Recruits Use Boomsticks

Turn your Recruits into an organized gunpowder formation.

Recruits Use Boomsticks is a Minecraft 1.20.1 Forge compatibility mod that lets Villager Recruits crossbowmen fight with weapons from Medieval Boomsticks and selected weapons from Epic Knights: Artilleries and Firearms.

Recruits find weapons and physical ammunition in their inventories, load them through supported weapon-specific steps, aim with compensation for projectile drop, fire native projectiles, coordinate volleys, and protect their owner and allies from friendly fire.

What's new in 2.2.1

Artillery Addon 1.16.2 support now covers 26 handheld weapon IDs. Version 2.2 introduced six wheellock firearms, native two-barrel operation, cartridge loading and extraction, and version-specific ballistics. Version 2.2.1 adds:

• Wheellock Hand Mortar: loads a physical clay or iron hand grenade, fires the native projectile with its 45-tick fuse, and uses a recruit-owned blast that spares allies.
• Fire Lance: uses a powder flask and torch for its native nine-projectile fire burst. Optional Iron Bits add four more projectiles.

Both weapons use the recruit combat AI, physical loading components, and server-side projectile ownership. The release JAR has been started on a separate Forge dedicated server with Artillery 1.16.2.

Combat and loading

• Real Artillery loading stages with physical ammunition, powder flasks, ramrods, spanners, visible tools, native sounds, and normal tool wear where applicable.
• An eight-arrow Chu Ko Nu magazine, Windlass Crossbow cocking, two loaded dual-wheellock barrels, and recoverable spent breechloader cartridges.
• Coordinated formation fire that avoids committing unnecessary shots to a target and can redirect recruits to another enemy.
• Ballistic compensation, mounted firing where the weapon supports it, aiming and recoil poses, and reload animations.
• Weapons out! and Weapons away! orders in the Villager Recruits combat screen. Recruits draw supported weapons or stow them and restore a sword, axe, or crossbow when available.
• Configurable projectile damage, minimum damage, smoke, strategic fire, and volley hit behavior.

Only Villager Recruits crossbowmen use the supported ranged weapons. Loading and firing timing follows recruit AI policy; it does not reproduce every player click or every Artillery ammunition branch.

Supported weapons

Medieval Boomsticks firearms: Handgonne, Arquebus, Spiked Handgonne, and Arbalest.

Medieval Boomsticks throwing weapons: Iron Throwing Knife, Iron Throwing Axe, Small Throwing Rock, Large Throwing Rock, War Dart, and Javelin.

Artillery Addon firearms and ranged weapons: Arquebus, Matchlock Musket, Matchlock Carbine, Matchlock Pistol, Toradar Rifle, Mini Pistola, Tiller Gun, Handgonne, Taccola Handgonne, Noble Handgonne, Markmengonne, Bronze Handgonne, Harquebus, Hackbut, Windlass Crossbow, Hand Cannon, Chu Ko Nu, and Double Barrel Gonne.

Additional weapons with Artillery 1.16.2: Wheellock Pistol, Wheellock Musket, Wheellock Hunting Rifle, Wheellock Breechloading Rifle, Dual Wheellock Pistol, Dual Wheellock Carbine, Wheellock Hand Mortar, and Fire Lance.

Artillery Addon throwing weapons: Francisca, Hurlbat, Throwing Cross, Javelin, and Throwable Cobblestone.

Support applies to the tested ammunition and firing branches. For example, Double Barrel Gonne uses its first iron-ball barrel; other grenade use, wallguns, emplaced weapons, and additional ammunition branches are not supported. Earlier Artillery versions provide only the weapons present in those versions.

Installation and dependencies

Use Minecraft 1.20.1, Forge 47.3.32–47.4.x, and Java 17. Install Recruits Use Boomsticks on both client and server. Dependencies are not bundled in its JAR.

Required: Villager Recruits 1.15.0–1.15.2, Epic Knights 8.2–10.11, Architectury API 9.0.8–9.2.14, and Cloth Config API 11.0.99–12.0.109.

Optional integrations:

• Medieval Boomsticks 1.01–1.2. Install GeckoLib 4.2.4–4.8.4 with it.
• Epic Knights: Artilleries and Firearms 1.11–1.13.4, 1.15.2, or 1.16.2.
• BetterRecruitFormations.
• Epic Knights: Addon. Artillery's native Fire Lance crafting and Steel Francisca conversion recipes require it; the weapons still register without it.

Do not use Artillery Addon 1.14–1.15.1 on a dedicated server. Those upstream releases load a client-only class during server startup and are excluded from this mod's supported dependency range. Artillery 1.15.2 and 1.16.2 have been verified on an unpatched dedicated server.

Configuration and support

After first launch, edit config/recruits_use_boomsticks-common.toml to enable integrations and adjust projectile damage, minimum damage, strategic fire, smoke, volley hit behavior, or debug logging.

Report issues on GitHub. Include the Minecraft, Forge, Recruits, and weapon-mod versions, steps to reproduce, and latest.log when relevant.

Villager Recruits, Medieval Boomsticks, Epic Knights, Artillery Addon, and the other integrations are separate projects owned by their respective authors. Recruits Use Boomsticks does not redistribute their assets or source code. Source code · MIT License

Form ranks. Load. Aim. Fire.

Recruits Use Boomsticks

Turn your Recruits into an organized gunpowder formation.

Recruits Use Boomsticks is a Minecraft 1.20.1 Forge compatibility mod that allows Villager Recruits crossbowmen to properly fight with firearms and throwing weapons from Ranged Knights: Medieval Boomsticks and Sharpsticks and selected weapons from Epic Knights: Artilleries and Firearms.

This is not just an item whitelist.

