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[Blastbeard]

I was enjoying an exceptional chicken soup when an idea hit me. Catapult+Corpses+Necromancer=??
Basically, you have a catapult launching corpses, and a necromancer that cannot see these corpses at the catapult, but can still view and reanimate them in flight. Reanimated corpses land at or around the target area, delivering a threat for the enemy to face. Has this ever been done before?

I prefer ballistae over catapults, and don't have much experience with them, but I do know you can set catapults to accept all kinds of things with DFhack trickery. What I don't know is if catapult projectiles exist in flight or just appear where they're going to land. Like I said, I shunned the stone-throwers the multiple-goblin-skewering might of the ballista.

[Larix]

Catapult ammo visibly travels across the screen as a shot projectile, i.e. on a flat, non-ballistic path until it reaches the extent of its range or a solid obstacle, where it stops moving forward and drops. I don't know if it can be interacted with during flight.

You can also hurl items from minecarts - that causes travel on a ballistic trajectory and doesn't require DFHack. Minecart ammo will skip over the floor when landing, which could damage (and de-animate) zombies. At least region interactions can animate corpses in a minecart moving on track. I think the corpses automatically dismount in that case.

[neblime]

fairly certain you can't interact with moving objects that way.. but hey i've never tried so good luck.  one problem, the impact will probably collapse the corpse (if it hits anything), it doesn't take much blunt impact to do that

[nanomage]

I would suggest minecart shotguns here instead of catapults or ballistae. The advantages are:

shotguns can shoot corpses in vanilla game, whereas catapults would require to be dfhacked for that

catapult projectiles exist in some sort of alternate dimension rights until they land, while shotgun projectiles visibly exist and travel through the map, increasing the chance that they may be targetted by necromancers for reanimation.

minecart shotguns can deliver a tremendous punch, shooting volleys of hundreds of body parts.

Even if the energy of the impact is enough to collapse the zombie, the situation can be amended if instead of reanimating in-flight we place a chained necromancer in a fortified windowed tower within the LoS of the area of impact. I have tried shooting corpses from minecart shotguns before, and found their performance much lower than that of the standard block-firing gun, but that would certainly change if the projectiles were to reanimate and continue fighting the invaders.
However, I can see a problem with this design being that it doesn't really add anything to just making the siegers path through a heap of corpses and then unveil your necromancer.

[Urist Da Vinci]

I tested out the core idea and found that necromancers can't target body parts/corpses that are currently projectiles.

[wierd]

So, the compromise is to animate the corpse parts prior to launch. All you need are line of sight shutters around your bridge-a-pult with necromancers stuck inside some oubliettes.

Something a bit like this perhaps.

o============o
|BBBBBBBBbFN|
o============o

B==Flinging Bridge
b==shutter control bridge
F==Fortification
N==Necromancer
o,|,= ==Walls

The shutter control bridge lets you block off the necromancer's line of sight through the fortification, so you can do whatever maintenance or cleanup you need on occasion.  This whole thing should be fed using a drop chute several Z above the flinging bridge. Raw corpse parts fall in, get turned into zombies inside the corral, then get flung out by the bridge-a-pult on demand.

NOT AIMABLE-- but then again, stock catapults really arent all that accurate either. 

I am thinking more or less "Zombie Surprise!" on the battlefield.

[Blastbeard]

 The bridge-a-pult sounds like my kind of gimmick and I do love the arc they give off, but I could also set something up so the necromancer can safely reanimate the corpse after it's been delivered. I've been securing windows behind fortifications for awhile now to keep building destroyers away from them, and I'd bet a plump helmet a necromancer can use that setup to do its thing in safety. The question is, can archers shoot targets through windows through fortifications? I've never allowed enemies a chance to try this before.

I don't really want to use a minecart shotgun because that opens up the possibility of it backfiring if the undead go the wrong way when they get up, but I can think of ways to get around that. Might cost me a minecart, though. All it would take is running the track all the way to an 1 z-level or greater drop. Nothing can climb yet so it's a one-way trip. The minecart's probably not going to stop at the end of the track, but at least it's another hazard flying the general direction of my enemies.

[Archereon]

Any properly dorfy fortress defense can and should have a chance of backfiring horrifically.

