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[Iden]

I don't really believe that Bigger is Always Better. 3x3 is a pretty sizeable construction. Especially when massive creatures fit in a 1x1x1 tile. I would have to say that anything larger than that begins to almost seem unreasonable unless you have a particularly large embark area and are maintaining an above-ground fortress. Otherwise the necessity of needing such large defensive constructions is not there.

To put it in perspective, a workshop is 3x3. A forge is typically not a small cramped place, not especially when you have tons of large piles of bars sitting around. 3x3 is a pretty well-sized building. 5x5 if you add walls to it and make it a proper building. 5x5 would be size of a good sized house. Most certainly twice as large as some home's peasants might live in. Defensive artillery that size is a little unnecessary imo.

Dwarves are mountain-dwellers. How much range can you need in a cavern or tunnel? Not quite that much, typically.

Range? What is range? Engines have good range. 3x3 engines are rather LARGE engines as it is! I've honestly never bothered to use ballista or cats in DF, so i'm not familiar with range, honestly. One of my old neighbors built a crude homebrew light ballista. The thing shot, from the end zone of a football field, about halfway across the field. That's approximately 50 yards. With a light home-made ballista with low-pound string tension. You increase the pound tension on the string, you get more spring, more power. You also increase the pressure on the rest of the ballista. From what I understand, he cranked the power up too high and the entire stock of the ballista cracked apart.

The stock on said light ballista was probably approximately 6 or 7 feet long. A 3x3 ballista in Dwarf Fort is probably larger than that. 3x3 is a large area. It's a small building or hut. That's probably larger than that light ballista was.

Maybe range needs to be tweaked and not size.
Siege weapons don't need to be larger.



The modifications to Siege we need are as follows:

• A broader assortment of siege weapons
  Siege Camps, Siege Ladders, Siege towers, Tower shields/Mobile Cover, Digging/Sapping, Battering rams, Trebuchet, etc.
  Simply put: More options.
  
  
• A broader use of siege weapons
  Enemies gaining the ability to build and use siege weapons on the fly. Assuming that there is a supply of wood in the area, or that the besiegers cart in supplies.
  
  
• Engineers
  The use of engineers for the designing siege camps, fortifications, and siege equipment. More specifically, the addition of enemy engineers on the battle field who will direct and oversee building and production for the purpose of besieging and enemy. Goblin Engineers. What happens when you sally forth and murder all the engineers? Guess there isn't going to be much of a siege! 
  
  Engineers should also be considered a combat class, as well. They should have armor and weapons to fight with. What if the siege engines get attacked? They need to defend themselves and the engines. Having participated in SCA Heavy Armored Combat with Siege Engines (Treb, Cat, Ball), siege operators do go into battle armed.
  
  
• A broader use of siege tactics and assaults
  Enemies actually assessing the situation and using different tactics/weaponry to get into a Fort. VARIATION is KEY. Maybe one time they'll build two catapults and a ballista. Next time they build a ballista and five siege ladders. Next time they try a battering ram. Then they try building a siege camp and holding out. Maybe they'll show up and just attack and do no formal assault on the base and try to get you to come out. We don't want to see them build a catapult 42 times in a row when they could try other things.
  
  
• Scaling Z-levels
  Enemies should be able to make ladders, rope ladders, grappling hooks, or even try to scale a rough-hewn (not smoothed) wall. Enemies should try to get over the top. This is assuming that you have above-ground fortifications or walls that could be climbed over in the first place. No walls to climb over? This can't be an option. Have a cliff at the back of your base? Enemies should be able to drop a ladder or a rope, or try to climb down in. I believe Toady mentioned he's working on maybe rope ladders to help get into subterranean caverns, so it's a start.
  
  
• A broader range of ammunitions
  Grapeshot, Chain-shot, humanoid or animal heads & carcasses, flaming debris, molotov kegtails -- a variety of random stuff we can throw for lulz and fun. A good use for too many cats!!!!
  
