Late-game ranged weapons

Sounds good.

I was thinking about special arrows. Either mundane (explosive, armor piercing) or magical.

Another suggestion for ranged comabt units: archers, would be to create additional techs up the tree that 'unlock' improved bows, catapults, arbulesks (spelling?), etc.  

Also, allow archers to pin units they fire a volley of arrows / bolts at, IF the defender uses its "armor"  -ie, defender uses heavy / metal armor to block incoming fire, it then loses movement and attack for next 'turn' or "two turns."   Price of using heavy armore, shileds to block ranged fire is loss of mobility (no move / attack this/next round).  OR, defender stays 'mobile' sufferts incioming volley while it moves and melee attacks.  I love choices.....

Arrows would require some mechanics changes, while adding cbows is simply adding new models and according xml. Altho having ammo is good idea, with different costs and amounts. So you could have more 'generic' ammo or less amount but more deadly ammo for example.

Couldn't you simply have arrows as a "pack" item that adds to the ATK rating?  You should be able to require that the unit be equipped with a bow in order to equip the arrows.  This way, you could upgrade to broadheads, pile arrows, and then magical versions that unlock "magical ranged weapons" in the magic tree or somesuch.

Here's how I would expand bows:

Short Bow (4 ATK, 2 combat speed)

Long Bow (6 ATK, 2 combat speed)

Recurve Longbow (8 ATK, 2 combat speed)

Crossbow (12 ATK, 3 combat speed)

Heavy Crossbow (15 ATK, 4 combat speed)

Then:

Arrows (no bonus, the "standard" arrow)

War Arrows (standard, +1ATK) [these would be 'bodkin points']

Broadhead Arrows (+3 ATK) [twin bladed arrows]

Pile arrows (+5 ATK) [these are basically armor piercing arrows, with hardened steel chisel points]

Crossbow bolt:  +1 ATK (standard hardened point)

Crossbow quarrel:  +2 ATK (four bladed crossbow bolt)

It should be noted that it's always been easier to penetrate armor than it is to protect against weapons.  Ranged weapons were invented because getting up close to something is rather dangerous.  To further expand ranged weapons, I would actually have very late game weapons be magical staves and wands.  Unless you want to introduce gunpowder.

Arrow should be more powerful at short distance as in they are in the real world. Their damage should be relative to the kind of armor worn by the enemy, but at close range they should still be lethal.

But if all these rules are introduced the UI should clearly state the chances to hit and the possible damage when a cursor is on a target.

While I do agree that to-hit and damage rolls should be separate, we have to work with what we have.  I'm not sure the current combat system can model "armor penetration" so to make up for it, right now, we can only really add more onto the damage dealt by the weaponry.

The current system only models penetration. Not range, not chance to hit, not moving targets nor moving shooters.

Crossbows could get around that with doing comparably massive damage but firing only every other turn - or less. (on a system like this)
Cbows are good for penetration. Their bolts are thicker, less likely to shatter when hitting armor. (arrows are too thin for that kind of energy transfer)
Their bows are not limited to the (roughly) 150 lbf that a trained shooter can pull.
Cbows don't magically multiply the penetration power but their whole design is far better suited for penetrating armor.
And what's at least as important when running an army:  it's a lot easier to train a crossbowman than an archer. Point and shoot.
(Yes, I like to ramble but you should know that by now)

Personally, I think that the ranged combat tech tree should consist of more than one entire tech.
That's so much wasted potential...
There isn't that much to research about bows. You already listed the 3 likely basic items.  Strings would have some effect but it's usually more about which is more resistant to weather conditions. Not interesting enough on a strategic scale..
Crossbows are an entirely different ballgame. These have constantly been in development but that mostly translated into bigger and stronger bows / pulls. There have been weird ones, though, like pistol crossbows or the cho ku no... a crossbow with a magazine... cbows that would fire bullets or stones - effectively medieval shotguns for bird hunting.
The crossbow tech tree could be very deep. Early cb weren't that much better than bows but late medieval arbalests with steel bows could have several thousand lbf and were on par with modern rifles. Compare that to the 100-150 lbf of a war bow...
The strong cbows weren't entirely safe, either. A snapped string would be the equivalent of a buzzsaw and the soldier (or the man beside him) was uncomfortably close to it when loading / firing.

I like the idea of having multiple arrows but how should that work? Would a unit be able to choose the "proper" arrow for the target?
Select it like a buff?
Creating a ranged units with multiple arrow types would be more expensive but have benefits.
Also, bows could shoot fire arrows, something that doesn't really work well with crossbows.
There shouldn't be a "does everything best" weapon. Choices, choices! =P

The biggest problem in this regard is that the difference in effectiveness between the padded/leather armor of the early-game and the heavy plate armor of the late game is simply out of line.  Archers are 1-hitting early enemies with padded armor, but can't even scratch late enemies with plate armor, and the maxed-out stacks can reach over 1000 hit points (mitigated somewhat by a ridiculously long build time).

I think the exponential increase in equipment strength needs to be rolled back.  Right now, the late-game units are easily hundreds of times stronger than your early-game stuff.  Certainly you deserve more power from investing in technology and the extra cost of using high-end equipment, but this doesn't come close to justifying the massive gulf between the early and late equipment that Elemental has.

Darvin3, I have to agree with you totally.  The stat scaling in Elemental is off by an order of magnitude.  The early stuff game is too variable and the late game system is as well.  Too many one shots or no possible chance scenarios.  But that's for another thread, really.