Recruits find weapons and physical ammunition in their inventories, perform real loading sequences, aim, compensate for projectile drop, fire native projectiles, coordinate volleys, protect allies from friendly fire, and follow company-wide weapon orders.

Version 2.0

2.0 is the biggest update the mod has received so far.

It adds:

• 18 supported Artillery firearm profiles
• 5 Artillery throwing weapons
• All 6 Medieval Boomsticks throwing weapons
• Real multi-step Artillery loading
• Physical powder and ammunition
• Ramrod and Iron Ramrod handling
• Native loading sounds and visible tools
• Tool durability
• Windlass Crossbow cocking
• Full 8-round Chu Ko Nu magazine loading
• Coordinated formation fire
• Ballistic compensation
• Mounted firing and reloading
• Improved aiming, recoil and reload presentation
• Weapons out! / Weapons away! company orders
• BetterRecruitFormations compatibility
• Dedicated-server support

Formation fire

Recruits do not blindly dump an entire firing line into the same half-dead enemy.

Shots are coordinated per target. Recruits reserve expected incoming volley damage while projectiles are still flying and can look for enemies that are not already covered by another shooter.

No more thirty muskets wasting ammunition on the same unlucky zombie.

Real loading

Supported Artillery weapons use their actual loading logic.

Depending on the weapon, a recruit may:

1. Pour powder
2. Insert physical ammunition
3. Ram the shot
4. Use a Ramrod or Iron Ramrod
5. Perform weapon-specific bare-hand loading
6. Cock the weapon
7. Finish its native loaded state
8. Aim and fire

A recruit will not begin a reload it cannot finish.

Reusable loading tools take durability damage normally, and ammunition is physically consumed from the recruit's inventory.

Weapons out! Weapons away!

Version 2.0 adds two commands to the Villager Recruits combat screen.

Weapons out!

Orders crossbowmen to draw a supported ranged weapon.

Weapons away!

Orders them to stow it and restore a Sword, Axe or Crossbow when available.

Commands work with selected groups. With no groups selected, they apply to all nearby recruits owned by the player.

Supported weapons

Medieval Boomsticks

Firearms

• Handgonne
• Arquebus
• Spiked Handgonne
• Arbalest

Throwing weapons

• Iron Throwing Knife
• Iron Throwing Axe
• Small Throwing Rock
• Large Throwing Rock
• War Dart
• Javelin

Throwing weapons use their native projectiles, speed, damage and sounds. Recoverable weapons remain collectible, and durable throwing weapons preserve their normal durability behavior.

Epic Knights: Artilleries and Firearms

Supported firearm profiles:

• Arquebus
• Matchlock Musket
• Matchlock Carbine
• Matchlock Pistol
• Toradar Rifle
• Mini Pistola
• Tiller Gun
• Handgonne
• Taccola Handgonne
• Noble Handgonne
• Markmengonne
• Bronze Handgonne
• Harquebus
• Hackbut
• Windlass Crossbow
• Hand Cannon
• Chu Ko Nu
• Double Barrel Gonne

Throwing weapons

• Francisca
• Hurlbat
• Throwing Cross
• Javelin
• Throwable Cobblestone

Slow throwing weapons move into effective range before attacking instead of repeatedly throwing into the ground.

Only tested weapon and ammunition branches are enabled.

Grenades are intentionally unsupported.

Combat features

• Dedicated firearm combat AI
• Real physical ammunition
• Native projectiles
• Coordinated volley fire
• Projectile ownership
• Owner and allied-recruit friendly-fire protection
• Mounted shooting
• Mounted reloading
• Projectile-drop compensation
• Strategic-fire positions
• Proper aiming direction
• Recoil direction preservation
• Reload animations
• Lowered empty/reloading weapon poses
• Configurable projectile damage
• Per-integration damage multipliers
• Configurable minimum projectile damage
• Optional volley hurt-cooldown bypass
• Smoke effects
• Debug logging

Requirements

Minecraft: 1.20.1 Loader: Forge Java: 17

Install Recruits Use Boomsticks on the client and server.

Required

• Villager Recruits
• Ranged Knights: Medieval Boomsticks and Sharpsticks
• GeckoLib
• Epic Knights: Shields Armor and Weapons
• Architectury API
• Cloth Config API

Optional

• Epic Knights: Artilleries and Firearms — 1.11–1.13.4
• BetterRecruitFormations
• Epic Knights: Addon

Artillery 1.14 is not supported on dedicated servers.

Use Artillery 1.11 through 1.13.4 for the supported dedicated-server setup.

Configuration

The mod creates:

config/recruits_use_boomsticks-common.toml

You can configure:

• Medieval Boomsticks integration
• Artillery integration
• Strategic fire
• Smoke particles
• Global projectile damage
• Per-mod damage multipliers
• Minimum projectile damage
• Volley hurt-cooldown behavior
• Debug logging

Compatibility

Version 2.0 includes compatibility with:

• BetterRecruitFormations
• Recruits Musket Mod combat goals
• Forge dedicated servers

Only Villager Recruits crossbowmen use supported ranged weapons.

Bugs & feedback

Found a compatibility problem?

Watched a recruit do something spectacularly stupid?

Report it here:

GitHub Issues

For useful bug reports, please include your exact mod versions, latest.log, whether the problem occurs on a dedicated server, and steps to reproduce it.

Source code

GitHub: https://github.com/iwosw/recruits-use-boomsticks

Recruits Use Boomsticks is free and open source under the MIT License.

Villager Recruits, Medieval Boomsticks, Epic Knights, Epic Knights: Artilleries and Firearms, BetterRecruitFormations and their assets belong to their respective authors.

This project does not redistribute their assets or source code.

Form ranks. Load. Aim. Fire.