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[Necro910]

Ballistae have an immense range, more than 100 tiles.  Its long enough that they can fire from outside of the vision range of mobs with breath attacks and are in no danger.  Its just you need stupidly high quality equipment and stupidly skilled siege operators to hit a target accurately at that range.

Ok, good. I can handle that. All the crappy equipment that gets made will be used for training weapons, and then the Masterpieces will be for sniping
 

[Mechatronic]

Took me about two years to train legendary siege operators from scratch, IIRC. I didn't find them to be much use guarding my entrance, but they were just using catapults.

[Rushmik]

I can usually get legends in a year with a simple ballista / bolt retrieval system, so that the fired ballista bolt collides with a wall and drops a z-level, unharmed, onto a stockpile. The operator then runs five or so tiles to grab it, reloads and repeats.

[Starver]

I can usually get legends in a year with a simple ballista / bolt retrieval system, so that the fired ballista bolt collides with a wall and drops a z-level, unharmed, onto a stockpile. The operator then runs five or so tiles to grab it, reloads and repeats.

Do Sige Operators get more XP from Ballista operation than catapult operation?

If not, you can run a good catapult system with exactly the same retrieval tactic or a longer ranger one with a good stone stockpile (also doubles as a convery-belt/quick-haulage method if built strategically) and doesn't require ballista bolts being made until you get the "fire in anger" ballista built for your now well-trained catapultists who should be just as happy ballistaing... ...ising ...ificating  ...whatever.

[Minnakht]

From what the Wiki told me, it won't work with catapults, as they have a minimum range. Ballistae don't.

Seeing as you can use like three bolts over and over, why not?

[Starver]

From what the Wiki told me, it won't work with catapults, as they have a minimum range. Ballistae don't.

Minimum range?  Indeed, it does.  Never noticed that.  (Probably because my catapults are rarely used in anger.)  Good job most of my actual defensive catapults (not really there for more than basic pestering duty, on most maps) usually cover a much longer inward road than that[1], or they'd be absolutely useless.


But I don't think (and it doesn't mention it) that this affects training, if you had a catapult throwing exactly one tile until a wall (the typical training setup, sometimes I set it up so it has an attack direction and a perpendicular/opposite direction training direction).  And with a stone-conveying system they're usually travelling a long way, regardless.

Seeing as you can use like three bolts over and over, why not?

I'd wait until you can get really good quality bolts made, and chuck stones before the appropriate craftsdwarfs have the necessary skills and are just training up on other items.  Get your weaponsmith (I think they're the one who help with the arrow-heads made) trained up on the copious amount of weapons you're going to want to make on the way to equipping your army-in-waiting.

Unless you're training them up on arrow-heads before making your real weapons.  That'd be an alternate plan, especially if you're expecting to loose (and, in the process, lose) a lot of ammo in your first real attack/defence.

[1] As it is, I always have at least 10 tiles of unfloored gap between the fortification-covered siege-engine exit and the same-Z roadway they're covering, and the (usually underground) path leading up to there is often most of the distance to the edge of the map, with a stone-catching channel all around with locked access in case I want the stones back, or to attack anybody having also fallen off the roadway.  But that way, the three-or-so stepped catapults I have aimed down that route have a good chance of sending stones down while the invading force is still making its way towards me.  (And I usually shut off the entrance once they've started their way in, so when I cause them to break they can't escape and I can keep on hitting them, or sending my military in for a bit of R&R... After stopping any ballistas that are also pointing that way, of course.  )