Items/Skills: Rename Crossbow Bows

[Repinuj]

Currently there are crossbows spread across Archery and Firearms combat trees. The more recent ones are under Firearms, with the logic that the mechanics of using a crossbow is more akin to using a rifle. Those are the Wintertide event rifles. This is logical, but the older crossbows are still under the Archery tree.

This is an official suggestion to rename the crossbow bows, as the simplest way to rectify this. Without having to figure out balance or ammo changes.

The Redeemed skill Crossbow of Cold Resolve can be Bow of Cold Resolve, or Horse Bow of Cold Resolve. Or maybe Yew Bow of Cold Resolve, after Otzi the Iceman's bow.

My suggestion for the Rotten Crossbow would be Yomi Yumi.

Yomi - 'Yomi or Yomi-no-kuni (黄泉, 黄泉の国, or 黄泉ノ国) is the Japanese word for the land of the dead (World of Darkness).'
Yumi - 'Yumi (弓) is the Japanese term for a bow.'

Someone actually familiar with the language may correct that. Would seem to fit the Hasheen Gloomstalker better, anyway. But just so it's not called a crossbow.

[kylinn]

Renaming to avoid confusion is cool.

Renaming that creates confusion rather than lessens it ('rotten crossbow' is more understandable than 'yomi yumi') is not quite so great. Maybe "yomi crossbow" or "deathly crossbow" instead? ("Rotten" also is not so great, as I look at the name and think it's always on the verge of falling apart.)

[Repinuj]

Well, the idea is that it's not named any 'crossbow', since those are supposed to be rifles.

I don't think it'd be too confusing, given weapons like 'Arc of the Horned Moon' and 'Shrivening Spire'. But that's just an idea.

For what it's worth 'yumi' is actually used in English to refer to a traditional Japanese asymmetrical bow. So it's just a type of bow.

[MrFrank]

I agree with kylin, "yomi yumi" is not immediately indicative of what sort of weapon you are using. Maybe a completely fictitious name like Gothic Crossbow could work.

I'm fond of Stake Launcher (a sort of repeating crossbow or auto-loading crossbow from various vampire-fighting media) but that has a similar problem where you wouldn't know what it was if you aren't familiar with the source material.

[Repinuj]

Gothic Bow could work, if people are just opposed to the perfectly English word yumi.

But, again, the whole idea is that archery weapons shouldn't be named crossbows, since new crossbows are under firearms.

The problem with 'Rotten Crossbow' was the word 'Crossbow'.

[erikune]

Given that there is only one crossbow in the guns category (Ice Crossbow) and that all other crossbows, including Crossbow of Cold Resolve, are in the bow category, it would make more sense to just rename the Ice Crossbow or to retire it any just not bring it back - perhaps naming it a Glacier Pole Gun or something else. Yes, I realize that crossbows don't share much with actual bows, but a lot of people seeing the name "crossbow" are going to start thinking about the combat tree with all the other bows, even if they know that a crossbow works very differently.

[Repinuj]

There are two crossbow rifles in the firearms tree. Ice Crossbow and Stunbolt Ballista (ballista is a big crossbow). Both made by Lychwood as firearms, with the logic that they're used like rifles. This seems to reflect the desire to have crossbows be on the firearms tree, as rifles, going forward.

The Ice Crossbow doesn't use any ammo, and Stunbolt Ballista uses Shock Spheres for ammo.

The older crossbows are under archery, with Rotten Crossbow using arrows, and Crossbow of Cold Resolve being a skill and using health.

Given that, renaming the Rotten Crossbow and Crossbow of Cold Resolve seems easiest.

Moving them to firearms would require you to figure out the ammo for the Rotten Crossbow, since it'd be strange for it to keep using bow arrows. And the Crossbow of Cold Resolve is part of the Redeemed archery skillset.

Obviously, any new mundane crossbows in the future would need to have the ammo figured out. Or keep them as magitech weapons that don't use standard ammo.

[Mousus6]

Particularly given the weirdness of any crossbow probably ending up repaired by the bowyer tree rather than the gunsmithing tree it may be a more sensible modification to go the route of avoiding calling anything else in the firearm tree a crossbow. Not having any clever ideas instantly coming to mind for things to call medieval themed guns, fire lances and hand cannons go very chinese rather than medieval. Maybe arquebuses?

Stunbolt ballista definitely caused me no end of confusion last breath with trying to work out why it wasn't a bow. Equal thought, just ensure that the weapon tree everything uses shows up in the mouseover though firearm crossbows will still be awkward and counterintuitive unless there's a mundane firearms crossbow that behaves that way.

[Repinuj]

Particularly given the weirdness of any crossbow probably ending up repaired by the bowyer tree rather than the gunsmithing tree it may be a more sensible modification to go the route of avoiding calling anything else in the firearm tree a crossbow. Not having any clever ideas instantly coming to mind for things to call medieval themed guns, fire lances and hand cannons go very chinese rather than medieval. Maybe arquebuses?

Stunbolt ballista definitely caused me no end of confusion last breath with trying to work out why it wasn't a bow. Equal thought, just ensure that the weapon tree everything uses shows up in the mouseover though firearm crossbows will still be awkward and counterintuitive unless there's a mundane firearms crossbow that behaves that way

Well, yes. But given that Smithing does knives, metal armor, leather armor, firefighter clothing, and all-wood tonfas, and Gunsmithing does guns, bullets, flamethrowers, and grenades (including magic Shock Spheres), I figured placing crossbows under Gunsmithing wouldn't make it any stranger.

Now that I think about it, I never did check which smithing tree repairs the Stunbolt Ballista. But given it's electric nature, metal construction seems reasonable. But it's definitely using the firearms combat tree.

And I wouldn't say no to a regular hunting crossbow using steel bolts. Bolt Cases presumably craftable with Smithing using Chucks of Steel.

EDITS: FIxing various brainfarts.

[Mousus6]

Adding a mundane crossbow with metal bolts made out of steel using gunsmithing would be a perfectly reasonable approach to fix the issue to go with either renaming the existing innates or just turning them into gun innates as at this point why not just let them be a different tree?