Print

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

[Jelle]

I'm kind of ashamed of it, after all this time I've not tried siege weaponry yet. They seem rather redundant and easely replaced by more effective means, and above all far from foolproof (scared operaters wut?).
But I  thought I'd make a fortress that isn't about effeciency for once, and you have to admit a few siege engines sitting at the battlements looks pretty epic.
But now to turn this bit of asthetic weaponry into an actual working killing machine. I'm not expecting to see to many action with them, they are stationed in a fallback spot that connects the city with the outside grass mosslands, kind of like an improvised city wall. I've placed them inside the walkways of the wall facing the outside through fortification. I figured out how to load them and I'm about to make an ammo stockpile just next to the wall.

After that though, how do I proceed? I have no idea how to make siege operators use the damn things. I'm also not sure if they are positioned correctly, will the operators become frightened if the siege engine is located directly infront the wall. If not how far would it have to be from the wall (where the siegers would be attacking) for it to operate smoothly.
Also if it is placed from a distance can it still accurately shoot though fortications?

It would be really awesome if I could get these things to work, but no biggy if it's not feasable in my design, I still have another level of fortifications where marksdwarves will be stationed. Might make a medieval style burning oil pot aswell, but then instead of oil I'd use magma. 

The fortress can be seen in my sig but that one is outdated and doesn't have the wall finished yet, but the designation are there, only I've made the walls 3 tiles wide to fit in the siege engines. It's the carved out path in the middle of the lake.

P.S I realize the weaponry isn't ideal for this purpose as it's more of a long range thing, but I simply don't have much open area to shoot through. Might change the bridges to better face the siege engines later.

[Proteus]

Yes, Siege Operators are civilians,
therefore they will get scared by goblins at the same distances as your normal dwarves.

Another thing you have to take into account is,
that they wonīt work across different z-levels,
therefore, if you want your siege engines to make any damage,
they should be stationed at the same z-level as the enemy.

And if you want to have your siege engine/s manned with operators,
you should use the setting "keep siege engine ready" (or something like this).
And donīt use "fire at will" before as the enemy can be hit,
as else your siege operator will needless fire the siege engine, thereby wasting ammo
 

[SpiralDimentia]

Also, for novices or dabbling and what not, I think it takes like a month to reload, where a legendary siege operator will get several shots off on a charging enemy?

Pretty sure I read that somewhere.

[Qinetix]

Tip : use the siege weapons on top of towers , they might get shot by other bowgobos but meh if you have fortifications it might be fine , btw lock the door during ZE SIEGE , might just run fine

[Sutremaine]

Distance required is ~25 tiles, at which point enemies need to be given an alternate path.

[Magentawolf]

Tip : use the siege weapons on top of towers , they might get shot by other bowgobos but meh if you have fortifications it might be fine , btw lock the door during ZE SIEGE , might just run fine

Nope. If you've got a siege engine on top of a tower, the only thing you're going to hit is a bird; catapults and ballistae currently only work on the same Z-Level that they're constructed on.

[Jelle]

Yeah I figured they could only shoot the same z level, wich is not a problem since I'm reserving the upper level for marksdwarves.
The civilian part is going to be a problem though, they might fire one shot before they run away using this setup. I was hoping for a bit more consistant destruction. I'd really love to have siege engineers act as military personel.
What about shooting through fortifications though? Can they shoot through a fortified wall from a distance, or would they only be able to shoot through them if they were put in front of them? If they can shoot through just fine I'll just overhaul my wall and turn it into a little castle.

Also I'm mostly looking into ballista, never been a big fan of catapults.

[Proteus]

Not sure about catapults,
but ballistae definitely are able to shoot through fortifications

[shlorf]

Catapults can do that as well.

[tolkafox]

Best bet is to use a 2x20 or 3x20 pathway, and have the siege engines behind a channel or fortification 10 tiles in front of the siege engine. This should keep the goblins from scaring your poor dwarves, and give a straight shot at them. Siege engines also fire from the middle tower, so you can stack them behind one another as long as the middle tile is unobstructed. Minimal range is 30 for catapult, I'm not sure about ballistae.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

XTX:Siege engine I: Firing line
-good-
XTX
XTX
XTX
  IXTX
  IXTX
  IXTX
  I  IXTX
  I  IXTX
  I  IXTX
  I  I  I

-not good-
XTX      XTX
XTX      XTX
XTX      XTX
  I          I
XTX       XTX
XTX       XTX
XTX       XTX
  I

Last time I checked, catapults don't have friendly fire, are generally weak, and only hit one target while ballistae will shoot anything in front of it and anything behind what's in front of it. Quality of the parts matters a lot, too....but training a siege engineer needs a lot of wood.

[Starver]

One composite design of several tricks I use is basically as below (although finessed more, a longer range and varying according to local geography and geology).