  
• Mobility
  Siege engines used in assaults should be designed to be mobile. They're big, they're slow, but they have wheels. Even small cats, trebs, and ballista are typically on wheels for ease of movement. Those things can be heavy. A small portable ram is one thing for doors, but to take down metal gates a large ram would be necessary. Men moving a huge ram by hand is not only slow, but the men will be tired out by the time it comes to actually fighting in melee. Wheeled engines are a necessity.
  
  
• Firing Angles
  Firing angles should be added for siege weapons. In order to get a maximum distance on any given projectile is to fire it at a 45degree angle. This would likely mean travel across Z-levels, as well. I believe the siege equipment with the greatest arc would be the trebuchet. This likely would make it the most ineffective weapon in tunnels and small caverns, and likely lead it to not being used by dwarves. Catapults and Ballista have smaller firing angles, but also require a 45degree angle for maximum distance. However, it is a lot easier to modify the firing angle on a Cat or Balli. Simply lift it up and put blocks under the front to raise the firing angle, or put blocks under the back to lower the firing angle. You can modify the range on the weapons this way. I've literally seen it done. In person. By people I know. Firing angles could be used to lob things over walls, or to fire directly down into group of enemy combatants. Low angles create shorter range, but would be useful in tunnels. Want more range in a tunnel? Dig out the level above it and make it 2 Z-levels for extra firing distance. I admit, though, adding options to change firing distance/angle could be a little on the complex and unecessary side. Perhaps simply an automatic system, or a "high angle/low angle" toggle option.
  
  
• Material/Structural Damage
  Most Importantly: the ability to take down walls, gates, bridges with siege weapons to make a siege weapons&tactics actually useful.. I mean, this was the purpose of siege engines, really. Rain destruction upon your foes. Shatter their hopes and dreams... and walls! It wasn't easy, but after a bit of pounding they'd eventually fall apart.

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.

Cats can be given the arc to shoot over walls too, though it probably was much easier with a good Treb. And maybe easier at a longer range, too.

Trebs, however, weren't too difficult to set up. CRAC (mouseover for more info on it, incase anyone doesn't know that) had a nice treb put together, and they took it apart. It got carted around to events. The same with their balli's and cats. They got taken apart and carted around. Taking them apart and putting them back together again isn't all that difficult. Peasants could easily be trained on how to dismantle and re-assemble them effectively. It was harder to actually build one from scratch than it was to put them back together.

Many peoples, I would imagine, used this tactic. Rather than making siege engines on the spot, build them at home and cart them to the siege locations and put them back together. I would imagine carting the siege weapons in pieces in wagons would have been easier than carting the actual engines around themselves. You could probably fit parts for a few engines into one large wagon, as opposed to having to pull a ton of different already-constructed engines. Though i'm sure that happened too in some cases.

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

Well, Toady just needs to work on Siege AI, really. Well-trained siege operators watch the battle and pick their targets. You move your engines and modify firing angles appropriately in order to hit where you need to hit in a battle. Again, CRAC did just this during SCA War events. You have a well-trained crew watching the battle and you fire where your support is needed, typically not at your troops. However, siege engines can be pretty accurate, barring outside factors such as wind. In those cases, however, you just compensate for the wind. Those guys in CRAC were pretty good marksmen. One of their engines was dubbed 'Kingsbane' simply for the number of times it had killed a king.

[NewoTigra]

I'm beginning to think 'better siege engines' might be a more appropriate title by this point.
To expand on the original post, what I was aiming for was a) more variation in size of Siege Engines, with associated advantages and disadvantages,
and b) a wider choice of ammunition, specifically for catapults.

After reading through this I agree: A Trebuchet does sound like an awesome idea. The mechanics of making one work in-game would be somewhat complicated though.

[Grendus]

A lot of this will go/need to go in the siege arc. A few things I can think of:

1. The armies sent to siege your fortress need to base their size on your fortresses population, not it's wealth. In my most progressed fortress I was invaded by 4 orc squads based on my wealth (the number has been greatly reduced after killing most of their nobles). They were outnumbered by my soldiers. Heavily outnumbered. Same thing with the goblins, who send 5 or 6 squads. Besieging a fortress requires massive troop or equipment advantage, fortresses by design are very defensible. 45 goblins are not going to have a prayer against a 140 dwarf fortress, even if they aren't producing much wealth.

