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Author Topic: Siege weapons tied to pressure plates  (Read 1109 times)

maluraq

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Siege weapons tied to pressure plates
« on: June 01, 2012, 11:29:37 am »

Once a dwarf loads a siege weapon, it should be able to be fired remotely by a pressure plate or switch.

It would be very handy to configure an array of ballistae facing a hallway and use a pressure plate to launch the projectile at the oncoming enemies.  A dwarf would have to manually reload the siege weapon of course.
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weenog

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Re: Siege weapons tied to pressure plates
« Reply #1 on: June 01, 2012, 11:32:41 am »

Neat idea, but you could probably fake it on a small scale by loading raising drawbridges with boulders or other heavy junk.
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Itsdavyjones

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Re: Siege weapons tied to pressure plates
« Reply #2 on: June 01, 2012, 02:05:47 pm »

I can imagine the carnage already lol :D
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Siege weapons tied to pressure plates
« Reply #3 on: June 01, 2012, 02:24:37 pm »

If you look at the devpages and the improved traps and mechanisms section, or the traps and mechanisms wishlist thread that the devpages were based on, you'll see that Toady is already planning on scrapping the notion of one-tile traps, and instead basing traps off of multi-tile devices where you have pressure plates tied to different things, and siege weapons are a natural place to start.
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Uristocrat

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Re: Siege weapons tied to pressure plates
« Reply #4 on: June 01, 2012, 03:18:45 pm »

If you look at the devpages and the improved traps and mechanisms section, or the traps and mechanisms wishlist thread that the devpages were based on, you'll see that Toady is already planning on scrapping the notion of one-tile traps, and instead basing traps off of multi-tile devices where you have pressure plates tied to different things, and siege weapons are a natural place to start.

With minecarts, we can pretty much build these already... :)

Okay, so minecarts (probably) weren't intended as siege weapons, but....
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Siege weapons tied to pressure plates
« Reply #5 on: June 01, 2012, 03:59:23 pm »

With minecarts, we can pretty much build these already... :)

Okay, so minecarts (probably) weren't intended as siege weapons, but....

Yes, and currently, siege weapons are useless because the damage rules they use make them about as effective in combat as throwing a pillow, but I don't think that's really the idea behind the suggestion. 

Toady is already intending to remake traps so that they work off of pressure plates (or perhaps something else like them, like tripwires or something else) and make weapons traps that run off of having your axe tied to a multi-tile mechanism that you have to explicitly design yourself.  He even puts in that if you want it to reset itself, it would have to require you set up the mechanism to specifically do that.

So yes, future weapons traps will basically be like how minecarts work, but with the ability to trigger weapon-launchers as well as just throwing minecarts at things. 
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Personally, I like [DF] because after climbing the damned learning cliff, I'm too elitist to consider not liking it.
"And no Frankenstein-esque body part stitching?"
"Not yet"

Improved Farming
Class Warfare