Will you ever do grenades or landmines?
My understanding of traps is that they use the trap weapon as a very short range projectile when triggered, if that is correct, an explosive shell used in a trap should be picked up by the cannon script and trigger an explosion.
I can't think of a fast way of testing this, however. I'll use some shells in my traps, wait for a siege and let you know when I get a result either way.
As for grenades, the hand mortar already fires 'grenades' (though I'm not happy with how they currently perform and am experimenting with a cave-in dust concussion effect to replace or go alongside the current bang), but I could add a 'grenade bag' ranged weapon so they could be 'thrown' in fortress mode. I'd have to think through a way to balance it against the mortar and make it distinct enough before adding it.
One possible way would be to remove the original grenade projectile after firing and replace it with a clone that is less accurate and has less range (but that could mean dwarves throwing grenades at too distant targets).
I'm trying to do something similar with the WIP blunderbuss where I need to replace a 'cartridge' with multiple weaker 'pellet' projectiles that can't be re-used.
I've been thinking about the flamethrower you asked about previously, too. Looking at the spellcrafts mod it seems possible to add firebreath to a dwarf when a (secretly melee weapon) flamethrower is in their inventory, but the overhead might be high as the script would perform the check whenever anybody changed anything in their inventory. Not sure if I'll get round to doing this one given the drawback but it's on the to-do list nevertheless.
What are some of those sprites on the original post that aren't yet in the mod? That harpoon with an (what I assume to be) explosive charge looks interesting.
That's the ammo for the rocket launcher, I'm afraid. It looked like a Congreve rocket to me, so I used it for that. All the sprites on that pic are ingame, unless I've made a horrible mistake.
And for more suggestions, how about a nock gun? I have no idea if you can script a gun that fires seven shots at once, but it would be pretty cool. And if you manage to figure that out, making a duck's foot pistol wouldn't be that different. A blunderbuss could be made in similar effect, albeit much more inaccurate, short ranged, and devastating.
As fascinating as the nock gun is (I'd never heard of it although there is something that looks similar in a Mount and Blade mod) I probably wouldn't want too many similar weapons as I'm already working on a blunderbuss, as I mentioned in my reply to Meph. It's firing multiple shots well enough, but currently acts as an infinite ammo generator.
I hadn't considered a blunderbuss pistol but it's so effing metal that I'll have to add it once I work the bugs out of the blunderbuss, might call it a 'dragon pistol' to keep the name concise, what do you think?
To a similar effect, a grapeshot charge would be good for cannons when your target isn't an elephant. For the elephants an elephant gun for excessive caliber needs. A double barrelled turn over pistol could be used for two quick shots followed by an extended reload time. A french knife pistol could be exactly what it says on the tin, a well crafted knife with a usable pistol built into it. But at the very least, I would STRONGLY recommend the German axe pistol.
Grapeshot shells for cannons is a great idea, I'll put it on my to-do list. I'm slightly angry at myself it didn't dawn on me at all when messing about with the blunderbuss. What a brilliant suggestion!
Not sure about the elephant gun and turn-over pistol as I don't know how to balance them against normal muskets and pistols, I wouldn't know how to change reload times beyond deleting every other shot and re-adding it to the firers inventory.
They're also quite similar to the existing weapons, as is the knife pistol, and it bothers me somewhat to have almost-duplicate weapons.
I hope that doesn't disappoint you too much. An axe pistol is very cool and distinct and could be included with the bayonets, added it to my list. Thanks.
Having little prior knowledge of scripting, I don't know how many of these can actually be done or are practical to do, but I just thought I'd give some ideas. All suggestions are based off of real fire arms from the 1800's or prior.
I appreciate your ideas, all these obscure firearms you know about are a great inspiration. I forgot to add you to the actual credits when I added the hand mortar (but credited you in the readme), my apologies, I'll do so with the next version.
I do hope my feelings of wanting to retain simplicity and abstraction in terms of the weapon categories don't disappoint you (or Meph) too much.