2. The armies sent to siege your fortress need better AI (which is in the works). Example: I the 4 orc squad siege came in slowly, an orc or two at a time due to how spread out the squads were. If they had all massed outside then rushed in, they might have actually reached the infantry (who still would have kicked their asses, but it would have been more sporting). Simply heading for the nearest dwarf isn't good enough, they need to actually think.

3. Dwarves need better AI (which is in the works). Dwarves tend to run in a mob more than formations. If the squad leader gets sleepy, hungry, thirsty, injured, etc they'll go back to the barracks and the dwarves who are not already fighting will follow them.

4. Siege weapons in general need better accuracy and control. Ballista's are not horizontal spear-chuckers of death, they're sniper/anti-siege artillery. Catapults don't just lob stone, they can lob anything from diseased cows to prisoners to flaming missiles (molotov kegtails!). A few other siege weapons I can think of off the top of my head: battering rams, siege rams (capped battering rams hanging on chains, more powerful but more expensive and slower), boiling oil, trebuchets, siege towers, and grappling hooks.

5. Siege weapons need to use arced shots instead of straight shots. Catapults were shot just as often into a fortress as against the walls, lobbing plague into a fortress was a good way to disease them out. Same thing goes for archers, though shooting over the walls should do reduced damage and have no accuracy (so it would only be useful if they were raking a fortresses interior with arrows).

[Lord Shonus]

Actually, there's no record of corpse warfare ever causing a plague in a city, a;though it was tried several times. More commonly, it was fire or stones fired over the wall, and almost never at the wall, even after the introduction of trebuchets. This is only true of catapults/trebuchets. Ballistae are very low-arc weapons.

BTW, a trebuchet is not very complicated. I built several as a freshman in high school. It's just a frame, arm, and a sling. Anyone who can bult a catatapult can build a treb.

[Atarlost]

That's not true.  If you do the math wrong designing a catapult you get something underpowered or inefficient.  The firing angle is easy.  If you do the math wrong designing a trebuchet you can get something that fires the wrong distance or even straight up.  http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi593.htm

Kennedy's not the first post-medieval trebuchet maker. Cortez tried to build one for his siege of Mexico City. The first boulder he fired went straight up. It fell back to earth and destroyed the machine. Napoleon had one built as an academic exercise. It threw rocks backward. The technology sounds simple enough, but it's more complex than it seems.

[Neruz]

Additionally, if you don't get the materials and construction right the entire structure may collapse, or worse explode due to being unable to handle the forces involved.

[Iden]

That's not true.  If you do the math wrong designing a catapult you get something underpowered or inefficient.  The firing angle is easy.  If you do the math wrong designing a trebuchet you can get something that fires the wrong distance or even straight up.  http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi593.htm

Kennedy's not the first post-medieval trebuchet maker. Cortez tried to build one for his siege of Mexico City. The first boulder he fired went straight up. It fell back to earth and destroyed the machine. Napoleon had one built as an academic exercise. It threw rocks backward. The technology sounds simple enough, but it's more complex than it seems.

You don't need terribly special knowledge of physics and mathematics to build a working trebuchet. Just an idea, materials, and tools. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. It might just take a little time. Trial and Error. If time is an issue, then it's a different matter. To build a working engine from raw materials efficiently and quickly would be a rather skilled task, and would be difficult.

Obviously none of the examples quoted included skilled persons in such tasks. However, given more time i'm sure they could have done it. And also, is this selective information? Did Cortez and Napoleon give up due to time restraints? Or did they eventually succeed? I highly doubt that they couldn't have figured it out if they had time and desire. Quickly designing them with no data may have been a problem, however.

For a real siege scenario, or a Dwarf Fort siege scenario, siege engineers would either have blueprints or experience building siege engines already. At which point it's just going through the motions or following the prints. Not exceptionally difficult tasks at that point.

If you want a perfect trebuchet with twinked out maximized range and power, then yes, you'll want to use physics and mathematics to figure out the best possible design.

