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[StagnantSoul]

Just train a strong dwarf to be a legendary siege operator, he'll fire perfectly straight 100% of the time and rather fast if you put ammo nearby.

[kingu]

I wonder if ballista ammo is as good when fired from a minecart shotgun.

Could make a semi-auto minecart railgun that fires blasts of ballista ammo to make up for the inaccuracy and slow fire rates of the standard ballista. If you shoot enough dakka at once something's bound to hit, right?

Also intresting to se if each arrow get multiple hits like when fired from a ballista.

[Bigheaded]

Whats the best way to train a siege operator? Might give it a go on masterwork with various sieging armies ON to enforce getting attacked 1-2 times a year minimum. As i thought in general they needed something to fire at, and wasn't aware you could just simply shoot your own dwarves.

Always considered playing around with them for fun and would be nice to have a fort with an idea with it.

[Spehss _]

I think you could just order the dwarves to fire at will and they'll shoot for as long as they'll do the job and have ammo. Could probably link the ballista (can this be done?) to an ammo stockpile for wooden ballista bolts for when you don't have armies approaching and want to train operators. When you need metal bolts just delink the ballista from the wood stockpile and link it to the metal ammo stockpile you presumably would have close by.

Pro-tip, probably want to keep fort population away from the ballista ranges while you're training. Or not, I'm not your overseer.

[StagnantSoul]

Get a catapult going in your mines with fire at will set to on. Also, you can't link ballistae to stockpiles.

[kingu]

Whats the best way to train a siege operator? Might give it a go on masterwork with various sieging armies ON to enforce getting attacked 1-2 times a year minimum. As i thought in general they needed something to fire at, and wasn't aware you could just simply shoot your own dwarves.

Always considered playing around with them for fun and would be nice to have a fort with an idea with it.

Perhaps not the best way but I set the ballista to fire at will against a wall with a channel beneath it so that arrows dont break. Then disable hauling on my siege operators and have the other dwarfs haul ammo back to the stockpile next to the ballista. Just keep the haulers away from the line of fire. I do this by only having one far away access point to the channel in wich the arrows drop.

[Insert_Gnome_Here]

I train siege operators across the dining room. It makes sure they are always nearby, plus I love the image of dwarves eating with boulders being flung around just above their heads.

[Kuikka]

Training crew might be better if you build catapult instead of ballista. Stone is everywhere. Like mentioned, channel before wall and stone/arrows drop without disappearing and keeps haulers happy.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[StagnantSoul]

*Tick, tick, tick* You've got a gem. Just after the channel. It's not centred. Centre it, or mine it.

[Solon64]

*Tick, tick, tick* You've got a gem. Just after the channel. It's not centred. Centre it, or mine it.

Oh ho ho, somebody has OCD, huh?

That wall in particular has an even number of tiles, mining it will look clunky.  I recommend digging out one more tile's width on the right side.  Actually, take that back, I'd dig it out, gems is gems.  Just build a wall in its place.  Then you'd have to smooth the rest of the stone there to match...

Ugh, that gem is just so troublesome.

[draeath]

I think you could just order the dwarves to fire at will and they'll shoot for as long as they'll do the job and have ammo. Could probably link the ballista (can this be done?) to an ammo stockpile for wooden ballista bolts for when you don't have armies approaching and want to train operators. When you need metal bolts just delink the ballista from the wood stockpile and link it to the metal ammo stockpile you presumably would have close by.

Pro-tip, probably want to keep fort population away from the ballista ranges while you're training. Or not, I'm not your overseer.

Keep the two ammo types in a pair of mantrap style rooms, which are the only way in/out of the ballista room.

Lock the door(s) to whichever one you want unused. Easier than fighting with linking. Since they are set up mantrap style, ideally with a decent length path to go from one to the other with the ballista-side locked, you can still use this technique while letting the "locked" pile get filled up. Also, if you run out and forget about it, they can still get to the other pile, but with delay.

[kingu]

I finally had a siege 6 years in.
5 goblins charged my 3 tile wide entrance corridor with 3 ballistas at the end. I have 6 legenary siegeoperators. They shoot perfectly straight at least 90%of the time. If the corridor is at lest 75 tiles long they can get 2 arrows in the air at the same time.

 No goblin made it past the first 3 side-by-side arrows. One dead and the rest maimed beyond moving. They made it a full 3 tiles inside the main gate. Still 10 tiles from the massive amounts of webs I thought I needed to slow them down. And 100 tiles away from the ballistas.

Now I wait for a larger siege. In addition to goblins I have also murdered some humans to provoke them.

Science: Training legendary siegeoperators only takes a couple of in-game years with a decent ballista setup.
Science 2 : the edge of the map stops ballista arrows like a wall. In my case there is a drop a couple of Z-levels and i can collect the arrows.

[Nameless Archon]

Science 2 : the edge of the map stops ballista arrows like a wall. In my case there is a drop a couple of Z-levels and i can collect the arrows.

Observation: The kobolds will love you.

[vjmdhzgr]

Before the ballista arrows got their cutting edge technology back those were fairly devastating against goblins - given that they hit. My siege operators were top notch quality, but not yet legendary.

I had to assemble my battery this way in order to catch broad shots and reuse arrows, but still I lost about 50% as those hit the wall before first fortification!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Getting a hit like this (= straightly forward flying arrow) reguired 11 arrows to be fired

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And hit did quite a lot of damage. It was nice to see those beggars can actually *block* ballista arrows with shields...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Minor casualty was a child of one siege operator, who ran in front of a siege weapon when it was fired and was jammed into the fortification, leg crushed and bleeding.

Your accuracy problem is probably caused by the quality of the siege engine parts, it's pretty important. It would also probably be better to use a design where missing doesn't matter. Something like a long pathway that turn and comes back to run parallel to itself with fortification walls. I personally don't think siege engines are worth the trouble as far as how good they are at killing goblins. I do however think they're worth the trouble in that they're really cool and difficult and if you do get them to work then you can kill like 5 goblins with a single arrow.