Jesus fuck what was even the point of designing such a shitty weapon

Well, having a lovely stroll around hostile chateau forces without armor wasn't the smartest idea.

make enemy dead

no, triggering this kills the pikeman from 100 yards.

>[...] or for physically disabled or aged hunters.

Why though? If I was old and frail or physically disabled, a crossbow wouldn't be my weapon of choice since handling one in that situation seems to be way more inconvenient than simply using a rifle.

Because you can't use a rifle during archery hunting season, dumbass.

>kniggers gets so triggered that they appeal to the church to ban ranged weapons

You must be pretty stupid.

Crossbows aren't that good compared to bows when it comes to penetrating well-done armor (3mm thickness where it counts).

They sure pack a punch but their best feature is being able to aim for long and being ableto have a shot ready when it matters.

>(3mm thickness where it counts)
there never was such thing. plate armour thickness varied roughly from 1- to 1.8mm.

>plate armour thickness varied roughly from 1- to 1.8mm

Nope.

This is the weekly "X weapon is shit why were medieval people monkeys" thread but I'll take the bait anyway

>Significantly less training/physical condutioning needed to shoot
>Can be loaded and given to someone else, meaning even cripples, women and children can defend a wall or a house
>Can be loaded and left loaded, being shot only at the precise moment needed rather than having to go through the entire loading and drawing action
>can be significantly more powerful than longbows

The lionheart loved crossbows. He was shot while wandering around taking potshots at the defenders with his own crossbow.

yes.

list your sources

just look from the wikipedia, you were the one to claim that they were fucking 3mm thick. that's thickness for lightly armoured military vehicles of today and even modern armours made for buhurt aren't that thick and they're made to be almost twice as heavy as originals.

>just look from the wikipedia

oh, so you don't have any

>you were the one to claim that they were fucking 3mm thick

No, I didn't say that the overall thickness was 3, of course it wasn't. I said that was the thickness were it counted, like the space alongside the center ridge.

He's going to pull out some 17th century breastplate that was worn by itself, and claim its an example of the overall thickness of every type of plate armour.

No, I didn't, retard, because I never said the words "overall thickness" in the first place.

Kinda off topic but why did armys stop using longbows and crossbows all together, surely they would have been useful during the age of line infantry using muskets, say line infantry shooting guns with crossbows/ longbows shooting from behind the lines.

On top of everything said. This 'shitty' weapon changed the face of the 100 Years War. It was primarily for penatrating heavy armour and wasn't a hassle like the English longbow. If you think it's shit now in comparison to a rifle than yeah it's shit. But it was the rifle of its time

black powder and lead balls are simply a lot cheaper, easier and faster to produce in industrial scale. you can cast enough ammunition for the whole army at once but every single arrow/bolt is handmade and needs several phases and resources to make.

/thread

imagine being shot at while still trying to hold pike formation
at least ancient and medieval soldiers had shields they could somewhat protect themselves with, pikemen just have their pants down at all times

what if pikeman have crossbow too

pikeman would be irl op

youtube.com/watch?v=aGj0M-NJDGA

That's of course about later cuirasses, but earlier plate armors really don't need to be 3mm thick to be effective against bows and crossbows, and that ~1,5mm will be more than enough.

>The Knight and the Blast Furnace: A History of Metallurgy of Armour in the Middle Ages & the Early Modern Period (History of Warfare) by Alan Williams
The Milanese armourers in 14th and 15th claimed that they used crossbows to test their plate armor.

Firearms were far more powerful, had a longer effective range, are much easier to aim, and can be used from behind cover or in a trench. Those are the actual reasons given by 16th century English military men for abandoning the longbow completely because firearms did everything so much better.

Economics of training or expense of the munitions had nothing to do with the decision. Under the trained band system, it actually cost the government a significant amount of money to train a musketeer, while the government actually *made* money by levying fines on men who didn't practice with their bows. While powder and shot might be cheaper than an arrow shot-for-shot, this hardly mattered, since a firearm easily cost 10x more than a bow in the first place. It would have taken about ninety to a hundred arrows to make up for the difference.

quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A04863.0001.001/1:8.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext
quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A05277.0001.001?view=toc

The same pope also wanted to ban bows, slingshots and knightly tournaments. I love how everyone cherrypicks the crossbow part.

...

it kills people

Also a crossbow can use some kind of assist to help the user cock it with less force. Grandpa might still be able to handle a 175lb pull, but he might not be able to hold it like you need to do with a bow any more.

It's pretty good actually.

It's rate of fire is a downside compared to a longbow but outside of that the crossbow is equal or better. You won't be shooting at full rate of fire for hours on end though, there will be days when chucking two arrows an hour at some lads on a castle wall is all you will do.

Nonsense, crossbows were great when applied in sieges, ambushes etc... The Hussites for example made great use of crossbows and early handguns in thier wagon forts. Shit, some modern armies still use crossbows believe it or not.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossbow#Modern_use

I thought knights weren't allowed to use crossbows? Whole muh honor thing and all.

Kek

Because longbows were fucking shit by comparison.

>allowed

Real life isn't a video game. The crossbow won't zip back to the knights inventory when he tries to equipment it because it's not compatible with his character class.

I never heard about a knight using crossbow.

I think his point was it was looked down upon when a knight used a crossbow or firearm.

Which was true because, muh honour.
Warrior classes in every age have had this.

From the Spartans looking down at slings and bows, to the Japanese samurai looking down at firearms (at first)

It comes down to muh honour and martial culture

...

Fuck off

Richard I at Acre.

Knights are generally busy training to be commanders and heavy cavalry or infantry rather than dicking around with ranged weapons.

...

Just because a man isin armour, doesn't mean that he's a knight.

because they are trying to train an old peole / tard crossbow unit in the event of an invasion

Just because a man is a heavily armored lancer in the 15th century doesn't mean that he's a knight either. What's your point?

that what you posted is not a knight?

That a knight is a very specific social and political rank, not just any guy in armour.

The princes of the First Crusade even used crossbows during the siege of Jerusalem.

What else would they do? Chuck rocks at them?

fight in melee like men

Typical nobility propaganda. 20 years of training, experience and expenses equaling to buying your own private jet in modern sense all wasted because some peasant picked up a crossbow

>samurai could cut arrows before they reached them
>knights were too unskilled to cut bolts

How?

You're sitting like 40 yard away from them and they are on a wall or in a tower. Did you bring the worlds longest pike to fight them in melee?

>something needs to be guarded
>give some farmer down on his luck a promise of good pay, show him how to use a crossbow, and it's probably secure and anything needing a guard that you're afraid will get fucked, you'll hire a real guard for

Que?

The point of designing the crossbow was a factor of force and simplicity.

people really underestimate peasants they killed quite a few kings after all

Sure, but unless they've been training they probably wouldn't be great with a pike. A crossbow also has longer range than a pike.

D-did someone say hussites?

Lol no, samurai used balloons to deflect arrows. There skills were not to enough for an arrow to cut.

>giving a deadly weapon to some old fart or some disabled fuck because killing things is "Muh inalienable right"

>samurai didn't use a more convenient method of using shields