Catapults garrisoned aboard triremes

[MiroslavR]

"Garrison a catapult aboard for a long-range siege attack." Can anyone tell me how or whether this works? I've put multiple siege catapults aboard, but the only thing it does is increase the frequency of arrows.

[sanderd17]

Where did you see this phrase fit triremes?

[Zophim]

If I remember correctly, isn't the above phrase advertised on one of 0 A.D.'s loading screens as one of the capabilities of a trireme (or at least a planned feature)?

[MiroslavR]

If I remember correctly, isn't the above phrase advertised on one of 0 A.D.'s loading screens as one of the capabilities of a trireme (or at least a planned feature)?

Yep, that is correct. I've stumbled upon it while translating the game.

[Stan`]

@Sanderd17 can't we adapt your code to add catapults on the boats ?

[thamlett]

In actual gameplay (at least for the present), the catapults are a bonus only for the Quinqueremes available to Ptolemies, Romans, Carthaginians, and Seleucids.

[sanderd17]

They were only planned as bonus for quinqueremes. So that's why I wondered.

[RoekeloosNL]

I think a bonus is great but please not that your ships fire rocks when you put catapults on them. There you got artillery ships for...

[Radagast.]

Isn't a ship manned with siege units an artillery ship?

Do we already have quinteremes for one of our civilizations? It might be as easy as changing garrisonable classes (those from <Identity></Identity> xml node in the templates) to the ship as:

<GarrisonHolder><!-- Component -->    <!-- Component's init data -->    <List>    Infantry    Siege    </List></GarrisonHolder>

Not sure if it's fully correct but it should be somewhat. At this moment it doesn't have an effect if you garrison those but it might be doable analoguously to the GarrisonArrowMultiplier in the BuildingAI component.

Therefore add this to the above XML:

<!-- ... --><BuildingAI>    <DefaultMeleeAttackValue>10</DefaultMeleeAttackValue>    <GarrisonMeleeMultiplier>1</GarrisonMeleeMultiplier>    <GarrisonMeleeClasses>Melee Ram</GarrisonMeleeClasses></BuildingAI>

[zzippy]

It has an effect if you garrison catapults. You can garrison 50 (!!) of them in a quinquereme. If you attack opponents port, as close as possible, that port is gone in seconds ..

[auron2401]

Siege weapons should consume more space on boats than other units.

Eg: siege rams, 5, catapults, 10.

So quintrireme factions dont get a big bad bonus at naval combat.

Quintriremes really should be BIG triremes, not "siege ships" (else this could imbalance other factions)

[Oimat]

They don't. Because you need 10 catapults in a boat to get a significant boost, nobody will do it. Because 10 catapults are more valuable than a boat that fire rocks, the bonus is not good enough to be used as it is.

[Stan`]

If we had them on the boats like I suggested, that could be useful. But since garrisonning could be a little annoying, you could have a tech that default set one on it.

Edited July 20, 2014 by stanislas69

[Radagast.]

you could have a tech that default set one on it.

You mean a tech that garrisons a catapult in a ship?

Techs can only modify things from the template and I'm not aware of a node in the garrison part of the template that is called "<default_garrison>" or something.

If we added that to the schema, then it might work.

But this ship default garrisoning and population cap should be kept in synch. That means the boat's population cost has to be derived from the default garrison tag.

[sanderd17]

They don't. Because you need 10 catapults in a boat to get a significant boost, nobody will do it. Because 10 catapults are more valuable than a boat that fire rocks, the bonus is not good enough to be used as it is.

Quinqueremes used to have no garrison multiplier at all, resulting in the ship to be way weaker than a garrisoned trireme. So that made no sense at all. I improved the code to allow catapults to add fire power to quinqueremes. But as I'm a bad balancer, I usually make my stuff underpowered. By making it underpowered, it's not that bad when it gets added to the released game without further balancing. Players just won't use it. Overpowering is way worse, as not every faction has a quinquereme, so it would cause imbalance. So currently, a ship with 10 catapults is about as strong as 5 catapults on the ground.

But the garrison multiplier is at your disposal for better balancing in the meantime.

[Yrgael]

Once again, a ship whose primary fighting ability is ramming has become a weapons platform.

Maybe I was absent that day in history class; but I don't remember any 0ad civil ever bombarding anywhere.

An effective siege weapon would likely flip ships who mostly hugged the coast because they could not handle storms.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Once again, a ship whose primary fighting ability is ramming has become a weapons platform.

Maybe I was absent that day in history class; but I don't remember any 0ad civil ever bombarding anywhere.

An effective siege weapon would likely flip ships who mostly hugged the coast because they could not handle storms.

The ship battle is not enough developed for now. So don't expect great things this an alpha.

[Zeta1127]

The Ptolemaic Tessarakonteres, or Juggernaut, was more along the lines of a floating fortress than a conventional warship, and Heavy Warships, mainly Quinqueremes, will be able to double as siege ships when garrisoned with siege weapons. Ramming functionality hasn't been implemented yet.

[oshron]

shouldn't the Macedonians also be able to get this bonus? iirc Alexander used Catapult ships in the Siege of Tyre

[Zeta1127]

I have always wondered why the Macedonians don't have Quinqueremes.