Anybody up for an FSTGOD?

[SirNitram]

I'm sure. There's no Machines this time.

That's what we want you to think.

[frigidmagi]

Gents I'm afraid I'm gonna be a bit slow here. My laptop is down so myy current post in the game thread is the only one I'll be able to toss out today. I have access to computers on campus and so should be able to post more... tomorrow.

By the way DS? Gotcha asshole.

[Dark Silver]

And the attack upon this token force will do what exactly?

I expected betrayl, I did not expect it so soon.

unless you brought overwhelming numbers to this trap....those airships are some of the most powerful airial forces in the game...

Thirdfain...your betrayl is remembered, and shall be dealt with accordingly.

[Charon]

Mind you there aren't a lot of aerial units, and three of them (Fisher (who on a side note I need to smack into posting or something), Nitram, and the dragon) have better air units than you. Mind you Tev, Frigid, and Rogue are the others and they do have varyingly weaker airforces. Unfortunately, an airforce does not win a war.

[Thirdfain]

Ah, but my good Silver, your lead airship has landed- and my artillary is already zeroed in on the muster-field.

[Charon]

Question for you Thirdfain, how are you getting anti-air ballistae to shoot at a downward angle?

[Thirdfain]

I've had WEEKS to prepare for this. I'm sure the castle carpenters have had time to rig up mountings aiming down, it can't be that complicated. Besides, it's probably not going to matter- landing the fire from 5 points of light seige trebuchets on the parked airship will probably be enough.

[frigidmagi]

I should point out there are about a hundred of my mage-priest calling down fire and lightening on the thing and the surrounding area as well. It ain't getting away.

[Charon]

I've had WEEKS to prepare for this. I'm sure the castle carpenters have had time to rig up mountings aiming down, it can't be that complicated. Besides, it's probably not going to matter- landing the fire from 5 points of light seige trebuchets on the parked airship will probably be enough.

Ok that's fine.

I should point out there are about a hundred of my mage-priest calling down fire and lightening on the thing and the surrounding area as well. It ain't getting away.

It still could. Maybe...

[Rogue 9]

Well, given that my nation is involved in the war, I'm not going to make the call.

[Dark Silver]

Third.....don't ever post for my chracters without asking me prior to doing so. And no..you didn't take down that airship immediatly, i still get my post in before it goes down...

oh yes, it will go down....

just not like you expected it to...

[LadyTevar]

And once this goes down, the Nithgaard will have a celebration

[The Silence and I]

I have done some research on siege weapons after finding a lot of incomplete, conflicting, generalized or just plain wrong information on most websites I checked in passing. So I looked for a better website and I do believe I found one: Link

A collation of what I found in there:


Ballistae

Torsion powered siege machines vaguely resembling giant crossbows which fired rounded stones.

Ballistae came in a wide range of sizes for a range of purposes. Anything from antipersonnel weapons to light siege was possible and accuracy was very good.

Their major drawback was complexity; these machines were not easy to build.

Small ballistae might fire 5 lb stones up to 300 yards.
Average ballistae fired stones about 30 lbs somewhat less than 300 yards, perhaps 200 yards.
Large ballista could fire stones as large as 172 lbs, but their range was reduced compared with large trebuchets, perhaps 150 yards.

The Palintone is a class of ballista which is easily modified to fire darts and javelins as well as stones.



Catapults

Siege machines resembling giant crossbows, catapults were powered by flexion or several methods of torsion and fired darts and javelins.

The oldest and smallest catapults were essentially large crossbows with stronger draws. Called gastrophetes they could outdistance short hand bows and threw arrows. This design was improved upon with time; a stronger bow was mounted on a frame, then the bow was replaced with torsion springs. The Romans eventually perfected this concept with their scorpio, which came in several sizes.

Manuballistae and arcuballistae were the smallest classes of scorpio catapults and could be operated by a single man. They could fire a javelin 420 yards with extreme accuracy, a very powerful antipersonnel weapon indeed.

