In the campaign when a crossbow fires it has a really nice reload animation where the guy plants the crossbow and pulls back the cord, in skirmish this doesn’t happen he plants the crossbow and it is ready to fire again. Either the animation is being canceled or the fire rate is too fast for it to play.
Another really nice detail ya’ll have in the campaign which is likely just an earlier build (one that I quite like a lot, less generic than the live build it seems at least in animations and the like) at this point is at least in the French campaign the turning wench on the crossbow, it changes the model of the crossbow and the reload animation, a really really nice detail to see and it’s a shame it got axed. The wench is still on the crossbow but it doesn’t seem to play for the French Arbalist, which once again is a shame, really like those little details.
So edit: the French wench reload animation for the Arbalist did play after researching Gambesons which is weird, it should probably be tied to the elite upgrade, or if it is it had a delay for some reason. oh well.