Ooh, ooh, new info on patch page!

[rdonj]

As to the yumi debate. I went and looked up longbows and got a hit from wikipedia with ranges to compare against the Yumi.

Now, the bottom site you listed stated that the Yumi has a "killing range" of 30 meters, and a maximum range of 380 meters. Comparing this to what wikipedia has to say, a 160-180 lb english longbow had a range between 165 and 228 meters, and that "An archer could hit a person at 165 m (180 yards) "part of the time" and could always hit an army." (not cited). Someone with a Mary Rose replica longbow was able to shoot an arrow as far as 328 meters(cited). The article also states "The longbow had a long range and high accuracy, but not both at the same time. Modern champion archers maintain that a hit cannot be guaranteed on an individual target at more than 75 m (80 yards) with any bow whatsoever." (not cited)

Though a lot of that information is uncited, even the highest figure for the longbow is lower than that of the yumi, and that one is cited.

Also what must be considered is what is actually meant in the teppou article by "killing range". This sounds like an incredibly useless sort of figure to me. Is it the range at which an archer is considered more than likely to kill the enemy? Is it the range at which an archer is more than likely to hit an enemy with a shot that will disable them? Is it the range at which they are more than likely to penetrate the opponents armor? Hit them? To me it sounds most likely to be the first option. An effective range of 50 meters as is stated in the other article you linked is believable for shooting directly at a target rather than volleying. Personally, I struggle to land arrows accurately at 40 meters with a modern compound bow, but I am a terrible archer and have not spent a lifetime learning how to shoot.