The cheiroballista came about later and is the most advanced form of catapult ever developed. Its key innovation was a largely metal frame which allowed far stronger torsion springs to be used. This granted the machine the longest range among arrow throwing weapons, in the area of 500 yards or more, with deadly accuracy (read: greater range was possible, but not accurate). Additionally this form of weapon was often mounted on a mule drawn cart or given its own wheels for added utility.



Onagers

The onager is a torsion powered siege engine with one arm instead of the ballista and catapult’s two. This arm holds a sling and swings upwards, throwing a stone.

The onager was developed by the Romans to replace the far more complex ballista. Its lesser efficiency in terms of range and accuracy were easily made up by its low cost and ease of construction.

Onagers were built to fire large stones like most ballistae and palintones were, and had similar if somewhat lesser range.

Onagers largely replaced ballistae during the late Roman period and the Medieval period, the knowledge to build the more advanced ballistae was largely lost.



Trebuchets

A large base with a pivoting arm attached, which holds a long sling. Trebuchets fired stones, and also dead bodies or parts of bodies at times.

Trebuchets came in two general classes. Smaller traction powered trebuchets were fired when a team of men pulled one end of the arm down, and the usually much larger weight powered trebuchets had a large mass attached to one end of the arm which did the work.

Traction trebuchets could toss small stones around 200 yards and with a high rate of fire. Accuracy was limited and many traction trebuchets were too small to seriously affect fortress walls but they were easily capable of killing soldiers. That isn’t to say all such machines were small, teams of many dozens of men could lob even fairly heavy stones a couple hundred yards.

The more powerful weight powered trebuchets could fire stones in the 200 to 300 lb range and could send such ammunition 300 yards. These weapons easily out ranged and damaged early ballistae but were largely immobile and their rate of fire was low.


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To people planning sieges in one way or another: plan accordingly, and keep in mind longbows were essentially useless beyond 200 yards. Against a cheiroballista too much distance isn't enough, if your leaders aren't more than five football fields away they are in serious danger!

[frigidmagi]

As far as I have been able to determine ballista were used in the vast majority of the time to fire darts and spears...

[Rogue 9]

The earliest ones were used for either, though darts were considerably more common to my knowledge.

[The Silence and I]

The earliest ones were used for either, though darts were considerably more common to my knowledge.

Wikipedia will tell you something like that...

As far as I have been able to determine ballista were used in the vast majority of the time to fire darts and spears...

Yes, and those were small ballistae called catapults by people who research and build ancient weapons. According the site I linked, which features people who research and build ancient weapons.

Ballistae and Catapults look almost identical, the former was more heavily built and fired rocks (heavier build to fire heavier objects...) and the latter were fairly small by comparison, had longer range and fired javelins and darts.

A palintone could fire either stones or spears, and looked much like a ballistae. I'm not sure what modifications were needed to enable this flexibility in ammunition though.

(One big reason most weapons fired one or the other is if you build a weapon capable of firing a 30 lb rock 200 yards and then put a 2 lb javelin into it, you will damage the weapon. The arms swing violently into the frame because the javelin is easy to accelerate for arms built for the stone, and wooden parts crack, joints loosen and bad things happen.)



Part of the reason I did this research is that many sources will call a catapult a ballista, and also call a ballista a ballista. They do look alike and funtion the same, but their ammo, range, accuracy, and uses were different. So in a game like this it is important to know the range of a ballista, right? So wikipedia will tell you they fired rocks and arrows, and could have a range of 500 yards or more. Great. Wait... do the stones go that far or the arrows? Is this for the best kind of ballistae, or an average one? Do the large ones and small ones have similar ranges? How far do the stones go? What sizes of weapons were there? You can see how this is too generalized for a game. Catapults (arrow ballistae) have greater range, but are useless against fortifications. Ballistae (stone ballistae) could be used against people (small ones fired 5 lb stones) or fortifications (the 30 through 170 lb rock throwers). The largest accurate (ish...) model rock throwing ballista today barely breaks 240 yards with a 4 lb stone, and trebuchets with 300 yard ranges at most are said to outrange heavy stone ballistae and onagers.

Without extra names you can't know what it is you are paying for in game and you can't plan battles around it.