Additionally, if you don't get the materials and construction right the entire structure may collapse, or worse explode due to being unable to handle the forces involved.

.....explode? Did we just say explode? That would be some REALLY shoddy construction. Anyone who's that poor of an carpenter/engineer really should NOT be in that position. In all likelihood they should be thrown into a pit of grizzly bears. Give him a spear and put in the front lines. In all likelihood, that thing probably wouldn't generate enough force in the first place to ever even cause it to explode. And if it's falling apart, it wouldn't even be fired; it would need to be reconstructed or at least reinforced first.

If I had a dwarf who built a catapult that fell apart, or even exploded...... I'll tell you what, he's going right into the magma. Right in. That useless, sober sod.

[Neruz]

That's not true.  If you do the math wrong designing a catapult you get something underpowered or inefficient.  The firing angle is easy.  If you do the math wrong designing a trebuchet you can get something that fires the wrong distance or even straight up.  http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi593.htm

Kennedy's not the first post-medieval trebuchet maker. Cortez tried to build one for his siege of Mexico City. The first boulder he fired went straight up. It fell back to earth and destroyed the machine. Napoleon had one built as an academic exercise. It threw rocks backward. The technology sounds simple enough, but it's more complex than it seems.

You don't need terribly special knowledge of physics and mathematics to build a working trebuchet. Just an idea, materials, and tools. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. It might just take a little time. Trial and Error. If time is an issue, then it's a different matter. To build a working engine from raw materials efficiently and quickly would be a rather skilled task, and would be difficult.

Obviously none of the examples quoted included skilled persons in such tasks. However, given more time i'm sure they could have done it. And also, is this selective information? Did Cortez and Napoleon give up due to time restraints? Or did they eventually succeed? I highly doubt that they couldn't have figured it out if they had time and desire. Quickly designing them with no data may have been a problem, however.

For a real siege scenario, or a Dwarf Fort siege scenario, siege engineers would either have blueprints or experience building siege engines already. At which point it's just going through the motions or following the prints. Not exceptionally difficult tasks at that point.

If you want a perfect trebuchet with twinked out maximized range and power, then yes, you'll want to use physics and mathematics to figure out the best possible design.

Additionally, if you don't get the materials and construction right the entire structure may collapse, or worse explode due to being unable to handle the forces involved.

.....explode? Did we just say explode? That would be some REALLY shoddy construction. Anyone who's that poor of an carpenter/engineer really should NOT be in that position. In all likelihood they should be thrown into a pit of grizzly bears. Give him a spear and put in the front lines. In all likelihood, that thing probably wouldn't generate enough force in the first place to ever even cause it to explode. And if it's falling apart, it wouldn't even be fired; it would need to be reconstructed or at least reinforced first.

If I had a dwarf who built a catapult that fell apart, or even exploded...... I'll tell you what, he's going right into the magma. Right in. That useless, sober sod.

We're talking medieval knowledge and tools here remember; catapults and ballistae exploding upon being fired due to the wood being rotted or the arms put under too much tension wasn't common, but it wasn't unheard of.

Hell, just finding somone who knew how to read and write was difficult; only the nobility had the money to get education in writing, and even then many of them only got the absolute basics.



For a modern man with modern equipment and resources along with no real time or money constraints, it's easy. For a medieval man with medieval equiment, limited resources, major time constraints and illiterate labourers, it's quite a bit harder.

[Iden]

Additionally, if you don't get the materials and construction right the entire structure may collapse, or worse explode due to being unable to handle the forces involved.

.....explode? Did we just say explode? That would be some REALLY shoddy construction. Anyone who's that poor of an carpenter/engineer really should NOT be in that position. In all likelihood they should be thrown into a pit of grizzly bears. Give him a spear and put in the front lines. In all likelihood, that thing probably wouldn't generate enough force in the first place to ever even cause it to explode. And if it's falling apart, it wouldn't even be fired; it would need to be reconstructed or at least reinforced first.

If I had a dwarf who built a catapult that fell apart, or even exploded...... I'll tell you what, he's going right into the magma. Right in. That useless, sober sod.

