artilery weapons

[adrien]

I was wonder if catapults and balistas exsist in armageddon. and if not, why not?

[WarriorPoet]

Wood is scarce, and what trees there are are usually stunted. Where are Zalanthans going to get a timber masive for the cross-beam or throwing arm? Remember, the walls and gates of both city states are huge and very, very thick, this means that for any damage at all to be done, the catapult or whatever would need to be HUGE...

And, why would you need boring old ballista when you could just enslave a magicker and have him hurl a kickass fireball?

-WP

[adrien]

acctualy catapults after walls became stone where not for breaking walls so muchbut for lauching flamming stones or baskets of hot burning oil over the wall.

you dont need big catapults just the ability to toss junk.

[John]

How often does a seige happen? Not too often. So I can see the need for catapaults not being very high, so no-one's bothered to invent them.

[FiveDisgruntledMonkeysWit]

Catapults seem a little medievalish for Armageddon, but for some reason, I always liked the idea of a ballista. I can see it being used in certain, extreme purpose, like in the hunt for massive game such as bahamets or silt horrors. And I'm sure the players in the midst of the most recent HRPT would've liked a ballista right about then.
The scarcity of wood is a good deterrance as WarriorPoet pointed out. However, I imagine that, considering the vast amount of wealth each city-state seems to possess, they could probably afford up to five apiece without crippling their military budget, if effecting it at all. Personally, I think the two big things stopping siege engines for appearing would have to be lack of knowledge, and lack of neccesity.
As others have pointed out, ballistae and catapults and similar machines seem reduntant when you have Templars and magickers and beings with superhuman strength and speed. I mean, when you get right down to it, a half-giant with a javelin is basically a highly mobile balista.
A highly mobile balista that needs to be fed. But I digress.
There's also the fact that there are no massive, ongoing military conflicts going on in the Known World right now, wherein a siege engine might be practical and useful.
The second reason why we don't have such weaponry would be the amazing power of Zalanthan ignorance. While keeping the vast majority of the population illiterate is a great way to throw salt on the proverbial seeds of revolt, it's not such a great way to make advances in technology, including military technology. One could argue that a ballista is simply an oversized crossbow, and since crossbows exist in Zalanthas, Zalthans could make the jump into building ballistae. Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple. Some one, particularly a military-minded person, needs the free time and inclination to think it up. Then they need to think of a way to get the materials, space, and resources to build a prototype, test, and make neccesary adjustments. They'd also have to come up with  clever way (clever even by our standards) to avoid using even a signle metallic part. I'm pretty sure that if you just take a regular crossbow and inflate it by about eight times its normal size, you wouldn't get anything even close to a working ballista.
This is probably because of a bunch of scientific-sounding physics stuff that I don't know about because I took chemistry instead (I like watching things melt and/or explode).
Then there's also the issue of how a siege weapon would be coded (but that could always be worked out in good time).
My point is, why would any military-minded person go through all that trouble when traditional warfare (as far as they know) works just as well?
Anyway, just because the walls of Allanak aren't bristling with trebuchets doesn't mean that no siege engines exist. Maybe there's a catapult buried in the rubble and treasures of Steinal? Maybe Tuluk, with their considerable wood resouraces, are working on a primitive ballista? Maybe some random yokel in the outskirts of Allanak is mixing together flash powder and wine, hoping to get a buzz, and instead ends up inventing a crude grenade?
Who knows? Maybe next time war breaks out (it's a when, people, not an if) we'll see terrifying, magick-enhanced machines of death stalking the battlefield, manned by muls and powered by elf's blood?
Or perhaps they'll just hand a spear to the nearest half-giant, point, and move on.

[Cenghiz]

Hire a Whiran then a Krathi.. Let the Whiran work on the Krathi and bingo! You've a portable flaming balls catapult. And it's not an easy target as a huge catapult is.
You need the gate open? Eh.. Rukkians are not that rare. You need an artillery which's gonna kill a few men at once, (I wonder if in only movies an artillery arrow may catch more than one or it can, normally) that Elkrosian would do much more but don't keep close.

And Tulukis.....

Heh, they simply suck. They should have h-giant soldiers hurling dwarves with obsidian armor and gith with spears to the enemy. They have a group, uber super sekrit weapon too, but it's IC.
By the way, there was a similar thread some time ago.. I'm just too lazy to find it and also I'm at work, have scarce time only to read.

[Dracul]

http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2605&highlight=siege

[Ghost]

If I saw it right, there are -virtual- catapults and ballistas in the game, at a specific place.  Had I not hear you shouting "IC INFO!  BURN THE WITCH!"  deep inside you, I could easy say where I saw them.

[ashyom]

We have catapults in game:  Half Giants

[Anael]

And Tulukis.....

Heh, they simply suck.

Go half-giant/kryl/bahamet war mutants!

[Anonymous]

We have catapults in game:  Half Giants

Yeah, but they are only three shotters.

[moab]

There was an excellent article in Dragon magazine back in the very dark past when AD&D was still fun.  It examined what would have happened to castle construction philosophy had magick been considered.  Maybe I'll google around for it a bit.  

As far as seige warfare in Zalanthas - the reason they were successful (in general) in RL was because the people outside the wall could easily get food while the people inside could not.  In our little bit of misery, the people outside would just as likely starve, suffer sandstorms, get sunburns and spider bites.  :-D  Not a fun time. Probably hard to keep morale up.

Now, given magickers creating food (for both sides) and water - seige warfare of this kind would not work - there would have to be some violent confrontation and magick changes everything.

I suspect that if magickers were nullified in some way, you would see seige weapons ('pults, towers, etc) being used.  Wood is rare, but so is steel and we've got a tower of that stuff in Allanak.  I'm sure someone could cut down enough trees.

[adrien]

http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2605&highlight=siege

LOL i forgot about that thread lol

[sacac]

A rukkian could make a solid bone catapult with firehardened wood and bone braces, right?

[FiveDisgruntledMonkeysWit]

sacac wrote:

A rukkian could make a solid bone catapult with firehardened wood and bone braces, right?

I'm not entirely sure why you'd assume that a Rukkian in particular would be able to do that, but...
Find out IC, I guess?

[Xygax]

Going to go ahead and lock this thread, since someone has been kind enough to locate a previous thread on the same subject.  Feel free to resurrect that one, if you've anything new to add.

-- X