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[DarkAvenger]

no to this. How do i use the catapult, can it fire over a wall? does it have to be high up?

will it fire on guys not in a seige? I was trying to get it to fire at an advancing goblin ambush party, it was facing the right way and I set it to fire at will and there was a guy manning it, but it wouldnt fire

and how far is the range?

[ColonelTEE3]

Catapults, as far as i know, only require ordinary "stones" you find all over the place. Are you sure you didn't built a ballista by mistake? If you build a fortification, or dig one out, a catapult should be able to fire though it fine. It does not have to be high up, though i don't know what the effects of having higher altitude catapults would be, so it might be worth trying out.

Catapults will fire regardless of targets or not, since it requires only a "fire" command. The problem is that it's up to the operator to find a target for it, and on top of that, he has to have enough skill for it to hit something, which can be very difficult if hes not skilled in siege operating. What alot of people do is they let their siege operators fire the catapult alot for training, since it only needs stone for ammo, then they put them on ballistas (ballistaes?) when the enemy sieges come, because ballistas are more powerful and i believe more accurate. Also, siege operators are civilians by technicality, so remember; if they see goblins getting to close to them, they will abandon the catapult/ballista, even if they are behind a fortification.
I don't know the range on catapults, but i know that ballistas fire very very far away and can kill in single shots.

[DarkAvenger]

how do I get him to fire at things, I have it set to fire at will

basically hes behind a wall in a courtyard so to speak. Can he shoot over it?

[Javis]

Carve a fortification in the wall immediately in front of the catapult.

[Greiger]

The siege operator will if there is nothing hostile to shoot at just fire the catapult as far as he can, with no particular target as training.  When there is an enemy within the firing arc he will try to hit the enemy.

As of version g they would not fire over anything but fortifications, in fact the siege engines were completely incapable of hitting anything above or below it's z level.  It would just fire straight ahead and when the object hit it's maximum range, drop out of the sky straight down.

I haven't had an opportunity to test it in this version but I don't recall any changes relating to their behavior.

[mwoody450]

For the most part, catapults are just for training your dwarves' attributes and possibly destroying stone (if they're firing into a wall).  As a weapon, they're ridiculously difficult to aim and operate in a useful manner, particularly since enemies in range will quickly begin to scare away your operators.