Why do you think a crossbow was never added?

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Walpknut said:
A Crossbow could fit in the game, there is nothing setting breaking about it, but it would be a very useless weapon that you could only find on some crazy survivalist or something, it would be less useful than a Cowboy repeater and most people wouldn't know how to make it. There pissing contest over.

This contest shall never end! Like judge Holden it will dance on forever
 
Walpknut said:
A Crossbow could fit in the game, there is nothing setting breaking about it, but it would be a very useless weapon that you could only find on some crazy survivalist or something, it would be less useful than a Cowboy repeater and most people wouldn't know how to make it.

That's exactly what i would love(except the useless part, i don't get that). Just a unique weapon on some crazy survivalist living in a cliffside shack or on some elite hunter/hitman or whatever. But apparently, a roving pack of homo crossbows once assraped fathers of couple of posters here so.............The scars are still fresh i guess.
 
well it's a weapon that doesn't do any more damage than a Rifle, and it would have the reload every shot issue, it would be pretty useless compared to other weapons, there is that survivalist crossbow mod if you really want a Crossbow in New Vegas, the reloading animation is that of a rifle, but who really cares?
 
Regardless of it's effectivness or utility or it's place in the Fallout Lore; it is fairly plausable someone on the planet would produce a crossbow or crossbow like weapon within the 200 year period after the war.
 
Unless, y'know, they never bothered and just picked up one of the six billion guns lying about in desk drawers and lockers.

When are you going to get it, Silus, they we don't really give a fuck about crossbows and are only fucking with you because you're goddamned obsessed with this shit.
 
Wintermind said:
Unless, y'know, they never bothered and just picked up one of the six billion guns lying about in desk drawers and lockers.

When are you going to get it, Silus, they we don't really give a fuck about crossbows and are only fucking with you because you're goddamned obsessed with this shit.

Of course. People can also fast travel across vast distances in one second blackouts, they can approach an NCR soldier and pickpocket it's ammo, they can enter Silver Rush and drag/steal the plasma caster from the counter and pick up a godsend knife that hacks through power armor by diging out a grave behind a gas station. Oh, and welding poles can be made poisonous and people's limbs tend to explode when you shot them.

Oh no, i b trolled by u. nooooooooooooo :(
 
:::SILUS::: said:
Oh, and how does the bumper swords, flaming swords, katana, spears and animal gauntlets fit in that sort of vibe if a crossbow doesn't?
They are pretty damn stupid and I'd rather have them not in the game.
Fallout 1 is the lore-defining game, and since Fallout 2, more and more out-of-place weaponry has been added. I'm not particularly fond of that, actually.
Also, I said that crossbows do fit, didn't I?
It's just that barely anyone would care about building one because it's pretty much raining firearms all day.
 
Threepwood said:
Regardless of it's effectivness or utility or it's place in the Fallout Lore; it is fairly plausable someone on the planet would produce a crossbow or crossbow like weapon within the 200 year period after the war.

And I don't see how it is? How any of the typical pre-war suburbanites can just sit down and design a crossbow. I've said it before, we're typical people right? Well go on then, design a crossbow.

You don't have to make it but you can at least imagine and design how one would work and how you would go about building one in the Fallout Universe right?

The earliest we have seen after the war - Fallout 1 - guns were prevelant, most who carried weapons carried guns, ergo, they were never really considered as a practical device. And in-case your next arguement is, we've only seen California, LA was mega-city it is in real life with one of the largest populations in the United States.

Immediately after the war was mass scale violence, looting and the other symptoms of total societal collapse; no-body had the time or inclination to shut their door and make a crossbow. Then decades after the war people lost knowledge of mathematics and engineering for the most part, again you can't expect these people to go foraging for all sorts to make a crossbow when they wouldn't even have any knowledge of what a crossbow is? I'd never thought of that actually...

How would these people know what a crossbow even is? They know what guns are because they see them everyday, they'd just work on getting themselves one of those; essentially re-discovering the crossbow is above wastelanders.
 
And I don't see how it is? How any of the typical pre-war suburbanites can just sit down and design a crossbow. I've said it before, we're typical people right? Well go on then, design a crossbow.

I know nothing about weaponry, but I imagine it would be acheivable.

A shaft down the centre with a groove for the arrow, the groove made by carving with a knife for example. Two wooden prongs (?) meeting the front end of the shaft, presumably via nailing them or using industrial glue, sticking diagonally outwards so it forms this kind of shape:

./|\
. |

Then use an elasticated string from prong to prong and slide in the arrow and pull back on it. Arrows can easily be made, iv'e done that before.

Now, if we were going to add a trigger, I think you'd make a hole in the central shaft just after the stock and near the string, and add a notch for the string to be behind, then add a simple wooden trigger that lowers the notch and releases the arrow when you pull it.

As for a crossbow that winds up the string, I don't know.

But I'm not advocating for or against crossbows, I'm saying if one of the millions of people alive made one I wouldn't be surprised.
 
Okay, now actually throw off some materials that would be suitable for making one. Unless you were suggesting they go and cut down a nearby tree to make one. As far as survivalism goes, unless Bear Grylls showed you how to make one the night before, 99% of the people who don't already have an interest in surviving the TEOTWAWKI won't know how to make one, and even then, maybe one out of a hundred would remember what Bear said. The people who are already ready to handle TEOTWAWKI are probably going to have a big stockpile of guns, ammo, food, etc.

