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[Nebabon]

What is the range of a catapult?  Also, if I stick it in a mine with no open ceiling, will it be able to work?

Thanks!

[AlienChickenPie]

Catapults are confined to the z-level where they were built. There is no need for a high ceiling, and they can't target things in the z-levels above and below, even if the things are at a distance that makes the up/down angle negligible.

[Pilsu]

Catapults are worthless for anything but training, don't make them

Several screens of range

[Footkerchief]

Catapults are worthless for anything but training, don't make them

And getting rid of stone, but yeah, as combat weapons they're totally useless.  Ballistas, in contrast, make poor training platforms (you'll need a couple thousand shots for legendary, at one log per shot) and are ridiculously deadly against tightly packed enemies.

[Raging Mouse]

On the contrary. Ballistas are excellent training platforms, since you can save on ammunition by having them shoot at a wall with a moat directly in front of it. The ballista arrows will fall into the moat without breaking.

Same is also true for crossbow bolts, by the way, but since they currently will not go back together into a stack, saving them like this is pointless unless you wish a thousand hauling jobs at once.

[Pilsu]

Or melt the bolts which are considered full stacks. You can effectively create metal this way

Fun fact, catapults have a slightly longer range than ballistae. In addition, while stones fired by catapults pelt a varied area of about 10-20 tiles, ballista bolts come to a dead stop at the exact same line. Both weapons are about as accurate as regular bolts at max distance which is not affected by siege operator skill. Good luck hitting anything

[WorkerDrone]

And both you must realise, are meant to be weapons of battlefield destruction. Your suppose to have at least 3 or 6 of the things before you start to unleash hell on everything near your wall.

More meat more the grinder?

[Ashery]

Or you can install catapults behind your wall of ballistae to add a bit of additional firepower as the catapults can shoot over'em.

[beorn080]

Or just put in 50 to 60 catapults on a 2X5 map going longwise with an extremely long corridor they have to walk through.

[jester]

Ive had 4 catapults rout a seige of 60 gobs before, Ive also seen a single catapult shot kill 3 gobs. they arent really all that usefull but lobbing giant bolders at my enemys is always fun.

[Tormy]

Ive had 4 catapults rout a seige of 60 gobs before, Ive also seen a single catapult shot kill 3 gobs. they arent really all that usefull but lobbing giant bolders at my enemys is always fun.

The problem is that these "siege weapons" are only shooting at things on one z-level. [The level where they were being installed.]
Once this bug is fixed, these weapons will be useful.