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[darkrider2]

A few suggestions here regarding catapult siege engines.

1) Later invasions bring catapults with them. Making sieges much more interesting.

2) Make catapults mobile. The ballista accomplishes its role perfectly, obliterate anything in the hall way ahead of it. The catapult is more of an open field weapon however and it would be more effective if movable (this would also be needed for suggestion #1)

3) Catapults can destroy walls. Combined with suggestions 1 & 2 this would make sieges much funner and prevent the wall yourself in phenomenon.

4) Assign dwarves to catapults. The idea here is that about three dwarves work as a team to operate the catapult, all three moving it when needed, and when firing it operates somewhat like a tank. loader, "gunner", and captain.

Suggestions and ideas to improve the idea are always helpful.

5) This is more of a request than suggestion. But I would like to be able to load the catapult with anything. Thus allowing me to recreate the scene from monty python and the holy grail where they are flinging cows. And what better way to dispose of cats than a catapult marksmanship competition? (bonus points for flinging them into a magma pipe)

[C4lv1n]

...And what better way to dispose of cats than a catapult marksmanship competition? (bonus points for flinging them into a magma pipe)

^This^

But seriously, this is a cool idea, but I think most of the problem behind the enemies bringing and movement thing is that would probly require programming for other people building things independantly, and programing for multi-tile creatures, which toady said he didn't want to do.

[deoxy]

Actually, I think it'd be much easier to make a "portable" version of the ballista.

I tried this, making a more powerful crossbow that weighs a TON.... and it works pretty well for what I want... until you make it out of wood instead of metal.  Then it's way too light again.  Oh, crap.

Basically, it should work just like a crossbow, only
a) it's really heavy
b) it does little or no melee damage
c) it has a lot longer range
d) it should probably take some time to get "set" to fire after you move and more time to fire generally.

This should be fairly easy to code, since it's just another weapon (melee, ranged, and now "heavy" ranged, or whatever you want to call it).

Actually, I think you could make catapults and ballista both much simpler if you just treated them as a special class of weapon that could only be used while standing in the built structure of that name.  Targetting, etc, could all work pretty much as is.  Longer range and reload times are really all that would be needed.

if these things could be worked out, well, sweet.

(Yes, I know that currently ranged fire is overpowered - my "more powerful" crossbow is base damage 150, and I nerfed bows and crossbows to be 75.  Ogres can take dozens of bone bolts each to kill, though a heavy crossbow with iron or steel bolts chews through them pretty well.)

[PsyberianHusky]

This and much much more may show up in improved sieges.

[mostevil]

Awesome a suggestion as it is, I can see mobile catapults being difficult for the AI to use effectively.

For my money there are a few easier to implement things that could make siege engines much more fun.

1) Lever/pressure plate triggers.  Shouldn't be a massive job and it gets rid of the problems of operatrors firing through their children/pets and means massive balista battery launches.  It's the little things that make you smile.

2) Aiming... Catapults just don't ever hit anything at the minute, but if you could set a range on them or even target a specific square they become an excellent area denial weapon.  That'd need to work over z-levels too though, so you could fire down from mountain tops.

[Safe-Keeper]

5) This is more of a request than suggestion. But I would like to be able to load the catapult with anything. Thus allowing me to recreate the scene from monty python and the holy grail where they are flinging cows. And what better way to dispose of cats than a catapult marksmanship competition? (bonus points for flinging them into a magma pipe)

That's not only a Monty Python scene -- flinging animals carcasses infected with deadly diseases with catapults and trebuchets was done in reality, too.

[darkrider2]

Awesome a suggestion as it is, I can see mobile catapults being difficult for the AI to use effectively.

Considering this is an AI that will not attempt to avoid traps that just ripped their best friend to pieces... yeah.

[mostevil]

Awesome a suggestion as it is, I can see mobile catapults being difficult for the AI to use effectively.

Considering this is an AI that will not attempt to avoid traps that just ripped their best friend to pieces... yeah.

To be fair to Toady better siege AI's on his to do list.  I think they already free trapped allies in the coming release.  Sapper goblins disarming traps will be nice, but most of the traps are kinda silly anyway, weapon/stone traps with those magical friendorfoe abilities are a bit cheaty for my liking.  I personally only use ones with lever triggers (which is why I want to link up some ballistas!)

But still even with the best AI in the world working out wheres useful to put a catapult on a random map like these is a huge undertaking and won't take much to exploit the AI's weakness.

It's not a realistic prospect, but I'd absolutely love to see a system where another player could direct a goblin siege against your fort by issuing orders/waypoints etc.  Some kind of play by email thing like lasersquadnemesis where you advertise for a goblin raid, they get a map and a set of units and send back their evil plot.  Ideally the result would be availible to view somehow too (even just a score and combat reports).
It would make them hellish difficult as they'd sap and move much more intelligently and be masses of fun to fight off.  Would be a very cool way to go multiplayer.

[darkrider2]

oh sorry... no offense to you toady.

I understand that programming isn't easy and programming AI to be smart isn't simple. I played galcivII with max CPU algorithms on and the computer would still overkill one target while ignoring much closer and more important targets.