The core of the armor penetration calculation comes from The Knight and the Blast Furnace: A History of the Metallurgy by Alan Williams. However there are some gaps in it since it primarely focuses on plate armor. So gaps were filled with Youtube experimental evidence and historical sources. For example we are assuming arrows / bolts are not greased in RBM (greased arrows seem to have "effectively 20 more joules" in comparison to non greased ones when we take into consideration results from Knight and the Blast Furnace). However the videos about loss of energy of arrows at range or penetration of light-medium shields are very educational in my opinion. Also videos with speed meter and bows used with multiple arrows and multiple weights (specifically Joe Gibs videos) are pretty good sample for reverse engineering the results and developing general formula for arrow missile speed calculation. Similiar thing was done for crossbows with videos by Mediaval Crossbows channel, especially the crusades era crossbow (270 lb I think). Also Tods and Medieval Crossbows videos are best information I was able to find about reload techniques of crossbows, given that he mentions max draw weight with these techniques and does demonstrations. Also other videos regarding melee fighting can give us some basic idea of how likely is it to cut / penetrate mail and gambeson. For example I came to the conclussion that deep penetration with polearm or sword is very unlikely against mail because they failed to break through more than one ring in all of the experiments I saw so far.
These video channels were used as source for behaviour of historical bows and crossbows.
And these writings:
Warbow Archery Tips,Techniques, and Seminars (markstretton.blogspot.com)
Collections: Archery, Distance and ‘Kiting’ – A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry (acoup.blog)
TURKISH BOWS PERFORMANCE (atarn.org)
Drawing speed of bows and reload speed of bows and crossbows is based on these information:
http://markstretton.blogspot.com/2016/08/how-many-arrows-can-warbow-shoot.html
https://www.facebook.com/bogar.archery/posts/768461360212529
So we ended up with system where default reload time for bow (we are using quivers not arrows stuck to the ground, those can be reloaded significantly faster) is 6 seconds and default drawing speed is 3 seconds, default light crossbow (first 3 crossbows) reload time is 10 seconds, this represents the spanning belt method of reloading, heavier crossbows require doubler belt which translates to 20 seconds of default reload time. Each bow requires some skill to unlock (hunting bow requires 0), drawing speed increases with your skill in relation to bow difficulty. By the time you reach 50 more skill than is required to unlock bow, your drawing time is going to be 2 seconds, with more skill this time is going to decrease further. Same applies to bow and crossbow reloading, better you are with the weapon, faster you reload it. For example bow at 0 skill = 6 seconds reload, bow at 100 skill = 3 seconds reload, bow at 200 skill = 2 seconds, bow at 300 skill 1.5 seconds. Light crossbow at 0 skill = 13 seconds, 100 skill = 10 seconds, 200 skill = 8,5 seconds, light crossbow at 300 skill = 7,41 seconds. Heavy crossbows at 0 skill = 21 seconds, 100 skill = 16 seconds, 200 skill = 13,33 sec, 300 skill = 11,42 sec. This applies to reload realism setting of = 1. When it is set to 2 all reload times are halved. When it is set to 0, you will get vanilla reload and draw speeds.
3 comments
for example needle bodkin 90grams vs greased barbed head bolts 50 gram , whats real life scenario dmg diffrence there?