We're talking medieval knowledge and tools here remember; catapults and ballistae exploding upon being fired due to the wood being rotted or the arms put under too much tension wasn't common, but it wasn't unheard of.

Hell, just finding somone who knew how to read and write was difficult; only the nobility had the money to get education in writing, and even then many of them only got the absolute basics.

Well, don't downplay medieval knowledge or tools. Ancient engineers did some amazing things. It's not like they didn't know how to take care of things or couldn't tell if something was rotted. And I never said it never happened to older pieces.

I was under the impression that we were talking about construction, and not the use of old or worn, already-constructed, siege engines.
In your quote you specifically referenced construction. "..the materials and construction.."
I even said, "If I had a dwarf who built a catapult that fell apart..."
Thought we were discussing the construction of, not the maintenance (or lack thereof) of siege engines.

And don't pull the "only the nobles had the ability to read and write". Typically that was true. However, if you were king, and you needed people to do a necessary job that required literacy, you found people who were literate. And if you couldn't, you didn't just give up. You're a king, you had someone trained/educated in order for that job to be fulfilled.

If a dwarf comes to me "sorry sir, nobody available is literate, we can't fulfill your mandate of 10 siege engineers"....... I'll tell you what, he's going right into the magma. Right in. That useless, sober sod.

[Neruz]

Additionally, if you don't get the materials and construction right the entire structure may collapse, or worse explode due to being unable to handle the forces involved.

.....explode? Did we just say explode? That would be some REALLY shoddy construction. Anyone who's that poor of an carpenter/engineer really should NOT be in that position. In all likelihood they should be thrown into a pit of grizzly bears. Give him a spear and put in the front lines. In all likelihood, that thing probably wouldn't generate enough force in the first place to ever even cause it to explode. And if it's falling apart, it wouldn't even be fired; it would need to be reconstructed or at least reinforced first.

If I had a dwarf who built a catapult that fell apart, or even exploded...... I'll tell you what, he's going right into the magma. Right in. That useless, sober sod.

We're talking medieval knowledge and tools here remember; catapults and ballistae exploding upon being fired due to the wood being rotted or the arms put under too much tension wasn't common, but it wasn't unheard of.

Hell, just finding somone who knew how to read and write was difficult; only the nobility had the money to get education in writing, and even then many of them only got the absolute basics.

Well, don't downplay medieval knowledge or tools. Ancient engineers did some amazing things. It's not like they didn't know how to take care of things or couldn't tell if something was rotted. And I never said it never happened to older pieces.

That's the important part. Good Engineers were hard to find, expensive to train and required alot of work and long-term investements.

I was under the impression that we were talking about construction, and not the use of old or worn, already-constructed, siege engines.
In your quote you specifically referenced construction. "..the materials and construction.."
I even said, "If I had a dwarf who built a catapult that fell apart..."
Thought we were discussing the construction of, not the maintenance (or lack thereof) of siege engines.

I am; genereally Trebuchets were built from trees logged on-site, as it was cheaper than dragging it across the countryside. Transportation via land is expensive and slow, and a siege was a long and drawn out thing often lasting weeks or months. It was substantially quicker and cheaper to log trees on-site and build stationary siege weapons from those.

And don't pull the "only the nobles had the ability to read and write". Typically that was true. However, if you were king, and you needed people to do a necessary job that required literacy, you found people who were literate. And if you couldn't, you didn't just give up. You're a king, you had someone trained/educated in order for that job to be fulfilled.

Exactly, but that takes time and costs money. In the case of training siege engineers, it takes alot of time and costs alot of money.

If a dwarf comes to me "sorry sir, nobody available is literate, we can't fulfill your mandate of 10 siege engineers"....... I'll tell you what, he's going right into the magma. Right in. That useless, sober sod.

Which does not, in any way, change the fact that you still have no siege engineers, and it's a bit late to start training them if you need them right now.


