Trunnions for people who aren't familiar with the term, are actually little pivot swivels commonly attached to cannons and other siege equipment, often equipped with wheels or sunk into the floor it allows a small amount of coaxial movement for the weapon itself installed ontop of it. If it gives way or is broken, the weapon is now in a fixed position without the mass manpower to move a heavy piece of equipment into place as needed.
Now a trunnion as suggested for dwarf fortress would be a bit a bit more mechanics based with siege engines being built atop it, since some simple job queued adjustments will allow you to tilt the orientation via a mechanic coming by. Allowing diagonal facing catapults or ballistae to all point together onto a common target, rather than hoping naturally for stacked siege engines to have overlapping lines of fire.
But that is not all by feat of engineering, by building a siege engine upon a secured trunnion and setting up a route, the rig that is the trunnion itself is as a vehicle will respond to dwarves pushing the vehicle from its current position along the general broad 3 wide rules that caravans have, if it clips at any point with terrain, the siege engine will deconstruct meaning long clear hallways are needed.
- The advantage is that you can also minecart track your ammunition to your frontline mobile siege engines by letting a dwarf guide the ammunition through complex non-roller turns and cross sections designed for the trunnion's being pushed into position.
The existance of a trunnion also helps justify smaller portable models of siege engines brought along like their real world counterparts, with little immobile catapult invader creatures being lead upon the battlefield by their `riders` hurling ranged projectiles into the field of battle and inflicting miner digging wear on collision with built constructions.
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Topic: Trunnions & Mobile siege engines along tracks. (Read 556 times)