower TLs. That is, double Cost for every difference in TL. But, given that we have fancy CF rules to cover cost modifiers, I thought I'd apply it as a CF modifier as well. After all, starting with the best materials doesn't make it harder to turn out an accurate and well balanced weapon. So, I thought that materials one TL earlier would add +1 CF, +3 CF for two TLs, +7 CF at three and so on.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't even know where to start at adding an option for these new CF modifiers. I can add them into the fields for Special modifiers now, of course, but then they multiply against each other, Fine(Accurate) and so forth.

*In-game, the GM would also be within his rights to say that as this is the equivalent of Fine work, the craftsman needs to be more skilled. Requiring the design to be invented, using the New Invention rules, is probably also relatively realistic.
**But allowing for the abstractions made by the spreadsheet, some advanced varieties appear to be best modelled by making the thickest part of the lathe effectively a riser and then choosing a weighed average for the N of the working limbs that might not be representative of most of the length, but takes into account the greater impact of the ends relative to the rest. As long as this is done to match historical data for draw length, dimensions and weight, it shouldn't be too bad. I have gone up to N 20, with ca 5% of the lathe counting as a riser, to model this. I also made a very ahistorical crossbow with a 31% steel riser and N 20 TL5 steel limbs, but that's because I'm demented and I will absolutely optimise any choice in a rules-system if I am given the chance.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Well, it wouldn't help things on its own, no, because Fine (Accurate) is handled as a cost multiplier, but Fine(AP), where applicable, is figured into the base prices given for arrowheads.

The result is that, contrary to usual GURPS practice and the letter of the RAW, Fine (Balanced) arrows with a hardened steel arrowhead are significantly more expensive than Fine (Balanced) arrows with the same arrowhead, but made out of unhardened steel, more so than just the added labour of careful matching of shaft to head and painstaking dedication to perfect balance, fletching, etc. would indicate.

While a fairly minor issue, the spreadsheet comes so close to perfection in most ways that it is disappointing when anything in it yields results that don't match what other rules say*. Also, because real fletchers generally used pre-fabricated arrowheads and (shafts as well, but presumably not for Fine(Balanced) arrows), it is a little jarring to to have the cost of Fine arrows jump so exponentially just because the arrowhead that they are using has been hardened.

*That is, in cases where TDS isn't deliberately altering a rule, as it applies specifically to the devices modelled. I'm on board with that, absolutely.

I'm not aware of there being any well-established rules on how to combine cost factors applied to portions of an object and cost factors applied to the object as a whole.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

I'm not aware of there being any well-established rules on how to combine cost factors applied to portions of an object and cost factors applied to the object as a whole.

There are not, but the rules for Fine(AP) and Fine(Balanced) indicate that the CFs add and don't multiply.

Thus, an arrow that costs $2 and applies both modifiers will end up costing $28, not $100.

[Celti]

I can confirm the bug with arrow quality not increasing the listed Acc. It appears that the formula in D5 on the Arrow Design Worksheet, while it does decrease the Accuracy if the arrow is Cheap, is missing the bit that makes it better if the arrow is Fine.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Celti

I can confirm the bug with arrow quality not increasing the listed Acc. It appears that the formula in D5 on the Arrow Design Worksheet, while it does decrease the Accuracy if the arrow is Cheap, is missing the bit that makes it better if the arrow is Fine.

Legit oops.



Put this formula in D5 on the arrow design worksheet.

=IF(B6="Cheap",-1,IF(B6="Good",0,1))

Note that I was mistaken, and that a Fine bow firing Fine arrows is a net +2.

[Celti]

Yay! That's much better, thank you.

Now to go back to experimenting with fancy materials for elven Craft Secrets…