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[Safe-Keeper]

I've been thinking - and I did search for this - that part of the fun of building, for example, querns and pumps is that you don't just tell the dwarves to build a "Waterwheel powered pump" or "Windmill powered quern" for then to watch them set up a generic 4x4 structure complete with built-in waterwheel, gear assembly, pump and lever. You have to research the subject yourself, and once you have the know-how, you need to build the contraption one piece at a time.

Now, I was thinking... wouldn't it be interesting if you built siege engines the same way? I know this would take a lot of thinking, programming and testing to work well, but the same way players can build huge pump structures that move magma a dozen z-levels, you would see players build repeating 10x10 ballistas that could fire a dozen arrows at a time. The siege engine would have a component to store ammo (such as a rock, ballista arrow or whatever), a mechanism that generated the energy necessary to propel the projectile forward (for example a counterweight system), etc.

I realize this would take a whole lot of work to accomplish, but is it theoretically possible?

[Naes Draw]

I like the idea, and it seems like it would be possible with work.

(P.S. Awesome sig.)

[nil]

In DF talks Toady has mentioned wanting to do this sort of thing with traps, so I wouldn't be surprised to see the same sort of thing happen more with siege engines.

[Gazz]

I know this would take a lot of thinking, programming and testing to work well, but the same way players can build huge pump structures that move magma a dozen z-levels, you would see players build repeating 10x10 ballistas that could fire a dozen arrows at a time.

The alternative is basic hydraulics.
If there's a tower of 10 ballistas stacked in 10 Z levels, you'd activate the hydraulics to push one by one past the level where the enemies are.
They fire and have time to reload while they are transported further up.

Effectively a simple gatling ballista.

[Kilo24]

Hmm... my main concern is people who just want a ballista having to go through a load of research and fiddling with the mechanics to get it working, as well as having to manually set it up every time if you'd rather not make a mistake.

Here's an idea: have blueprints for more complex machines for both siege weapons and mechanics that automatically lay out and link up the required equipment through just building and rotating it, and have several blueprints by default (like pump tower, ballista, or some mechanical traps) and allow the player to create more.  But still let the player toy with all the basic components if he wants to.

That would remove the problems I'd have with this suggestion.

[Safe-Keeper]

Blueprints: I'd be in favour of that, too.

[Gazz]

Blueprints, sure.  That's exactly how it works right now...
You pick the design to build and the dwarfs do that.

A blueprint going through a "working recipe" is the same as the player assembling the same recipe from individual parts.

The game has to somehow know which combination of parts produces a working "Ballista Type 2".
If you let the player "tinker with parts", the game has to figure out if the custom 3D design drawing "works" and how well - I kinda doubt that's within the scope of the game. =)


What could work is to include many premade recipes but limit access to them. Maybe by requiring a master siege engineer for the construction of a Steelrain 3000.
If you don't have the master, you may only be able to construct a Steelrain 1000 with less range and oomph.
(other conditions may apply but that's the obvious one)

Basically an abstract form of "research" without the hassles of a completely new bag of features you have to deal with.

[zwei]

... you would see players build repeating 10x10 ballistas that could fire a dozen arrows at a time. The siege engine would have a component to store ammo (such as a rock, ballista arrow or whatever), a mechanism that generated the energy necessary to propel the projectile forward (for example a counterweight system), etc.

I realize this would take a whole lot of work to accomplish, but is it theoretically possible?

I would guess it is.

I, myself would like at least ability to link ballistae to levers/pressure plates in order to be able to fire them remotelly at will (vision of room deep inside fortress where one dwarf operates levers to fire)

But first, I would like different improvements: finer ability to aim (45 degrees or even ability to designate target spot), ability to fire throught z-levels, making operators more resilient to being scared by nearby monsters (siege engine operating is a military duty ...)

[Starver]

Might blueprints also work w.r.t. building certain other constructions?  E.g. building 'hanging' rooms means laying out a rectangular (or square) floor where you want it and (usually) a single floor tile adjacent to where an otherwise unsupported corner wall would be built (over space or a Z-1 Fortification), walls planned all round the rest, then remove and replace the 'tab' floor once the corner is supported.

Or where a room is on top of a lower wall, corners need to be placed before at least one of the corner-adjacent walls.  Could template/blueprint building be flexible enough for that?  (Including "grab stone type <foo> as and when available"?)  [Currently, I'd typically set for building all non-corners but one corner-adjacent one for each, then the corners (for LIFO job stacking) then assign the adjacent walls for building as each corner is ensconced.  But that depends on immediately available material and workforce!]

