The Catapult gameplay dilemma

[Tristan]

Ok. The way I see it is the following.

The idea behind catapults is that they give the attacker the ability to crush walls making it easier to take castles. Problem now is, that the catapults are very effective at taking down walls causing castles to have little to no defensive purpose.

If you lower the effectiveness of catapults the attackers are just going to arm themselves with greater patience making the siegebattles even longer and drawn out.
Adding ammunition to catapult could be a solution, but is it conceivable that attackers would never be well stocked on this?

Right now, besides being a cool feature, I have a hard time imagining how catapults add to the fun of gameplay.

I might lack vision, but can someone come with a suggestion of how they can actually increase fun? Not just draw out sieges and after waiting for an hour making them pitched battles.

[Greziz]

I agree the way catapults are as of now is terrible. I prefer my siege battles to be similar to single player siege. People are forced to bring ladders or use the preset invincible ladders basically assuring that it is always harder to take a castle than defend one.

[Lizard_man]

catapults are fine...

[Ujin]

I agree the way catapults are as of now is terrible. I prefer my siege battles to be similar to single player siege. People are forced to bring ladders or use the preset invincible ladders basically assuring that it is always harder to take a castle than defend one.

Catapults should make gaps in walls instead of bringing the walls down completely, that way they create more places for the attackers to breach but still possible to fend off by the besieged side. They should also have limited (and expensive) ammo and/or longer reload rate.

I know all this is hard to code and  make into  the game, but as it is atm, catapults render castles almost completely useless.

[Keshian]

I think making ammo very expensive and limited would be good solution.  Wont be able to take down all the entire castle walls, isntead lower them slightly making thema  little easier for ladder atatcks and siege tower tactics.  Catapults should be useful but not the be all, end all of siege equipment they are now.

[CrazyCracka420]

retracted:  http://forum.c-rpg.net/index.php/topic,15179.msg215345.html#msg215345

[DarkFox]

There should be a timer for attackers. After 1-2 hours they reatreat and lose 15% of troops and equipment. So they will be forced to play aggressively.

[Moncho]

I like the idea of ammo and would like to introduce another (logical) one:
If you  break (or even damage) a wall, the faction that keeps the castle in the end needs to REPAIR it, probably with huge costs (and time to repair it).
This would disencourage attackers from just razing the castle and make defenders have to focus on breaking catapults so that if they win, they dont have to use the resources to repair the castle. Also, I dont know if for later battles the scene could be saved so that the unrepaired walls appear still broken (or and admin use a catapult to break them before the beginning of the proper siege).

[CrazyCracka420]

I like the idea of ammo and would like to introduce another (logical) one:
If you  break (or even damage) a wall, the faction that keeps the castle in the end needs to REPAIR it, probably with huge costs (and time to repair it).
This would disencourage attackers from just razing the castle and make defenders have to focus on breaking catapults so that if they win, they dont have to use the resources to repair the castle. Also, I dont know if for later battles the scene could be saved so that the unrepaired walls appear still broken (or and admin use a catapult to break them before the beginning of the proper siege).

I suggested this in another thread, I'm glad you bring it up.  This is a very good idea.  It should take time and/or money for the people who take over a castle to repair the damage done during the siege.  Once strategus implements crafting/engineering then they should also add an option for an engineer to rebuild the walls/fix the damage using resources (and also still keep the option of paying a certain amount and for a certain time to fix a percentage of the walls [like say 5% an hour at a cost of 1000 gold]).

Also, can someone move this thread to the stragegus issues forum?

[SPQR]

If I'm not mistaken this thread: http://forum.c-rpg.net/index.php/topic,2869.0.html hints that in the future walls will be "hollowed out" rather than completely destroyed, which will balance things out more.

That plus I think we'll start seeing "defensive catapults" as standard castle defense equipment.

[HarunYahya]

For fucks sake adding expensive ammo to catapults ?
THEY THROW ROCKS FOR FUCKS SAKE ROCKS !
It is just fine as it is.Add defensive ballistas or flaming arrows if you want to buff defenders but do not NERF catapults.

[Digglez]

balistias would be great!

i agree its kinda of dumb that in 30 minutes attackers can render 2 sides of the castle completely wall-less.

[Ujin]

For fucks sake adding expensive ammo to catapults ?
THEY THROW ROCKS FOR FUCKS SAKE ROCKS !
It is just fine as it is.Add defensive ballistas or flaming arrows if you want to buff defenders but do not NERF catapults.

Pretty cool rocks if they totally destroy castle walls (no matter made of what) in 4-5 shots.

[Cepeshi]

Pretty cool rocks if they totally destroy castle walls (no matter made of what) in 4-5 shots.

saw a catapult hit wall like 8 times today and it got ALMOST down, so what the hell are u talking about?

[Ujin]

saw a catapult hit wall like 8 times today and it got ALMOST down, so what the hell are u talking about?

Castle walls can be different. Point is, catapults make  sieges way easier than what they are supposed to be. A trained catapult crew (or two, why not) can demolish the whole castle in no time.