[nanomage]

you could have a double-barrelled shotgun with one barrel shooting undead and the other shooting blocks or spikes to pacify them.
afaik 1z-level aboveground windows-behind-fortifications type of watchtowers is completely safe from everything.

[Larix]

The bridge-a-pult has one tiny flaw:
it's imaginary. Bridges don't work like that in the game.

They only fling stuff up, with maybe a small, completely random sideways velocity. And items/creatures are _least_ likely to be flung in the bridge's raise direction - the wall into which the bridge turns blocks their movement. You could of course have your corpses on top of a retracting bridge and drop them into the welcome room once they're revived.

Minecarts are the only way to shoot random items into a target area currently (excluding DFHack tricks). You can always shoot over walls, down cliffs or across ravines to avoid your ammo returning into the fort. Nothing can easily get through fortifications, either, so those make good gun barrels.

[Blastbeard]

I've watched drawbridges fling people a fair distance before(middle of 5x5 map to the edge with no obstacles between bridge and landing site), but it was in the direction the bridge lowered, not the raise direction. I'll agree that there's no reliability with them, though. The retracting bridge method would work great, it's like that combat drop tactic I hear about only you don't have to worry the user landing safely. The only downside would be the time and resources needed to build something like that on the surface. Not that much really but something I have to consider if I want to keep my workers alive.

So far you've all given me four ways to make this work. This is what I've interpreted from what you've given me so far.
1. Using DFhack to enable non-stone ammunition, fling corpses by catapult and reanimate them when they land(because projectiles cannot be interacted with mid-flight)
2. Use a minecart launch tube to fling corpses and other objects(possibly including the cart itself, depending on construction), and reanimate them when they land(because they would dismount the minecart if animated in transit). Designing the system so the launch tube ends at a cliff of any height would prevent the animated corpses from going the wrong way and causing trouble. NOT designing the system to prevent this would be the truly dwarven way of things.
3. Gamble with a bridge-a-pult and hope the zombies land where they need to and not in the middle of a party held at a statue garden. Corpses can be animated before or after they land. This method gains points with me for how random and potentially entertaining it could be.
4. Drop the undead from above with a retracting drawbridge. Corpses can be animated before and after they land, possibly both depending on how the system is built. Unless constructed underground, this system would require time, resources, and exposing workers to attack in order to be set up.

I don't see any reason I can't try all of these. These methods could all work any situation given enough effort, but they're easier to implement in different circumstances. For instance, the retracting bridge drop method would be a useful delivery mechanism for inside the fortress, in the caverns, or any area underneath the player's general territory. The way I envision the use of minecart shotguns would be ideal for defending a mountainside fortress from the outside, and could be built into the outer walls of any defense. All of these suggestions are good and would work fine if I try hard enough, but they'll shine brightest if I can find the right environment for them.

[Urist Da Vinci]

A minecart shotgun can be built to fire "LIVE" undead. What you need is a double shotgun:

1. Load a cage of animated corpses into the minecart.
2. Fire minecart down track.
3. Minecart hits wall and ejects cage (they appear on the z-level above and travelling in the same direction). Obviously there needs to be an air space above.
4. Cage immediately hits wall and shotguns the undead towards enemy.

Hey, it worked with puppies, and the shotgun range was 112-142 tiles:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=126669.msg4299408#msg4299408

The same trick would work with other war animals. You can also use this trick to dispose of caged prisoners, by launching them into a deep chute at high speed.

[miauw62]

you could have a double-barrelled shotgun with one barrel shooting undead and the other shooting blocks or spikes to pacify them.
afaik 1z-level aboveground windows-behind-fortifications type of watchtowers is completely safe from everything.

IIRC very high-level archers (Master or above I think?) can shoot through fortifications from a distance, everyone else has to be right next to it.

[nanomage]

you could have a double-barrelled shotgun with one barrel shooting undead and the other shooting blocks or spikes to pacify them.
afaik 1z-level aboveground windows-behind-fortifications type of watchtowers is completely safe from everything.

IIRC very high-level archers (Master or above I think?) can shoot through fortifications from a distance, everyone else has to be right next to it.

skill level of great is required for that though i don't remember if it's in archery or in weapon skill. That doesn't matter though because that's exactly why you put windows behind the fortifications.