You seem to have the wrong end of the stick; i am not and never was saying that nobody had siege weapons; quite the contrary in fact. But a corps of siege engineers were difficult to find, expensive to train and even more expensive to maintain; good mercenary siege engineers commanded exorbant prices due to this, and you had to be a fairly powerful king of a reasomably large nation to be able to afford your own full-time siege corps.

[BlazingDav]

The idea of background knowledge before taking up a skill does sound interesting, though given having an education system of some sort in dwarf fortress is a fair way off it does seem a little unfair, though possible as in the medieval age monastaries did provide education of some sort to locals, this could be tied in nicely when they make an appearance.

THOUGH instead of learning, what about blueprints? Not making them a requirement to build a siege workshop, but an optional part, so if you collected siege engine blueprints for multiple things, when you build it a menu displaying blueprints you got, you select them and that siege workshop will be able to produce the parts for it. Naturally these blueprints would be expensive, but then whose to say a legendary siege engineer couldn't start producing copies or making new ones that you can sell or use in new workshops

[Starver]

[...]However, it is a lot easier to modify the firing angle on a Cat[...]

Yeah, just hold it further up or down its tail when you swing it!

(Really, I find the post this quote is cruelly ripped out of contet from to be a very good summary of the kind of things I'm talking about, save the possibility of extending to the portable/movable versions as mentioned in my own less structured post.)

[Atarlost]

If you want a perfect trebuchet with twinked out maximized range and power, then yes, you'll want to use physics and mathematics to figure out the best possible design.

If you want your trebuchet to put the rock where you want it you need math.  Where you want it is not behind you or on top of your head.  Really, for someone who took freshman physics you seem to be underestimating the difficulty.  Try designing a trebuchet without using any of Newton's laws of motion.  Newton was born in 1643 and didn't publish his Principia Mathematica until 1687.  You designed a trebuchet using mathematical methods developed allmost three centuries after the end-date Toad'ys given for Dwarf Fortress technology. 

Torsion catapults you can build without math and have something that, while suboptimal, fires in the right direction.  You claimed the same of trebuchets and that is demonstrably false. 

[BlazingDav]

Just because you don't have the knowledge doesn't mean you can't work out how to do it, just takes longer, naturally more skilled siege engineers and operators should be more accurate, but I'd say the skill should have a heavy influence on the operation of them though designing more useful stuff to make it user friendly would be nice, could even let a noble have a go with them as if they could actually get excited I'd imagine the would want to have a go =P

I think the issue of expansion here is not so much required background and skill as those developments require other developments, but deciding what siege engines dwarves should have (as well as what others can have =P), what abilities they should have for given sizes, realistic size vs. balancing size and mobility vs. static (with practical issues)

If a siege engine is mobile, it should be forced to occupy more than one tile as it gets bigger *maybe even z-level* due to it gradually becoming more and more powerful in some fashion, but given we are a way away from that *except creatures for the 1x1 engines*, for now it makes more sense to create them as buildings which do occupy multiple tiles, then when they can instead of making replicas of each, a movable set of tiles which you can build on buildings and then move in a variety of ways, but mostly pulled or pushed by animals or people. Which would also have amusing side effects from moving statue gardens to moving walls surrounding an ammo/food stockpile, which would actually be quite handy for siegers sieging for more than one season. Also dwarfy ingenuity siege engines would be possible, which would naturally be Fun. Of course anyone on them should also be pulled along. Then building them as big as you like can let you move more, but then you have to deal with how do you get it out of the fort, while enemies naturally can't just plop it on a steep mountain side, though for giggles it falling off the side of a cliff should be made possible XP

If we are building them then, what should we make them off? Naturally the framework for the siege engine itself, much like the parts we see now, a skeleton as it were, a basic concept to be worked and illustrated upon by creativity, (if you think I'm making this up as I go along, I actually call it inspiration after thinking), as they get bigger they should typically get a larger range, but arc more to counter gravity.

But then the bit where all can have their cake and eat it (I confess I don't understand what that means, but it feels appropiate), you get to pick MODULES you build into it, these modules would be sets of mechanisms and parts to alter function of the siege engine, create new behaviours and such, for example, if you want to handle more complicated types of ammo you need to store them, like a pen for cows and animals, a large vat for caking stones in alcohol to be set on fire, naturally different ammos would be compatible with different ones, *like keeping kegs in an animal pen*, of course these modules would adapt the launcher in the process so it could go from storage to firing, the loading is just putting it in the storage module.