And further "site plan"s could make micromanagement of quarrying unnecessary ("from this area, remove these tiles with channelling/Z-1 ramping, then these ones, then these ones, thus avoiding cave-ins/random orphan ramps in the centre").

But that's speculative and me being distracted from the original subject.  Back to siege engines, I think a prior suggestion (possibly on a thread about large siege engine construction) included the thought about disassociating the firing, preparing and loading stages of the device (even a special 'magazine' stockpile-like area), for building separately, allowing for either a single gunner or a even a 'gun crew' to work with faster or slower loading/firing rates and more/less accurate shots, among other things, according to quality of the respective components.  And tie that in with "room-type" workshops (built from relevant workstations, i.e. emplacing tools within an area to define that room as a <foo> workshop, and with possibly multiple workstations) which can be similarly 'templated' and... well, it's potentially a lot of development (and still yet speculative), but an interesting one overall.

[Firehound]

I don't like the idea personally. linking a seige engine to powered mechanisms to decrease loading speed would be nice.

Putting together a seige engine yourself that shoots 50 zillion ballista bolts sounds gamey to me, and even if implemented, you'll probably require a proportional number of engineers to keep people from building the 'kill-a-tron 9001' with which one can simply stomp anything with 20 ballista bolts and a rock, and by the time the next seige rolls around, twice that number bolts have already been made.

Now, I'm all for variety if Toady wants to implement more seige engines, but no modular ones please.

[Safe-Keeper]

The game has to somehow know which combination of parts produces a working "Ballista Type 2".
If you let the player "tinker with parts", the game has to figure out if the custom 3D design drawing "works" and how well - I kinda doubt that's within the scope of the game. =)

Depends. As I said, it's how pumps work already - you build a power source, gear assembly, etc. and it gets to work at the pull of the lever. I'm no programmer, but surely it can't be that different to build a catapult or ballista, with parts to generate kinetic energy and whatnot?

Putting together a seige engine yourself that shoots 50 zillion ballista bolts sounds gamey to me, and even if implemented, you'll probably require a proportional number of engineers to keep people from building the 'kill-a-tron 9001' with which one can simply stomp anything with 20 ballista bolts and a rock, and by the time the next seige rolls around, twice that number bolts have already been made.

Yes, we're probably went overboard with the "superweapon" suggestions here. I guess a better comparison would be big mechanisms like waterwheels that power a system of pumps which in turn pump waters ten z-levels out of an underground river into an aquaduct which in turn leads into your fortress.

Then again, DF has a bit of a "sky is the limit" feel to it, so who knows what people will build with even simple tools.

[Rowanas]

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=43559.msg850664#msg850664

Use the search. I just looked for the one that I mentioned, but a search for siege engine parts in a basic search got many, many results on this topic.

The search exists for a reason.

[Safe-Keeper]

It's a long thread. I skimmed it, but didn't spot that post.

[Rowanas]

But.. but.. it was a post by ME!! How could you fail to spot a post by an international hero and sex icon?

But yeah, this post has gone in a different direction a little bit, so I guess it's all good.

[Kilo24]

I don't like the idea personally. linking a seige engine to powered mechanisms to decrease loading speed would be nice.

Putting together a seige engine yourself that shoots 50 zillion ballista bolts sounds gamey to me, and even if implemented, you'll probably require a proportional number of engineers to keep people from building the 'kill-a-tron 9001' with which one can simply stomp anything with 20 ballista bolts and a rock, and by the time the next seige rolls around, twice that number bolts have already been made.

Now, I'm all for variety if Toady wants to implement more seige engines, but no modular ones please.

I don't think it would be that much of a problem.  You can already rig up flooding chambers, collapsing ceilings and atom smashers for instant kills; unlike those, this would require ammunition and a dwarf manning them.  Chances are, you'd need to set up a kill zone to do this properly, and once burrowing gets in, they could evade that kill zone.
I don't really see what a stack of 20 ballistas will do much better that 2 or 3 wouldn't; they'd still all be occupying space and annihilating whatever they hit.  Maybe rapid fire will be a problem, but you'd be going through ammunition at an insane rate to do so.

Catapults are more of a problem, because their ammo is cheap.  I'd advise only having one spot (or maybe a few, with lots of automated parts) that they can aim at without a dwarf at the catapult taking time to aim.

To cripple my own argument a bit though, megabeasts entering your fortress just to be shot through instantly with 20 ballista bolts isn't a good thing when 3 ballista bolts shouldn't kill them.