Battlefield 1: Crossbow Launcher / Guide / Is It Overpowered?
134The Crossbow Launcher is a gadget found in the Support kit. It was added in the ‘Giant's Shadow DLC’ and is available from rank one without needing to spend war bonds to unlock it.
It's a lightweight weapon which can be carried by a single soldier. It can either fire the frag grenade or High Explosive grenade and there are a few significant differences between the two:
The frag grenade explodes shortly after it lands and has a five-meter blast radius. It has a maximum damage radius in the center of 1.6 meters, where it will deal 100 damage. This means it can kill any player - excluding sentry kits - standing in this lethal radius.
The High Explosive grenades detonate on impact when they strike a vehicle and they have a larger blast radius of 6 meters. It also has a slightly larger maximum damage radius of 2 meters although it deals less than half the damage of the frag grenade on infantry. Given the crossbow only holds 2 rounds, killing enemy soldiers is therefore very difficult unless they are already injured.
These two grenade types are also available for the Rifle Grenade and for this reason I’ll be comparing the two quite closely.
The crossbow launcher has a slow fire rate of only 24 RPM due to the 2.5 second reload process. This is almost half the speed of the Rifle Grenade’s 43 RPM. This means you'll have to carefully position your shots because spamming multiple grenades in quick succession isn't possible. The crossbow launcher also has a muzzle velocity that's 25% slower than the Rifle Grenade, meaning the travel time of the projectile takes slightly longer.
Travel distance and accuracy are excellent with the crossbow having a maximum reach of 200 meters (I think), although landing a shot over very long distances does involve a certain amount of guesswork. The reticule is useful up to a point, but beyond that, experience is the only way to gauge the right amount of angle needed.
For this reason, midrange is where it's the most effective. In many situations, it's much more effective than a standard grenade toss because of the additional velocity. It’s not as fast as the rifle grenade but much faster than a tossed grenade and it can be more easily bounced off surfaces, allowing it to more easily reach players hiding behind cover.
A distinct advantage the Crossbow launcher has over the Rifle grenade is that it’s silent. While not a huge advantage it works well in conjunction with the Crossbow launcher’s other key strength… unlimited ammo.
It starts with only two rounds vs the Rifle Grenade’s 3, but it automatically resupplies after 15 (check) seconds. This is one of the key reasons that some people consider it OP. The issue with self-replenishing ammo is there's limited strategy or risk involved. Support players are free to find a safe vantage point and take shots at passing players without ever needing to actively resupply, or reveal their position. This can promote camping or overly defensive gameplay.
So to answer the question; is it overpowered? Maybe… when compared directly to the rifle grenade there are few areas where it's the better pick, except when it comes to the automatic ammo replenishment, and this really is a big deal. Sure you can replenish rifle grenade stock from support players but it's nowhere near as quick, or convenient. The grenade crossbow may not be the most effective projectile weapon but it’s still capable, and other than the lengthy reload time, there is no penalty for missing a shot.
★ SUBSCRIBE: https://goo.gl/58CRSY
★ SUBSCRIBE via RSS: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC0HhYm4oi3OjYGaGfDwZKnQ
★ Latest video: https://goo.gl/Elcrnd
★ CHANNEL: http://www.youtube.com/goukigod
★ Support via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/goukigod?ty=h
★ FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/pages/808-Gaming/327553877343798
★ TWITTER: https://twitter.com/im_goukigod
★ Email: goukigod@gmail.com
★ Equipment I use: https://kit.com/Goukigod/
★ MORE VIDEOS: https://www.youtube.com/user/goukigod/videos
★ Website: https://www.goukigod.com
Need cheap controller accessories?
Use code 'goukigod' for 10% off your order at http://crucialgrips.com/
Outro song: Modern Day Drifter 2 / Per-Anders Nilsson
Royalty Free Music: http://audiomicro.com/royalty-free-music
Sound Effects: http://audiomicro.com/sound-effects
Other Videos By goukigod
Other Statistics
Battlefield 1 Statistics For goukigod
There are 315,704 views in 16 videos for Battlefield 1. Battlefield 1 has approximately 2 hours of watchable video on his channel, or 3.15% of the total watchable video on goukigod's YouTube channel.