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Author Topic: Ballista corridor  (Read 840 times)

DCd

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Ballista corridor
« on: October 02, 2009, 12:08:59 pm »
Well, i have this bridge i make my enemies come through, but the ballista arrows hardly ever go straight through it. i was wondring, could i make them go straight through the corridor by making walls to it, or are the arrows destroyed when they hit a wall when not going straight?

Hard to explain, i hope you understand what i mean.
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Quietust

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Re: Ballista corridor
« Reply #1 on: October 02, 2009, 12:28:24 pm »
Train up your siege engineer to produce some exceptional or masterwork ballista parts, then make sure the ballista is being fired by a legendary siege operator.

Arrows that hit walls are always destroyed (unless they then fall down a Z-level).
« Last Edit: October 02, 2009, 12:30:11 pm by Quietust »
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Quote from: Lord Dakoth on September 17, 2009, 10:47:58 pm
It's amazing how dwarves can make a stack of bones completely waterproof and magmaproof.
Quote from: Neruz on September 18, 2009, 06:58:26 am
It's amazing how they can make an entire floodgate out of the bones of 2 cats.

Albedo

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Re: Ballista corridor
« Reply #2 on: October 03, 2009, 02:01:43 am »
<nods>

If you dig channels on the sides of your corridor (and at the end of the L, as it should be), then any mis-fires will hit the wall and fall down intact. They (probably) won't be gathered up in time to re-use for that defense, but they can be later. (I have lockable doors on these lower areas to prevent haulers from getting scared by the big bad gobbos.  I unlock the doors when the siege has been pacified.)

Don't know about you, but ballista ammo is not something to throw away for me.
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XSI

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Re: Ballista corridor
« Reply #3 on: October 03, 2009, 10:05:18 am »
Ballista accuracy is effected by the quality of everything involved, so here's a quick and easy to view list for it.

Ballista parts(3 of them)
Ballista arrows
Siege operator's skill levels

I'm not sure if the ballista head(Iron/steel/bronze/whatever) effects accuracy, but if it does I would assume the material and quality of that would effect it too, I never use those because a ballista arrow is mostly lethal without them anyway.
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Quote from: decius on September 04, 2009, 03:11:20 pm
What kind of statues are your masons making, that you think they have "maximum exposure"?
Quote from: Albedo on September 04, 2009, 03:20:55 pm
(Full frontal ones, apparently.  With very short beards.) 

2xMachina

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Re: Ballista corridor
« Reply #4 on: October 04, 2009, 12:37:23 pm »
Siege operator skill lvl is same with pump operator skill lvl right?
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Albedo

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Re: Ballista corridor
« Reply #5 on: October 04, 2009, 02:27:35 pm »
Huh?  ??? No.

Oddly enough, any two skills with different names are... (say it with me)... two different skills

Quote from: XSI on October 03, 2009, 10:05:18 am
a ballista arrow is mostly lethal without them anyway.

Ballista ammo is 100% lethal without them - everything they cross dies. However, they do "run out of steam" after a half-dozen or so kills - an arrowhead is supposed to improve that. (For obvious reasons, this has not been researched very closely, but this is the best guess currently.)  For now, common wisdom says "ignore ballista arrowheads".

Read wiki "ballista" for all the above info plus more you haven't thought to ask about yet.
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2xMachina

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Re: Ballista corridor
« Reply #6 on: October 05, 2009, 02:03:55 pm »
My Dwarf Therapist seems to list my Legendary Pump operator to have a similiar lvl for siege operating in VPView.
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Malicus

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Re: Ballista corridor
« Reply #7 on: October 05, 2009, 04:02:03 pm »
I remember that being a bug.  It's not there in the latest version.
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Albedo

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Re: Ballista corridor
« Reply #8 on: October 06, 2009, 12:08:53 am »
There's a reason 3rd party utilities are not supported by the actual game.  Basing assumptions off of those is a bit... over optimistic.

In this case, yes, it's a coding errour. Download 4.0, it's been fixed (along w/ several other improvements - I like DT). And read the DT thread in the modding sub-forum.
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