Though admittedly, that's based on this life, in the fallout timeline they probably all had guns to be ready for communist paratroopers landing on their front lawns.
 
Wintermind said:
Okay, now actually throw off some materials that would be suitable for making one.

copper piping can be easily cut and used to make sharp bolt heads, you could head down to spring vale and saw up some kitchen cupboards to the right shape, i'm sure there is an ellastic band in the wasteland somewhere, or quite a few in the office buildings which could be used to form one strong ellastic string etc etc.
 
Elastic string is the worst you can use.
The energy to fire a bolt is stored in the limbs and nowhere else.
Fresh wood is not common in Fallout, so wooden limbs are not exactly an option for a crossbow.
I'd try to find leaf springs from a light car.
Take one, maybe grind it down some more.
Cut into the ends, fasten some rollers in there. It should be easy to find suitable materials in a junkyard and cars.
The stock can be made of wood or more junk, it should be strong, though.
I'd try to find a steel cable to use as a string.
Fallout's cars are electrically powered, so I don't think that there are bowden cables to the carburator in them.
But maybe one can find suitable cables on bicylces (although I've never seen a bicycle in Fallout, so that might not be an option) or somewhere else in a junkyard.
The trigger could be complicated, but there should be enough material around to figure something out.
I mean, there is a crossbow in a boys' book from my father. That book is aimed at boys up to 15 years old. If they can rig up a crossbow, a wastelander should be able to, too.
Assembling everything on a workbench (which are common in the Mojave wasteland) should be no problem. It might take a few tries to get a solid, working crossbow, but then you have a good, moderately deadly weapon for a low cost.
 
There are some Joshua Fir trees on Mt. Charleston, not a whole forests worth, but if some needed wood to make a crossbow, there you go.
 
I love how some of you people are talking as if making a crossbow is like constructing a nuclear warhead. You cam make a crossbow that pierces through tin cans with ease out of couple of pencils, some rubber bands and grill sticks.

With just a bit of more effort, you can make a reliable ranged weapon with retrievable ammo that can be discharged whenever you want by pressing a trigger.

Beats a throwing spear, a punching pneumatic thing or a car bumper any day in the week.

There are mechanisms so simple any poor schmuck can construct them. Most of them are basically things that hold the drawn bow string combined with the bolt groove and the bow itself.


And why would there be any wooden parts? Practically no modern crossbows has anything wooden on it.

And even if the potential crossbow in the game would have been made wooden, so what, half of the weapons in Fallout are wooden.
 
Crossbows cant have rubber, once they have rubber they become slingshots, arrow shooting slingshots....

A hunting crossbow can easily kill a man and most animals on this planet, hunting tips are sharp and spearlike and could kill someone with light bodyarmor wich a 9mm could not.

They are completly unpractical in combat, because the reload time on a strong crossbow is ridiculous + the range is limited.


But i can see them in FO, they fit, canonwise not everyone has acces to guns, they are good for hunting, and are pretty easy to build (i did build a few crossbows myself when i was young) and can potentially do alot of damage + are silent.
 
I am positive he is trolling us, but here we go;

With just a bit of more effort, you can make a reliable ranged weapon with retrievable ammo that can be discharged whenever you want by pressing a trigger.

Retrievable ammo? You do realize that this is not realistic, right? If the bolt pierces something enough to damage it it'll be damaged too, and unable to be used again. Also, a gun fits all the above requirement, is more commonplace, and just plain better.

Beats a throwing spear, a punching pneumatic thing or a car bumper any day in the week.

Spears are useful at close-range combat, and far easier to craft and use than crossbows. Power fists are pre-war, rooted in lore and serve an actual purpose; give you an edge in melee combat. Car bumpers are used by 8 foot tall, muscle-bound superhumans for the same purpose. Not the same as a weapon that is completely inferior to other, more common weapons at any range.

There are mechanisms so simple any poor schmuck can construct them. Most of them are basically things that hold the drawn bow string combined with the bolt groove and the bow itself.

True. But your mechanism will hardly be able to dent a tin can at ten meters, let alone kill a man at more than fifty.

And why would there be any wooden parts? Practically no modern crossbows has anything wooden on it.

Because everybody has advanced synthetic materials and production facilities to combine them in their backyards, hmm? Well, the Gun Runners have, but they wisely prefer to stick to their namesake.

And even if the potential crossbow in the game would have been made wooden, so what, half of the weapons in Fallout are wooden.

True enough, rather than chop down wood, you could use the stock of an existing rifle and build up on it, I suppose. As to why you would do all that hard work to build an inferior weapon, I don't know.
 
How is it that the Van Graffs are able to make laser and plasma weapons that are equal to their pre war counterparts, despite the complications of having limited to nonexistent ability to make plastic, glass, metal, and the various electronics that go into such weapons, but the thought that a waster with no access to firearms might make a primitive crossbow is thought to degrade the fallout experience?

To be honest, I don't care that there are no crossbows in NV I'm more concerned that the prevailing opinion here is that no one anyone in the US would ever be able to create anything like a crossbow.
 
jeesus, it is not an inferior weapon, it is extremely silent and deadly at close range.
 
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