Archering

Archering is an overhaul based on my desire for more interesting tactile archery mechanics. 

Feature overview

• Pinpoint accuracy: bows no longer fire arrows in random directions. The arrows fly exactly to where your crosshair points.
• Weighty draw: your crosshair will now curve off from your initial target smoothly when drawing the bow, based on its weight.
• Tracking the target: the aim now sways continuously after fully drawing the bow. Even a stationary target may require manual aim adjustment. 
• Breath-holding: the player can hold their breath to stabilize the sway and more easily control it. Until your breath bar runs out, requiring lengthy recovery. (Sneak and sprint - default Ctrl and Shift - both hold breath)

• Stability: moving, jumping, or sprinting has severe aim penalties; you still fire to where your crosshair points, but good luck controlling where that is. 
• Unique handling: varying draw times and draw weights make the bows feel and behave differently from eachother. 
• Trajectory: heavier bows send arrows flying much faster, greatly reducing arrow drop. No more mental calculus mid-hunt to hit a boar from 25 blocks away - if you use the right bow. 
• Draw flash: a small circular reticle will flash up the instant your bow is drawn and ready to loose the arrow - helpful for the longbow which now takes 3.38x longer to draw.

• Stat balance: base damage of bows has been adjusted, and an arrow damage modifier makes the previously static additive arrow damage bonus now scale with the bows. 
• Denocking: arrows can now be denocked when the bow is fully drawn by left-clicking, allowing a convenient reset if the target disappears behind a tree mid-aim. 
• Arrow breakage: all arrows have had their break-chances significantly decreased. Crude: 25%, copper: 7.5%, steel: 2%.
• Square begone: The vanilla square reticle is removed for a cleaner view.

Design and description

In general, bows are intended as the primary weapon of choice, but have only a slight increase in DPS for the end-game tier, but a major increase in drawtime and proportionally higher base damage. Longbows are intended as a sidegrade, with lower DPS but a damage per shot high enough to exactly cross low-integer (2-4) breakpoints of "hits to kill" on tough enemies when using the best metal arrows. Recurve bows meanwhile require steel arrows to take down some mid-tier enemies (deep drifter) in a single shot, but are still significantly faster than the longbow and will output more damage per second. Simple bow serves as the introductory tier main staple. Crude bow just straight up sucks.

Arrows are considerably buffed, and now have damage values that scale with the bow instead of additively contributing static damage, which would disproportionately advantage faster bows. Break chances are adjusted to support the bow main weapon playstyle, and to save the player from RSI while smithing arrows. 

The modconfig contains a fair amount of values to tweak for the interested experimentalist. All balance is subject to change; any feedback is welcome and encouraged. I have erred on the side of caution adjusting speed and amplitude of sway. It's easier to tell when it's too easy rather than too hard, I think. Spending hours on end adjusting magic numbers and hoping for a good balanced result across the board is exhausting.

The game's AABB collision detection may theoretically not play well with the adjusted arrow speeds, and the longbow in particular, causing tunnelling if the arrow/hitbox intersection occurs at low depth angles (corners and edges). It's difficult to tell due to the hitbox sizes compared to animal models. If possible, use ".debug wireframe entity" command to confirm you are striking the hitbox before reporting tunnelling. If you confirm issues with this, you can adjust EnableSpeedIncreaseWithDrawWeight to false in the modconfig to use a gravity-adjustment solution that exactly mimics the speed-based arrow dropoff decrease based on distance - but of course target leading will still need to be manually adjusted (increased) to account for the slower arrow travel speeds. 

Config

Kisses and thanks to my dear kitty for helping and putting up with me