Safe distance

[JaM]

MonsGraupius: problem is these weapons were not used against single men in battle, but against certain "area" They were both area weapons, to saturate the area with projectiles, so enemy gets suppressed.. Primary goal was not to kill, chance to kill somebody behind his large shield was quite small, but to reduce their will to fight before melee units meet in battle.

I think games have a lot to do with this, as from my experience with TW games, everybody kinda expect to kill a lot of men with arrow barrage, not realizing how low actual kill chance was.. So i think instead of looking at what distance you can hit a man, people should be asking what dispersion would a formation of archers or slingers usually have.. that would determine the saturation of projectiles vs area, which would be better indication of its potential.

And with slings, there is also one interesting factor - their projectiles are relatively small, therefore a bit harder to spot. so while you could see a javelin flying at you, so you could try to block it with the shield, it was much harder to spot the slingshot..

[Crispianus]

You wont see a sling shot flying towards or away from you no more then you would a bullet, and normally it makes no sound.... it must be quite disconcerting to be under mass fire by slingers and not something I would want be on the recieving end off..... with a sling I would say you could target a body of men at one hundred yards with regular practice fairly easily moving or not...

You can also catch javalins in flight....

[JaM]

yeah, and imagine its effect on unprotected men.. i think that's why slingers were so successful at suppressing archers - they usually had no protection, didn't had any shields, and couldn't fire back with slingshots flying at them... and you actually don't even need some massed concentrated barrage for this.. even few hits into archer formations would definitely have demoralizing effect..

so, personally, i think it doesnt really matter what had longer range.. slingers could get at archers and prevent them from shooting effectively.. plus, at distance i would guess Slinger formation would be a long but shallow line, therefore not an ideal target for a mass archer volley, which would have typically circular target zone (English Bowmen were trained to get about 25m dispersion with the whole unit), so archers would have a bit harder time to suppress slingers with indirect fire.. they would have to get closer for aimed fire