Code: (Side slice) [Select]

  v target zone v (usually longer)
#             
#                        H<--    X
# ################\   ___DEPOT__ X
# ####################  ###### ##X
# ###############################X
#                                X
#################################X
#################################X

The target zone is entered from the side (into/out of the screen), sometimes the target zone is an actual "tongue" of rock, with the sides also channelled down towards the lower area (stone gathering level), but which can be additionally protected by lowerable bridges if I don't fancy the flyable gaps.

The siege engine(s, usually three, staggered) sit on the same level as the target zone floor, the depot is below.  By the time enemies are within 'scare' range of the siege engine, they're not shootable, and I might well have raised the bridges (one from the depot to the outside world, one from the inner fort to the depot)

I can have any siege operators (I must admit I've not used them much, recently, but when I do it's almost exclusively catapults, despite the 'glyphs' I drew the siege engine in) practice constantly, the stones they use hit the end and are available for further use by siege operators or other stone-users.  I can pause them when attack is obvious, if I want instant response, but it gives them a chance to get their reload speeds up through loads of practice.

Alternately:

Code: (Top view) [Select]

                 ######
##################___##   <- 'practice' hole, for when facing north
...........v     HS^S##
...........v     H<+-X#   <- Siege engine, set either to north or west through fortifications
...........v     HS|S##
#################H#####
     
^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^
kill-zone & sunken approach

(Seconded on the catapults through fortifications, BTW.)

I've also done the following:

Code: [Select]

                 Raisable bridge
                     |
                     v
#############################
                    __  H<--X
###############\     #  ####X
###################### #####X
#side view############      X
############################X


Top view

############################
++++++++++++++++v   =+  HSSS
++entryway++++++v   =+  H<--
++++++++++++++++v   =+  HSSS
#############+++############
           #+++++#
(usually   #+++++#
 depot has #DEPOT#
 bridges   #+++++#
 and moats #+++++#
 for both  ###+###
 inwards and outwards access,
 as well, but this is simplified)


Bridge up for training (also protection from ranged enemies who might turn up and look dangerous), bridge down for sending all shots straight down the corridor at enemies.


Staggering the siege engines might go as follows:

Code: (Top down) [Select]

#############
####SSS######
   H<--SSS###
   HSSS<--SSS
   H...SSS<--
##########SSS
#############

In response to the the largely ninjaing post from tolkafox, about staggering, channels in front of fortifications, etc, you can always train your SOps on catapults, with spare (or recoverable) stone, even if you're going to be using a ballista or three in your main defence in which you can't engineer a reliable  ammo-recovery system.  Same skill, and all.

(But for a ballista version of the staggered defence, watch out for that 1x3 space to the side of the forward engine, with the rear engine shoots through it.  Better put a restricted zone.  Also directly in front of the middle one, possibly, just in case the forward gunner decides to wander through those tiles to man his own weapon.)

[Babylon]

Yeah I figured they could only shoot the same z level, wich is not a problem since I'm reserving the upper level for marksdwarves.
The civilian part is going to be a problem though, they might fire one shot before they run away using this setup. I was hoping for a bit more consistant destruction. I'd really love to have siege engineers act as military personel.
What about shooting through fortifications though? Can they shoot through a fortified wall from a distance, or would they only be able to shoot through them if they were put in front of them? If they can shoot through just fine I'll just overhaul my wall and turn it into a little castle.

Also I'm mostly looking into ballista, never been a big fan of catapults.

Catapults are good for training your dwarves, since they use rocks as ammo.  You can set them to fire at will during peace time, maybe somewhere there's a chance of them hitting some meat.

[ledgekindred]

Another thing to keep in mind with catapults is that they only have about a 30 degree arc in front where they can hit. 

In one of my forts I had built a huge wall around the entrance, with towers in the middle.  Each tower was about 6x6 with a catapult in the middle of each floor, and the walls carved to fortifications.  The entrance was through a tunnel underground, so there was no way into the towers except by getting through the fortress first.  Having a catapult on each level helped with the "only fires on the same z-level" issue.  The land around my fort was hilly, but not excessively, so I had access to most of the z-levels from one of the tower levels.

I also had my siege operators running full time until they were high, grand or legendary.

I put it into practice when we got a human siege.  (I have no remembrance of why they decided to siege.) I fired probably 500 rocks and hit maybe 5 humans during the whole siege.  I even had time during the siege to build another tower directly along the x-axis from where the main siege camp was and started chucking rocks hoping that maybe a direct line-of-fire would help.  Didn't make much difference.  The landing area for the rocks was about a 20x20 area and no "splash damage" as far as I could tell.

Eventually, to make them vaguely useful I built an enclosure in the range of fire and dropped a bunch of caged prisoners into it.  They had nowhere to run, and I set the catapult to "fire at will."  Eventually I hit enough of them to be fun, and even then, it only injured them about as much as a stonefall trap.  In general, catapults are pretty useless in my experience.