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[DrJonez]

Instead of just letting dwarves wander around and carry rocks from 50 miles away to load the catapult, I suggest the following:

Let us craft catapult ammo out of rock at the siege workshop. This will solve 2 problems:

1. We can specify catapult ammo stockpiles right next to our catapults, which will make ammo hauling easier.

2. Make it so the ammo crafting increases the siege engineering skill, so it doesn't take the ridiculous task of felling 600 trees to make a good siege engineer.

[Pacho]

Dwarves grab the nearest stone when they're loading the catapult.  Just make a stone stockpile next to the thing and they won't go to the other end of your fortress to load it.

[Mechanoid]

still, having specifically designed ammo for the catapult would be awsome... instead of a standard rock, it could have blades and spikes carved into it. The giant metal ball (the one for the weapon trap) would actually have a use, too.

[Zulaf]

Sounds good but it would still be nice to just use regular rocks for ammo, you could specify what catapults use what ammo so you can use just regular stones for practice. Also if you need to make some ammo like a spiked ball in a forge wouldn't this bring up a similar problem like the one currently wrong with the carpenters and the animal traps?

[Karzack]

What about a special ball made out of whatever, but then filled with extracts from various plants or animals.  An example would be liquid fire from fire snakes.  That is where it comes from correct?  I can't remember.  Something like this could hit the ground and splash/splatter over intruders.

[nerdpride]

I wonder--do dwarves use pumice for catapult ammunition?  That sounds somewhat ineffective XD.

Spiked catapult balls sound awesome, but if it were really effective, then why didn't anyone ever do it?  Still, It would be neat if processing the rock gave two separate "ammo"s for the catapult.  Or perhaps you could fill the catapult with smaller rocks that hit a wider area for less damage than a single rock, making it not technically a catapult, but a similar siege weapon more useful against huge groups.

[mickel]

I'm sure spiked balls were used historically, given the amount of stupid ideas that have been tried in warfare... There is, however, little to gain from taking the time and effort to put spikes into something that will come crashing down at the speed that a catapult projectile does. It'll make no real difference to the target if it was smashed by a spike a split second before it was smashed by the ball itself. Against hard targets it may even make the projectile less effective by deflecting it or something.

Spikes would certainly decrease the range of the projectile a lot by drag.

Then again dwarves have never struck me as practical beings, and given that even their thongs have menacing spikes, they would probably be firing jewel-encrusted gold balls with spikes of tower-cap wood and bands of obsidian, just because they can.

[Delton]

I think it would be a cool feature if you could select which items are used for ammo - sort of like selecting items to chasm. It would be just as sure-fire a way to clean up the fortress, and how awesome would it be to start throwing goblin corpses back at them during a siege?

[BDR]

quote:Originally posted by Delton:
<STRONG>It would be just as sure-fire a way to clean up the fortress, and how awesome would it be to start throwing goblin corpses back at them during a siege?</STRONG>

Very.  This could also turn into biological warfare with the implementation of plagues and diseases; imagine killing off a goblin siege with the help of your latest breakout that has haunted you from the very beginning of your fortress and feeling a sense of satisfaction as you finally extract some use out of what had been murdering your dwarves for so long.

[Veroule]

Actually catapult ammo sounds like a good idea.  The current concept of stone is that are quite large and can be carved into just about anything.  For a catapult we want something that is at least rounded to get the best range and greater accuracy.  So being able to carve stones in rounded catapult ammo that can go in a bin is good.

[Savok]

Catapult ammo would be more accurate than plain stone, but plain stone would work: During the siege of Minas Tirith, both sides (or just the humans?) fired large, irregular chunks of rock at each other.

[Delton]

I also remember a bunch of heads being fired into the city. ;-)
I want corpse-ammo, so bad....

[Tamren]

quote:Originally posted by mickel:
<STRONG>I'm sure spiked balls were used historically, given the amount of stupid ideas that have been tried in warfare... There is, however, little to gain from taking the time and effort to put spikes into something that will come crashing down at the speed that a catapult projectile does. It'll make no real difference to the target if it was smashed by a spike a split second before it was smashed by the ball itself.</STRONG>

Its actually not that bad, the major point like you said is that the ball does not fly as far. But then again it also:

1. Inspires fear, which is a very important part of combat not implemented much yet.
2. Because of its relatively increased size it will cut/drag/impale people on near misses. This way you could fire it into a formation and hit more people.
3. "sticks" to large creatures, this would make it easier to say... knock an elephant off a bridge.
4. Turns glancing blows into penetrating blows. A spiked rock will pulverize a goblin just as well as a round rock. But against something like a tower the spikes will amplify the damage onto a few points. If the tower was tough enough to shrug off a round ball, a spiked ball would at least erode the surface.

[The Menacer]

Once object durability and shattering and whatnot goes in, it'd be ridiculously brutal to use specially made glass catapult ammunition that sprays jagged shards of glass everywhere.

Totally unrealistic?  Absolutely.

Totally awesome?  Hell yes.

Now that I think about it, it'd also be totally awesome to have glass crossbow bolts (probably just the head so that the bolt itself wouldn't explode on firing) that were specially made to shatter inside of whatever body part you choose to savagely mangle.  Maybe they'd do less outright damage and have a chance of shattering uselessly on hitting armor, but they could target organs easily or something, but that's another thread entirely.

[Lightning4]

quote:Originally posted by Tamren:
<STRONG>
Its actually not that bad, the major point like you said is that the ball does not fly as far. But then again it also:

1. Inspires fear, which is a very important part of combat not implemented much yet.
2. Because of its relatively increased size it will cut/drag/impale people on near misses. This way you could fire it into a formation and hit more people.
3. "sticks" to large creatures, this would make it easier to say... knock an elephant off a bridge.
4. Turns glancing blows into penetrating blows. A spiked rock will pulverize a goblin just as well as a round rock. But against something like a tower the spikes will amplify the damage onto a few points. If the tower was tough enough to shrug off a round ball, a spiked ball would at least erode the surface.</STRONG>

I'd piss my pants if I saw a big spiked ball flying towards me.
I think most people would.

Plus there's the additional horror effect if the thing starts rolling and goblins get stuck to the spikes. Brutal...

I'd imagine metal catapult spikeballs would also be reusable, unlike rock. Trouble is, loading the thing without losing 50 dwarves.