This is an archery thread, be warned. I thought it would be productive to publicly discuss a very comedic situation, the HeavyXbow bot and it's use en mass as an area denial weapon. One heavyxbowman is little danger to most mages and even dexxers in almost any 1v1 situation. However, a group of 3 or more in proximity are a nigh-unstoppable 10 tile zone of death. The only thing that could reasonably stop groups of archer bots are suicidal charges by reasonably similar numbers of tanks/dexxers. Or, at least, a similar number of tamers to counter. It is also interesting to note that supremely accurate archery weapons result in hideous accuracy. Also, HeavyXbows can be replaced with regular crossbows or bows if your number of concentrated bots is high enough for practically the same effect with higher ROF at the cost of requiring more accounts per 10 tile death-zone. But here, the 3 account rule leads to some anomalous results: a properly configured archer bot does not require attention, while other offensive classes, excluding perhaps tamers, do. Thus just a small group of players (let's say 4) can reasonably field a small squad of 8 heavy crossbow archer bots while still maintaining a cavalry reserve of 4 attended tanks to defend the formation from the unexpected. This is a huge boost. Such a group, if properly divided into 2 groups (as more than 4 in any one spot is overkill unless you are roleplaying a napoleonic line army) provides a 17-20 tile wall of instant death to 1 player per 2 seconds or so. In addition, these 4 players still have their regular pvp characters available. I could see (and have seen, in tests) such tactics being used to frankly hilarious effect. I would be greatly interested to see how "wars" of such similarly outfitted groups of players. I would imagine it would be something. Especially when you consider the implications of using wall of stone to assist in advances on such units with your own. So I came up with some general template ideas for such armies. Line Infantry: general purpose damage and survivability mix 100dex/whatever/whatever 100 archery 100 anatomy 100 tactics 100 resist 100 hiding (or replace with skills below and use invis) 100 ________ (choose magery/healing/whatever) 100 ________ (choose med/eval/inscription/whatever) Drummer: anti-tamed-dragon specialist/insurance 100dex/whatever/whatever 100 archery 100 anatomy 100 tactics 100 music 100 peace 100 ________ (choose magery/healing/resist/whatever) 100 ________ (choose med/eval/inscription/hiding/whatever) Cannoneer: maximum damage output glass cannon that follows up every shot with an ebolt 100dex/whatever/whatever 100 archery 100 anatomy 100 tactics 100 magery 100 meditation 100 eval 100 ________ (choose whatever) Special Forces: stealthiness units to advance on a position or otherwise geared for comedy 100dex/whatever/whatever 100 archery 100 anatomy 100 tactics 100 hiding 100 stealth 100 ________ (choose magery/healing/resist/whatever) 100 ________ (choose med/eval/inscription/hiding/whatever) Then use the remaining active window for pvp characters to be used as, well, cavalry. Does anyone have any experience or thoughts? Does it tickle anyone's imagination to get some friends together in sashes and tricorne hats and roleplay an era in advance of the one UO represents by squinting a bit and imagining heavy xbows as flintlock muskets? Let me know your thoughts.
it sounds fun. as an orc we used to require our members to have two weapon skills with having to be one of the requirements. We fought a lot, and we had a buddy like system. You had two to three other orcs in your squad, you always fought together, you knew each others play style well, we focused on cross healing and STAYING together. You get three to four archers working as a team, on the same page, you made things happen. I love archers. I've played many archer templates I enjoy. Most of our temps were. Archery Hiding Secondary weapon skill (I always went macing) Tactics Anatomy Healing Resist