(e.g. 1 pt for 10 ballista is meaningless -- what does a 1 pt ballista fire, how far does it fire, what damage can it do? If you make a distinction between ballista and catapult then you know a 1 pt ballista fires 10-ish lb stones about 200-300 yards, while 1 pt for 10 catapults means a small catapult which fires javelins 400 -ish yards. A 2 pt for 10 ballista fires 30-ish lb stones around 200 yards, but never arrows or javelins (no catapult AFAIK was made to fire a 30 lb spear) and could attack fortifications from outside (usually) effective longbow range (longbows could fire almost quasi accurately at 200 yards, but hitting one guy next to a siege engine at that range would be a herculean feat according to what I've researched). A 3 pt for 10 anti air siege engine would be most similar to a manuballista and would have a range -- firing javelins -- of about 500 yards on level ground. Pointing into the air... different story. And so on. With this kind of information players can look at what they have, what the enemy has, and make informed plans)

[frigidmagi]

I'm gonna have to bed to differ. A ballistae for the purpose of this STGOD launches darts and spears. It is light artillery but heavier versions can be used for anti-air. There are bluntly speaking no jet craft or ships capable of going into high area flight, so the enchanced anti-air equipment works.

Catapults again for the purpose of this STGOD are single armed artillery that throws rocks. They are medium artillery.

Trebuchets once again for the purpose of this STGOD are the big guns capable of lofting tons of projectile across large distances. They exist mostly as anti-fortication artillery.

Frankly it is to bloodly late to start calling for changes in the classification and y'all are just gonna have to choke it down for the purposes of game play.

[The Silence and I]

I'm gonna have to bed to differ. A ballistae for the purpose of this STGOD launches darts and spears. It is light artillery but heavier versions can be used for anti-air. There are bluntly speaking no jet craft or ships capable of going into high area flight, so the enchanced anti-air equipment works.

Catapults again for the purpose of this STGOD are single armed artillery that throws rocks. They are medium artillery.

Trebuchets once again for the purpose of this STGOD are the big guns capable of lofting tons of projectile across large distances. They exist mostly as anti-fortication artillery.

Frankly it is to bloodly late to start calling for changes in the classification and y'all are just gonna have to choke it down for the purposes of game play.

I'm not calling for changes. The point class system gets across the right message, the names are vague but not actually wrong, and the GM's may call the things what they want anyway.

Really it was for general interest, and to provide breakdowns of the machines within the provided classes, and corresponding information, such as firing ranges. Call a catapult a ballista if you like, the game does not have to follow real world labels here.

The OOB opening post does make mistakes regarding certain weapons' capabilities*, and I can't change that, but I still find this worth looking up. I get curious.

*Light trebuchets don't meaningfully outrange onagers (what you called catapults -- the OOB post correctly calls them onagers) and accuracy was similar. Perhaps "light trebuchet" was badly named, a light trebuchet would have been hand operated by teams of men pulling the lever arm and would have had ranges at best similar to an onager, throwing small to moderate sized stones. If a small-ish weight powered trebuchet was meant by "light", then the description would be closer to accurate.

*Ballistae (the ones that throw rocks) got as large as onagers, yet there is no heavy ballistae option. This is a very minor thing as the two machines were similar in performance, but I mention it because I can.

[Rogue 9]

The earliest ones were used for either, though darts were considerably more common to my knowledge.

Wikipedia will tell you something like that...

I'm sure it would. Fortunately, I wasn't dumb enough to look there.

[Charon]

I do see Silence's point here. He's not asking that we restructure the point system, simply that we give some more specifics on what the capabilities of the siege weapons are before we run into serious problems where someone does an action only to discover later that with siege weapons on the scene what they're doing is suicidal.

[Charon]

In other news, where is everyone? I know I've not exactly been up to snuff on moving on some things and I'm sorry but a lot of other people have not either. How many of you are dropping out?

[Comrade Tortoise]

I am not, I just have time commitments that make things... special

[frigidmagi]

I'm bloodly well waiting on Thridfain to post his shooting down DS airship and getting a mite cranky over the wait.

[Dark Silver]

likewise...

[Rogue 9]

Okay, this is getting ridiculous. How long has it been since any of you have seen Thirdfain? He's on my AIM list, but if he's logged on in the past month I haven't noticed.