Naturally this module system would control more than just ammo, it could control the type of siege engine it is within a family, such as catapult being a default (though mangonel may be a more appropiate default), with average arcing and range, but adding a type module could turn it into a trebuchet, with max arcing and range, or a mangonel with a straight shot and shorter range, each with their own problems and such (i.e. trebuchet and catapults can't hit targets immeadiately in its face), another type would be mechanical or property changing, such as allowing turning on the spot to fire in any direction it pleases or to decrease reloading time by being 'wound up' quickly again, or for more stationary and complicated ones... crazy pumps powered by hand or machine that loads a liquid into a sealed container of appropiate material and then launches it drenching all that it flies over in its liquidy goodness, this liquid being anything from water, pitch or... magma =3

Really any module you come up with that is feasible, it should be makeable via appropiate materials and skilled engineer, though you couldn't equip these modules like anything, naturally they would be limited by size specifically, they should only equip their own square root in terms of the tiles they occupy in modules, or some rule that means that bigger siege engines can do more, while the little ones are more maneuverable (when it can be done =P) and fit in tighter spaces

Naturally deciding how varied the families should be and how many there are would be an issue

[Iden]

You seem to have the wrong end of the stick; i am not and never was saying that nobody had siege weapons; quite the contrary in fact. But a corps of siege engineers were difficult to find, expensive to train and even more expensive to maintain; good mercenary siege engineers commanded exorbant prices due to this, and you had to be a fairly powerful king of a reasomably large nation to be able to afford your own full-time siege corps.

I don't really believe I was stating that you stated that nobody had siege weapons. I don't wholly understand from where you began to believe such.

That's the important part. Good Engineers were hard to find, expensive to train and required alot of work and long-term investements.

Agreed. I don't believe I said otherwise. But it doesn't mean that if you needed them you couldn't invest in them.

Exactly, but that takes time and costs money. In the case of training siege engineers, it takes alot of time and costs alot of money.

We keep coming back to "expensive and slow". If you're a king facing a war, you generally are going to be spending money to keep your assets. Namely to keep your kingdom and your title as King. It's a worthy investment. At least I think so. Money should not be the biggest issue here.

I did also say, and I quote: "If time is an issue, then it's a different matter. To build a working engine from raw materials efficiently and quickly would be a rather skilled task, and would be difficult."

If you want a perfect trebuchet with twinked out maximized range and power, then yes, you'll want to use physics and mathematics to figure out the best possible design.

If you want your trebuchet to put the rock where you want it you need math.  Where you want it is not behind you or on top of your head.  Really, for someone who took freshman physics you seem to be underestimating the difficulty.  Try designing a trebuchet without using any of Newton's laws of motion.  Newton was born in 1643 and didn't publish his Principia Mathematica until 1687.  You designed a trebuchet using mathematical methods developed allmost three centuries after the end-date Toad'ys given for Dwarf Fortress technology. 

Torsion catapults you can build without math and have something that, while suboptimal, fires in the right direction.  You claimed the same of trebuchets and that is demonstrably false. 

So what you're saying is that if you gave a bunch of freshman physics students a bunch of materials and tools, that without making any calculations not one of them could figure out how to build a working trebuchet?

It certainly helps. Especially if you want to build something in one go, and pre-design it. But it is not necessary.

What ever happened to Trial and Error? Are you saying someone couldn't figure out over time? What happened to Scientific Method? What about simple Problem Solving?

To do so efficiently and quickly is a skilled task. To do so perfectly requires masterful knowledge (and masterful design, brought about by mathematics and early physics). However, to simply build a working engine takes nothing more than an idea, materials and experimentation. Simply put, the process of invention.

Just about every one of us here could build a working small trebuchet given the knowledge of what one is, the materials, the tools, and the time to experiment with different methods. Assuming some of us didn't give up in frustration of failed attempts.