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[Shiv]

I don't know how they do it but every now and then one of my siege operators will hurt themselves.  They have a line of fortifications directly in front of their practice equipment so they can't go down range, but they still manage do hurt themselves on the ballistas from time to time. 

So far it's only two, but that's 2 out of 5, I'm running low on operators!  So the first one hurt her head, took off an ear, not worried about her.  She'll heal.  The other one that just happened, though, took off a hand.  She still has her right hand, but her left hand is completely gone.  When she heals, can she still operate the equipment?  If not (and she's legendary unfortunately) could she still haul objects around and what not or should she have another accident in the future?

[Derakon]

She should be fine. Most jobs in DF can be done one-handed. If not though, post here; I don't think anyone's every checked up on this specific job before.

What's your siege range set up as? I'd suggest having your operators practice with catapults pointed at walls, and only use the ballistae for actual fights. The experience is the same regardless but catapults are much less dangerous to friendlies.

[Shiv]

Like so.  Unfortunately I got this screenshot at the blink when her clothing (glove in this case) wasn't visible but it's sitting at the tip of the ballista on the right.  I don't know how (or why) she pathed up there (especially since I restricted that entire top row after the first person got injured at the same point) but that's where I found her and her hand (which was carted off to the morgue of all places).

[Grendus]

Setting a path as restricted will only keep the dwarves out of the way if they don't have a reason to go there (IE: they will ignore the shortcut by the snakeman-infested river if it's marked restricted but will still go into a restricted zone to pick up something for a stockpile). I'd recommend completely sealing off any path into that top area, stones are incredibly cheap, you can lose a few hundred and not notice. If the dwarf can come up with ANY reason to go up there eventually they will.

As a sidenote, what tileset is that?

[Skorpion]

So, she's pulling the ballista string back with her TEETH, now?

[Shiv]

As a sidenote, what tileset is that?

Mike Mayday's

So, she's pulling the ballista string back with her TEETH, now?

Don't care how she manages to do it, so long as I don't lose a legendary siege operator out of it. 

[Malicus]

It makes more sense than this.

[Shiv]

Ok well she finally healed from her mangled leg, but she's still 'resting', so I think she might be permanently out of commission.  She didn't lose the leg (only the hand) so it's not because she can't walk.

Can one handed dwarves still function in society?  Or are they invalids? 

Is there a healing time associated with a missing limb?

[smjjames]

Well, operating medieval siege equipment is a pretty dangerous job with a good risk of injuring yourself (in RL as well), snapped cables, slipped gears (resulting in a spinning crank wheel from the tension), getting your hand caught in something. I wouldn't be too surprised if she lost her hand from getting caught in a cable or something while operating it.

[Elvin]

I think that if she has a few ranks in toughness she'll eventually recover from the missing limb, but she might not even then and might spend the rest of her time in bed. I know my dwarves who had no toughness and lost multiple limbs were bedridden for life, but i've never had someone lose just one limb before.

[HammerHand]

Aaaauugh!  So many animals!

Stuff all that into cages, for the love of FPS!
 
... Unfortunately, I have no idea what to tell you for the lost hand, or on preventing ballista-related injuries.  My siege operators have never harmed themselves so - but then, they've rarely harmed anyone ELSE, either.  I tend to use siege operation as cross-training for haulers.

[Rowanas]

Dear god. THAT'S WHY! I had a siege engineer sustain a pretty major wound while doing nothing but practicing.

By the way, can catapults ever hit anything? As far as I can tell, they only hit one tile and anything there is killed. With the loose formations of enemies and the fact that they move, doesn't this make catapults utter shite?

[HammerHand]

Yes.  Yes it does.  As the wiki put it, catapults are only effective against a ridiculous number of enemies moving as a unit.  So I just use catapults for training, as ballista bolts involve several steps to create but stone is freakin' everywhere.

[Skorpion]

Catapults are useless as siege weapons, but brilliant for moving rocks about. Almost as good as an agile stonecrafter for clearing space.

[Rowanas]

wow. kinda crap. when AoE comes in I'm modding everything fired by a catapult to explode, killing everyone nearby. Dropping bombs will rock...