Print

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

[NewoTigra]

forgot about making anything smaller, that simply makes it less deadly. What we should be doing is making it BIGGER!

Mainly, siege engines. I want it to be possible to vary the size of catapults and such like, something along the lines of 3x3, 5x5, 9x9 etc. Bigger siege engines should of course use more parts, maybe making use of the 3x3 requires 3 parts, system already used.

A larger Siege Engine should have it's own advantages and disadvantages of course;

Pros
-able to fire more / nastier projectiles
-larger range?

Cons
-takes up more space
-should take longer to load / fire
-bigger is not always better

I suppose I just want to make siege engines more useful as a whole. There's something appealing to me about them, maybe just the fact that ballistae arrows are basically just sharpened trees, being fired at high speeds.
On that note, bigger ammo to go with bigger engines? if 1 set of logs = 1 tree = 1 arrow...
The end result of this line of thinking will probably entail firing an arrow the size of the map at invaders, so I'll stop now.

[Geb]

Increased range isn't going to help much except on a really huge map. Perhaps a good benefit would be to allow a bigger catapult to fire the same projectile as a smaller one, but a lot harder, to give different results. Catapults that fire stones hard enough to make them shatter on impact are far scarier than ones that just knock one hole in the target.

This might break the period appropriate tech limit though.

[Euld]

Sorta random, but in the intro to Civilization IV: Warlords (or maybe all Civ IV versions) they had these wooden towers on wheels that wheeled up to a castle's walls, dropped a ramp, and allowed a bunch of troops to walk right onto the top of the wall instead of bashing the wall down.  I'd imagine the towers having up/down stairs from the ground up plus a door at the bottom to allow more troops to scramble up and over the fortress's walls.

[Foa]

I just want a choice of ammo, and different kinds of siege engines.


Now to revive my idea of the DWARF BUGGY! Too many bolts though...

Spoiler: The first and only image (click to show/hide)

[KenboCalrissian]

A larger catapult that launches smaller catapults?  It would work kind of like those little doll thingies where there's always another smaller doll inside the bigger ones.

I like the wall tower idea.  I've seen this in Lords of the Realm 2 and that was probably one of my favorite siege weapons.

A few other suggestions...

-Booze Bombs: Allow catapults to be loaded with flaming barrels of booze that explode on impact.

-Battering Rams: Good for taking out draw bridges and wall sections, gives many civs wall-destroying abilities.

-Portable bridges: Especially useful for DF, this is just a plank that lays across a single channel tile.  Though the easy solution is to dig your moats at least two tiles wide, this does present complications to defense since it won't always be possible.

-Picks: Really, what could be more deadly to a fort than enemy miners?  It's kind of lame that a thin wall of sand is impenetrable by attackers, anyway.  I think all enemy diggers should dig as slow as a dabbling miner dwarf since dwarves are the undisputed digging champs.

-Sappers: Goblins should totally strap explosives to themselves and run headlong into the walls of your fortress.  In fact, they should be aiming for your booze stockpile.

[Derakon]

The problem I have with upsizing the siege engines is that they already do "You got hit by a freakin' [tree/boulder]" damage, so bigger ones don't see like they'd be appreciably more useful. But it doesn't make sense to me for the 3x3 versions to do less damage.

This might start being useful once we need siege engines to break down enemy fortifications, though.

[Neonivek]

The problem is that for the most part a lot of the seige weapons don't scale up very well until you simply need to use an entirely different siege weapon. 3 by 3 is already massive. 5 by 5 would be immense and likely stationary. A 9 by 9 is just flat out obscene and would likely not be a giant siege weapon so to speak but a siege weapon that fires multiple times (like a row of catapults)

If you want a truely immense Catapult then you make a trebuchet (or however you spell it) since it is better.

[Dante]

-Booze Bombs: Allow catapults to be loaded with flaming barrels of booze that explode on impact.

Urist McIdiot cancels Menial task: getting drink.
Urist McIdiot cancels Drink: gravity misplaced.
Urist McMunitions cancels Load catapult: interrupted by screaming burning flying half-fuelled dwarf.

Win?

[Grendus]

The large wheeled platform is called a siege tower. They're dangerous, but very vulnerable to fire since they had to be made out of wood (metal was too expensive/heavy, stone was too brittle to build mobile towers out of) and moved incredibly slowly. Flaming arrows wouldn't light them on fire, but pouring boiling oil onto them could turn them from siege weapon to deathtrap.

Most of the changes I'd like to see with siege weapons are multiple z-level targeting. Setting up catapults like Gondor or even just lining the walls or courtyards with siege weapons and lobbing stone over my defenses would be awesome.

[Foa]

Erg, we need, trebuchets!

Siege Shields, known as moving wall!

[Neruz]

The problem is that for the most part a lot of the seige weapons don't scale up very well until you simply need to use an entirely different siege weapon. 3 by 3 is already massive. 5 by 5 would be immense and likely stationary. A 9 by 9 is just flat out obscene and would likely not be a giant siege weapon so to speak but a siege weapon that fires multiple times (like a row of catapults)

If you want a truely immense Catapult then you make a trebuchet (or however you spell it) since it is better.

A 9x9 Catapult would probably be a Trebutchet; a gargantuan weighted throwing arm that was pretty much impossible to transport intact and had to be carried around by wagons in bits and constructed as a stationary siege weapon on-site, often using lumber cut at the site to reduce transportation needs.

[Neonivek]

Even a Trebuchet doesn't get to 9x9 proportions

5 by 5 max but it can just as easily be a 3 by 3

Though there are even smaller Catapults like the Onager and even smaller balistae like the Scorpian. I'd love to see 1x1 Siege weapons.

[Neruz]

The Scorpion is less of a siege weapon and more of a field artillery piece.


As for the Trebuchet, it would depend very much on the size. A smaller Trebuchet would probably be 5 x 5, but if some of the plans we've got on record are correct then the larger ones would certainly be somewhere around 9x9 (remember, 9x9 is basically about 9 long paces or so in width). Some of the plans for the real monsters are incredible feats of engineering, and this is Dwarves we're talking about; brilliant engineers to begin with (if somewhat stupid.)


I don't think it would be unreasonable to have some sort of 'ultimate' siege weapon that could be constructed on-site that is somewhere around 7x7 - 9x9 in size. Remember also that Trebuchets are very long, and as the weapon would need to rotate it would have to have a square footprint the size of it's length to do so.

[Neonivek]

9 is a bit more then 9 paces.

Though to compare it to in game content. You could fit the interior of 4 houses inside a 9x9 Trebuchet.

Also a smaller Trebuchet could easily be a 3 by 3 going by the sizes of a Catapult.

9 by 9 is also so large it may be excessive just to find the space to deploy it.

[Neruz]

They're very small houses; as appropriate for medieval peasantry.

9x9 is slightly smaller than the Inn, if you look at the approximate size of an old medieval Inn (there's still a few around in Europe, ovbiously renovated, but the building itself remains) then 9x9 isn't actually that far off, 7x7 at worst, 5x5 for a light one.

A square seems to equal about 1 'pace', since that's how far creatures move with each 'step'.