Robert:  I did some reading on bows and crossbows before posting.  Indeed, most late crossbows were capable of penetrating heavy armor, but were dangerous to use.  Crossbow technology basically ended when gunpowder reached Europe.  Additionally, armor became fare less common when modern ranged weapons would penetrate.  Interestingly, it would be the French in World War I that would bring armor back into the fight (helmets, in this case).  Only recent materials science has made the tradeoff in mobility worth the protection offered by armor.

That said, enchanted bows should affect to-hit rolls, and enchanted arrows should affect damage.  Plus, there should probably be the ability to ignore armor's damage reduction.  But I have an extensive wish list for that, too.

Perhaps have a cross bow that causes 2 effects

1 a high damage shot

2 a spell effect that means that the unit can no longer attack with a duration of a turn or 2 (simulate winding the crossbow)

there was some example about a club that did extra damage but removed the counter attack somewhere.

I would start by adding additional types of bows to the tech research tree as suggest by Ishantil;

1. Short Bow (fires 2x turn)
2. Long Bow (fires 2x turn)
3. Recurve Bow (fires 2x turn) (NEW)
4. Light Crossbow (fires 1x turn) (NEW)
5. Heavy Crossbow (fires 1x turn) (NEW)

This would be easy to implement, lengthen the weapons tech tree and make archery effective in the late game against heavily armored units.

I would also add a new building: Archery Training Grounds. Only with this building could the user recruit Expert and Elite archery units.

I would just have plate armor have a slight weakness against piercing weapons.  Of course more weapons is always cool too. 

I like the idea of adding bows and cbows. The archery tree really needs a workout, to say the least. Right now you can get more damage from equipment add-ons than from the weapon itself (Longbow 5 atk, equip 8 atk iirc)

I also like the idea of arrow types. The easiest way to simulate them would be packs (like the vengeance coating). Archers, in a battle field scenario, would only carry a single type of ammo, maybe 2(limited specialty and standard). You wouldn't want 6 types of ammo in your pack, each with different flight, range, damage characteristics, sucks if you grab the wrong one in the chaos of battle. So equipping arrow pack before battle makes more sense than adding a special ability.

As a side note, flaming arrows look cool and set things on fire, but the combustible packing prevents any meaningful penetration. Maybe city attack bonuses, but until elemental damage/weaknesses or Tactical traps are implemented, their use should be limited 

I only brought up combustible ammo because there should be incentive to go down the (hoped for = ) bow tech tree instead of going for the massive piercing power of cbows.
In fact, the tech trees should amplify the strengths of both weapon systems. Ammo types are nice but it's just a gimmik.
Albeit a cool one. (fire always cool!)  Maybe a tactical advantage of setting wood squares on fire, creating obstacles.

Even crazier arrows like caltrop heads I could imagine. The medieval version of area denial cluster bombs...

Cbows seriously limit the arrow types you can use (with a few freak exceptions that aren't easy to switch on the fly) which would allow to develop the tech trees in completely different ways.

For bows I'd rather imagine something to increase the rate of fire. Cbows would go the other way, decreasing it but increasing range and punch to take out armored targets.
Spinning that further, maybe advancing under fire would slow down units? Advantage bow because... more fire.
How to do that? Sounds easy. Every attack such as a bow shot is an "ability". Effectively the same as a spell. It can do whatever someone codes it to do.

Since the coding bit is probably unavoidable anyway, changing ammo types wouldn't be hard. It's a unit ability tacked onto the quiver. It sets a custom unit stat to... whatever... and there's your "current ammo" that can be changed anytime.

crossbows are almost always inferior to longbows in the hands of a trained user. if you want both then the former cannot be an upgrade to the latter.

Crossbows cannot be 'inferior' due to physics. They provide far more kinetic energy to the projectile, and there's nothing you can do about it with any level of 'skill'. Its same in terms of accuracy, skilled bowman will be at best at same level of accuracy as average crossbowman. Plus projectile itself is completely different and is better at penetration.

Only area where cbows can be inferior is rate of fire.

It always depends on which era you're talking about.  It seems some people here are talking about classical crossbows, while others are talking about late medieval crossbows.  Big difference; a classical crossbow probably wouldn't even go through chain mail, whereas the late-period stuff were basically hand-held ballistas.  So it really depends on what technology level we're looking at.

I think that this is actually the cool thing about them. Their research tree can be much longer. =P

Also, even if the early CB aren't better than bows, they would be faster to load than the late arbalests. The weak CB would be loaded with a single lever or even with 1-2 hands (and foot sling).

A CB should also add 0 or even negative trainign time to the unit.  There's not that much to learn about pulling the trigger.

Since currently ranged weapons have only advantages over melee weapons and no disadvantages, I think it is important that ranged weapons will always be weaker in attack rating compared to melee weapons in the same number of techs.

Possible ideas for disadvantages can be:

- Limited ammo

- Attacks that take more move points compared to melee

- Limited range and lower attack on close range

- Cannot move and attack the same turn

Random, I think ranged does take more actions than melee.  Pretty sure ranged takes 2 action points and melee takes 1.

While true, it's kind of moot because with 2.0001 CS you already get 2 attacks per round...

Indeed; there needs to be a disassociation here so that ranged attacks and spells can be limited further.  I don't mind moves and melee attacks being linked like this, but ranged attacks and spells presents a problem.

Add to this:

6. Repeating Crossbows (fires 2x turn, heavy and light) (NEW) (only the light repeating crossbow can be used while mounted).

Longbows should only be usable by Expert or Elite trained units as it requires years of training to use a longbow effectively, whereas a crossbow can be used after a week of training.

Just represent that in the unit's build time.  Longbow units take a long time to train, crossbow units a short time.