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[Shiv]

And had any more luck than I?  Used to be that wooden ballista arrows would still skewer anything that got in their path, but I had a dog get in the way just now and merely got a bruising from it.  Haven't tried it against goblins yet, but I imagine it'd be much the same.  Y'all getting the same results?

[gerkinzola]

how are you getting the combat log to show?

[Proteus]

DF Wiki  says that ballista arrows are now very weak, often even  glancing off  from normal clothing.
Havenīt tested it personally  yet, however

how are you getting the combat log to show?

[r]

[gerkinzola]

sweet i now love you!

[Narmio]

Has anyone tried metal-headed ballista arrows?

[jokermatt999]

Has anyone tried metal-headed ballista arrows?

That's probably the issue. Wood in the new version is basically useless as a weapon material (which makes sense). I'm guessing ballistas are edged/piercing, so iron or adamantine would be the way to go for the heads, unless it's more of a blunt force thing, in which case you should go for a heavier metal.

[Dorf3000]

On a related note, has anybody tried catapults yet?   A gigantic stone being hurled at you should do a bit more damage than a pansy-Elf toothpick.

[Paul]

I experimented with metal ballista arrows. My conclusion: Absolutely useless.

Basic no-quality iron armor can almost completely deflect all shots from a ballista. Exceptional quality ballista, exceptional quality ballista bolts made from: silver, copper, bronze, iron, steel. Best I got was mild bruising, nothing even remotely fatal. They healed before I could even get another shot to break through enough to do more damage.

Even on unarmored targets the ballista is ridiculously weak. It shatters some bones, but doesn't hit everything in its path and rarely kills anything. I had a siege operator fire off 57 shots (thats how many shots my 20 arrows lasted, 4 of each metal type - all high quality) through a 3 tile wide corridoor with a wall and ditch at the end (to recycle ammo) and 20 unarmored recruits standing in the hall. 11 of them were injured severely (shattered bones), 2 of them were dead (bled to death), and 7 of them were completely unhurt. Several of them had been hit numerous times without actually dieing, and many of the shots only hit 1 part of the body - shattering one bone, but leaving the dwarf otherwise fine.

I then reloaded the game and released one goblin bowman I had captured in a cage trap against the 20 recruits. 4 of them died before they wrestled it to death. So: One goblin bowman = twice as dangerous as 57 shots from a ballista. Woo?

Siege weapons definitely suck this version.

[PopeRichardCorey]

Siege weapons definitely suck this version.

In 31.02.  Ballistas should still be fairly deadly.  I mean, they're Ballistae for cryin' out loud.

(How the hell do you pluralize that?)

[UristMcGunsmith]

Perhaps if they were changed to blunt weapons and the weight was changed dramatically? Maybe then they wouldn't suck. But I'm no modder.

[mrbobbyg]

"The dog just *somehow* got in the way"

And was shot like 10 times...something smells fishy here. 

Hey, I'm cool with you tying a dog up and shooting it with a ballista if you're short on elves, but there's not need to lie about it to us.

[Paul]

Sadly siege weapons aren't modable yet (not fully in the raws, just a generic entry for ballista arrow that has no tags to edit).

I don't think making them blunt would help though. I think the problem is they might be counting as blunt, and even then the damage is ridiculously low. My iron armored dwarf got hit in the HEAD by an exceptional steel ballista arrow. It was deflected by his iron helmet. That shot should have taken his head clean off. An unarmored dwarf got hit in the head and it broke his skull, but didn't do enough to kill him - at least a warhammer hit to the head drives the skull into the brain and kills them. These things are weaker than warhammers (and that's saying something this version).

They should be changed to do slicing damage. That way instead of my steel ballista arrows causing bruises and broken bones it slices and dices. A ballista arrow shot through a group of goblins should leave at least a few of them missing limbs or dead.

[Danjen]

Hey, I'm cool with you tying a dog up and shooting it with a ballista if you're short on elves, but there's not need to lie about it to us.

I'm sigging this.

[Airpi]

You know, when I think of a Dwarven ballista, I don't think of an actual ballista. In a world where a theoretically infinite number of dragons can occupy 1 space, it takes up 9 spaces. I imagine that a human ballista of similar proportion would take a team of men to operate. The fact that it only takes one dwarf is a testament to both dwarven engineering and stoutness. A normal ballista does damage by piercing with overlarge arrows, a dwarven ballista does damage by crushing with entire trees. They deserve better than this, really.

[Asmodeous]

Perhaps if they were changed to blunt weapons and the weight was changed dramatically? Maybe then they wouldn't suck. But I'm no modder.

Perhaps when Toady fixes the issue with unkillable mobs and ineffective weapons that aren't slashing it will all be moot.