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[Nameless One]

I think my Siege Operators are firing randomly when siege engines are set to Fire at Will. I never cared a lot about the catapults because they fire the abundant stones. I assumed they were firing at wild animals which would actually have been good for training. When I built the ballistae a noticed that they fire whenever possible even when there is nothing to hit if set to Fire at Will. Is it possible to fix this? I would like to set them to Fire at Will and be sure that they fire only at enemies or at least at wild animals.

[Smew]

Yep, fire at will means fire randomly, ballista are actually pretty hard to use when it comes to using them against sieges, because you have to have a LOT of room between your ballista and your siege, because once the siege gets within... 15 or so tiles of your siege operator he just runs off scared, even if they can't touch him.
But actually, they just get experience from firing, I don't think they get more for hitting things.

[Psychoceramics]

Use Prepare to Fire when you want them to sit by it ready to fire. And then switch to Fire At Will when there are targets in range.

[Elvin]

There is no need to train your operators on ballistae, they gain exactly the same experience from using catapults. They also gain all the expierence from firing the projectiles, not if they actually hit anything or not. So just set them using catapults all the time, and only ever toggle your balistae onto fire at will mode when there are enemies to hit ( use the prepare to fire option to get the operators to the ballistae, ready to fire on your command)
Also, make sure you a) have more operators than siege engines ( in case of eating/sleeping/drinking) and b) make sure you toggle your catapults to " not in use", so your operators have less distractions to worry about.

[Albedo]

There is no need to train your operators on ballistae, they gain exactly the same experience from using catapults.

Actually, cat's are a little faster iirc.  Just put a wall 2 tiles away with a channel in front of it and a ramp down to the bottom of that channel - where an "ammo" stockpile will be.  The operator will keep firing the same stone over and over and will always have ammo close by.  Can be done similarly w/ ballistae if you make the channel 2 long (for the ammo).

Same can be done w/ a raising drawbridge instead of a wall, and then lower the bridge if/when you need to fire in that direction. But, since you can re-orient siege weapons instantly, having your "practice wall" 180 degrees from your actual field of fire isn't a problem.