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[Noobazzah]

So, is the firing cone of a ballista completely random, or does the operator actually aim? When I used wooden ballista arrows, none of them hit anything (just hit the walls of my main corridor), but the first time I shot a iron one it hit a troll (broke it's arm-passed out in pain) and a giant olm and killed a cave crocodile. My operators were all competent, and the ballista was made by a novice. How do these qualities affect this? I know that catapults "aim" at hostiles, just wondering if that's true for the ballista as well.

[Garath]

they do, they're just very inaccurate. Bolt and balista quality and operator skill help, but not much

[Noobazzah]

Okay, so replacing the old ballista with a better quality one won't help much? Would be very nice if the bolt could fly straight just a bit more often, since it's just so damn cool when it does and then score 10 headshots on a horde of rat-riding goblins.

[Garath]

I've noticed a drastic decrease in deviations, but usually my bolts, even with everything good, still go quite a bit off-course, though not the 45 degrees I've seen before.

[JimiD]

I thought quality of siege engine affected accuracy, and skill of operator rate of fire?

[Garath]

I thought quality of siege engine affected accuracy, and skill of operator rate of fire?

good point however, assume the worst, hope the best

[Elvang]

Back in 40d, it was always recommended to built your siege engines out of only masterwork parts for the accuracy. Bolt quality affects the damage, if I remember right, with siege operator skill being the rate of fire's main factor.

[Noobazzah]

Yep, seems so that skill affects reload speed. Can't make masterwork parts yet, but I'll try them out eventually. Until then shooting my precuious steel ballista arrows is a gamble.

[Garath]

you can very handily combine a dodge/fall trap with a ballista bolt retrieval system

[Hyndis]

Siege engines definitely work best if you can keep the target stationary.

Try building an artifact furniture, such as an artifact table or armor stand, and use that as bait. Building destroyers will attempt to destroy it, but artifacts cannot be harmed, so they will just be stuck there. Then you can shoot at them with siege engines.

[Azated]

you can very handily combine a dodge/fall trap with a ballista bolt retrieval system

I like to use a dodging pit, combined with multiple ballistas on the sides. It actually works quite well, considering it only uses ballistas and crossbows.

[Noobazzah]

Mine is located some tiles away from a retracting bridge pitfall trap. Once the bridge retracts, enemies crowd at my entrance and If the bolt flies straight through the 3-tile wide corridor the results are devastating. I may widen the hallway a bit so that I can make channels to both edges of the entryway, because most of the time the bolts just hit the wall on the sides.