Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-27831234-20160225060317/@comment-27831234-20160226120659

AlteOgre wrote: Realistically, siege engines, whether it's towers, ballista's, catapults or trebuchets, are massive, heavy structures that can only be moved slowly across any area, and only if it's flat. These structures were typically constructed on the spot where they were to be used, and if constructed elsewhere, scores of men and beasts of burden were required to pull the structure to it's destination at crawling pace: max. 1-3 km/h. Mounting them on a carriage would have made transport a bit faster, but shooting a catapult from the top of a carriage is simply very impractical: single-use only with extreme inaccuracy. :)

A catapult mounted on the back of a large creature should be considered 'single or at least very limited use' only, both regarding the catapult and the creature. It certainly would be a fun aspect to equip a mountain troll with the devastating power of a catapult, but it shall be costly: troll and catapult should be worn off after 10-20 rounds of massive 2*2*2 rock launches (that's 8 metric tons of material folks: enough to snap the trolls spline with one round only!). Question: Is that movie feature actually supported by lore?

Back to the main topic: Siege towers can only be moved, and used, on flat terrain. I would just advise Mevans to assume players will erect them on the spot, near the place where they are to be put to use, and that the offensive party will also ensure the terrain where the tower is to be moved upon, will be flattened and/or slabs will be used to ensure no step heights of 1 block or higher shall be overcome.

Same holds for battering rams and trebuchets.

Catapults, ballista's may be mounted on wheels, but I'd just advise to not code for that. Let players build such structures, and trebuchets, where they need them for battle/siege, and not make the 'moveable' at all. Only the aiming direction and the launch power may be variable, both to limited extents: aiming can be up to max. 45 degrees off in both directions from the main build direction, and power may vary between 60 to 100 % of maximum. The load of a round may also be a variable: 25 to 100% of maximum. This will offer a wide range of possible targets and impact powers. The durability of such engines should be limited: maybe somewhere between 20 and 40 shots?

This should make the use of siege towers most realistic and less of a burden to code. Same for the other devices.

With this in mind, I won't support the notion of siege engines as 'entities' in the mod, as proposed in the first post of this thread.

Dawn of the Ring has recently implemented the Pistronics mod (watch the nice demo video of a catapult on the top of a ring wall around Mins Tirith, shooting at orcs in a target zone). This may offer other interesting viewpoints for coding and mechanics of siege engines for the LOTRmod. You are right, what I was thinking is that the siege weapons are supposed to be erected at the battlesite. I also saw that video, it was just amazing man. I also agree with the siege weapons that shoot such as catapults and trebuchets should be stationary. But, i dont know about durability. Oh and a question, how can battering rams and siege towers move if they are not entities?