Hello 0.A.D community,
I think currently siege engines in general are not interesting to play as they are handled as simple as any unit. I was thinking of introducing following changes to make them more interesting to play.
Top level idea: A siege engine shouldn't take popluation to produce but it will not move or attack untill units are garriosned. The attack and movement will depend on unit garriosned.
Siege engine popupulation utlization: A siege engine shouldn't take any population or train, that means from current population of 3 to 0.
Movement, attack & armor: Movement & attack will varies with respect to the number of units garriosned in the siege engine. While other statics will remian the same. The current and expected values can be seen in following table.
Current
Expected
Inputs
Siege type
Attack
Speed
Attack
Speed (current*x/pop utlized)
Currently pop utilized
Unit Garrisioned
Crush
Pierce
Interval
Crush
Pierce
Interval
Battering Ram
150
1.5
7.2
50
0
4.5
2.4
3
1
Siege Tower
2.5
12
1
6.3
NA
NA
NA
2.1
3
1
Bolt shooter
160
4
8.1
0
80
8
4.05
2
1
Catapult
210
7
7.2
0
105
14
3.6
2
1
*Siege tower has impact only on speed and not other stats, as attacks depends on indivudual unit and not on siege iteself.
Lets take an exmple of battering ram.
With 0 unit garriosned ram will not move or attack.
With 1 unit garriosed, its attack damage, speed and interval will be 1/3rd of what is currently there.
With 2 unit garriosed, its attack damage, speed and interval will be 2/3rd of what is currently there.
With 3 unit garriosned, it will behave as it behave currently.
More than 3 will not have attack on stats but you can garriosn in it as per current state.
Gameplay cases
You can train as many siege as you want but in order to use them, you will need units inside. Depends on your requirement you can garrsion 1/2/3 or more.
You are not pop constrained here but at same time you are, but tactically.
You can park the siege out of fight and after fight when you wants to kill buildings garrsion units and start.
This will also insure to use garriosing units in siege.
There are many use cases I can go about. But i hope you got the idea.
@borg-, @Stan`, @ValihrAnt, @Lion.Kanzen, what do you guys think?
Open for suggestion if you find it interesting.!!