Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[snaggles]

Google images "trebuchet" and you'll see that they definitely aren't 5x5, let alone 9x9. If they were 9x9, that would be like saying 81 dwarves could fit in it's footprint, before squishing them all together to fit more. A more realistic space would be a 3x3 with an extra 3x3 above it that must be open if you were to build it there, with the rock being flung from the middle tile of the top z-level with a tall arc. (potentially hitting the ceiling and raining rock bits everywhere if you decide to launch it inside. )

Once PC mounts are available you should be able to have your swordsdwarves/hammerdwarves (with accompanying mount rider skills of course)  ride out to smash up the trebuchets/operators before they start tearing down your outer wall.

[Neonivek]

Google images "trebuchet" and you'll see that they definitely aren't 5x5, let alone 9x9. If they were 9x9, that would be like saying 81 dwarves could fit in it's footprint, before squishing them all together to fit more. A more realistic space would be a 3x3 with an extra 3x3 above it that must be open if you were to build it there, with the rock being flung from the middle tile of the top z-level with a tall arc. (potentially hitting the ceiling and raining rock bits everywhere if you decide to launch it inside. )

Once PC mounts are available you should be able to have your swordsdwarves/hammerdwarves (with accompanying mount rider skills of course)  ride out to smash up the trebuchets/operators before they start tearing down your outer wall.

You can't use Dwarves as the measurement for size as just about everything fits in there.

It also helps because if you were to scale everything according to the size of a dwarf then everything in this game would be TOO huge! Just look at Castles and Temples. Some of those could be the size of a town. Beds could be as large as 4 tiles, Dragons would be around 10x10 creatures.

[Neruz]

Google images "trebuchet" and you'll see that they definitely aren't 5x5, let alone 9x9. If they were 9x9, that would be like saying 81 dwarves could fit in it's footprint, before squishing them all together to fit more. A more realistic space would be a 3x3 with an extra 3x3 above it that must be open if you were to build it there, with the rock being flung from the middle tile of the top z-level with a tall arc. (potentially hitting the ceiling and raining rock bits everywhere if you decide to launch it inside. )

Once PC mounts are available you should be able to have your swordsdwarves/hammerdwarves (with accompanying mount rider skills of course)  ride out to smash up the trebuchets/operators before they start tearing down your outer wall.

Additionally, the replica Trebuchets that various history buffs have built were all either to-scale or using the plans for the smaller ones. One of the English kings had plans for a Trebuchet that was something like 20 feet long, and his records indicate his engineers built and used it twice.

[Belteshazzar]

Interestingly I think one of the main reasons siege engines don't quite feel 'seigey' is because material damage does not yet exist. The primary purpose of a siege engine is to damage structures and eventually reduce the foe to a course rubble. As of now we just have to hope we hit quickly moving targets.

Arcing shots, variable load types (especially for projectile 'tossers' like catapult,trebuchet, onager, and mangonel), as well as an expanded sense of motility and aiming are also desirable aspects but I feel such has likely already been covered in this thread and others.

[Atarlost]

maybe the bigger siege engines can be made to shoot qicker based on power level so that the crew just load the ammo and shoot.
i.e. Polybolos http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/RepCatapult.htm

That place is like TVtropes for classical warfare. 

[Lord Shonus]

Interestingly I think one of the main reasons siege engines don't quite feel 'seigey' is because material damage does not yet exist. The primary purpose of a siege engine is to damage structures and eventually reduce the foe to a course rubble. As of now we just have to hope we hit quickly moving targets.

Not quite true. While many average generals used them this way, all of the great conquerers and empires used catapults and ballistae (and trebucets in the late middle ages) extensively in the field.
Alexander had a higher ration of artillery to his army than any modern army up until 1915. (At times, he had a catapult or ballista for evey three soldiers in his army). Rome used them so extensively that they created variants more useful against soldiers, the Scorpion and the Repeating Ballista (using a two man crew, the latter could fire a clip of bolts in a couple of minutes, while the former was essentially a very large crossbow on a stand). Generally, "siege engines" were used more against troops than fortifications.

[Aspgren]

Tree buckets are already in the game.

[Neonivek]

Well the Balistae despite being depicted as a wall destroying weapon (It couldn't really do that) was used more as an extremely accurate weapon against specific targets.

[Lord Shonus]

Precisely. It was the equvalent of a modern anti-tank gun.

[Neruz]

As it turned out; any weapon that could damage walls could be easily turned into one that could wipe out infantry.

But mostly if you wanted to destroy walls, you undermined them or captured them with siege towers and ladders, if you wanted to destroy gates, you used a ram. Ranged siege weapons were more for destroying structures inside the walls or the soldiers on the walls rather than the walls themselves (with notable exceptions here and there, like the Trebuchet, which threw big enough rocks.)

[Neonivek]

The Trebuchet was the device that made destroying walls and powerful fortifications easily possible. Other Siege weapons would take time and numbers to think about taking walls or gates. So the Catapult was probably used to destroy walls and gates in long drawn out sieges.

The problem with Trebuchets is that they weren't exactly easy to set up and just as easy to take down. Unlike Catapults and Balistae that could be wheeled to the battlefield.
-It also had enough of an arc to shoot over tall walls.

What made the cannon so war changing was that they were effectively portable trebuchet and only the most powerful fortifications could protect you from them. The Cannon is what outdated Castles, or at least stopped their dominance. Though that isn't to say that the cannon was only a anti-fortification weapon, it dominated infantry even more so then previous siege weapons.

[Neruz]

The main issue with Trebuchets was they were fiendishly complicated; you needed a trained and experienced engineer to build one and a trained and experienced team of people to fire it without the whole thing resulting in a mess, or worse, backfiring. They were also hugely expensive to build, operate and transport.

If you had them, they were awesome, but they were damn diffiticult to get. And then the Cannon came along and made them redundant.

[Neonivek]

And this was the medieval ages.

Finding people with such skills as being literate and knowing mathamatics was rare in it of itself.

[Neruz]

Yar, if you wanted them you had to train them, and that took time and money; only the richest kings of the largest and most powerful nations could afford to field Trebuchets.

[BlazingDav]

Does that mean we should allow cannons to give sieges a sporting advantage to demolish dwarves *and dwarves to them =P* or just use trebuchets as the best of the best, though I think as a more underground race maybe dwarves should have a different taste in siege engines, like maybe a giant drilling tower that send drills deep into the ground pushed along by some serious water pumping driven by a dwarf to its intended destination where it pops out the ground or just stops before pumping is reversed to suck it back, definetly appropiate for a siege defense =P

Though more complicated siege tactics would also need to be developed in conjunction so that siege engines don't end up wiping out their own infantry the enemy I mean, dwarves are ok in that department... mostly