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Catapults dont work


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It's fairly common to tell units to attack buildings in the fog of war. But if you tell it a catapult, it will not obey. It will unpack and it is in range, but it doesnt shoot. Reason might be that the range of the catapult is bigger than its line of sight (since alpha 24 or 25). If you tell another unit do go close to the building so you see it then the catapult can shoot. But its not logical that it cannot shoot buildings in the fog of war - after all its known where they are located.

In general catapults need a buff. They are very inaccurate, they can barely hit towers. Maybe they should cost less population space too. Against units they are very weak but that might be fine. But they are also rather weak vs buildings.

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I would partially agree, but here is the related bug I've noticed - Attack Move across map makes catapults stop on first enemy building sighted. They will unpack and start shooting, but because building isn't at uncovered area, You cannot see building HP - so your catapults shoot infinitely (until you move them closer to reveal that the building is dead hours ago).

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6 hours ago, Purgator_ said:

I would partially agree, but here is the related bug I've noticed - Attack Move across map makes catapults stop on first enemy building sighted. They will unpack and start shooting, but because building isn't at uncovered area, You cannot see building HP - so your catapults shoot infinitely (until you move them closer to reveal that the building is dead hours ago).

They need greater vision range.

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8 hours ago, Purgator_ said:

I would partially agree, but here is the related bug I've noticed - Attack Move across map makes catapults stop on first enemy building sighted. They will unpack and start shooting, but because building isn't at uncovered area, You cannot see building HP - so your catapults shoot infinitely (until you move them closer to reveal that the building is dead hours ago).

Well that is also the case in other games where you only see you've crushed the building after you go scout it - but yes indeed - catapults need a better vision range - maybe add a tech that allows like +25% catapult vision range for 300-500 food "eagle eye" or "sharp shooters" (this latter one I would argue should be 500 food and add +15% accuracy as well so the catapults (and bold shooters) can be useful - I really miss bolt shooters from a23 where you could capture them but they couldn't be destroyed by archers...)

Bolt shooters should have larger shooting max limit then archers so you can counter ranged like you used to back in the day - these last two alphas made bolt shooters obsolete because you can literally just send archers a bit closer and they melt ranged siege so the catapults (and bolt shooters) - because the cost is too big for them to be melted in 1 arrow volley - ever since the nerf of catapults/bolt shooters every single civ became too reliant on rams - romans lost the most in this trade since they relied on bolt shooters to deal with ranged troops back in the day (they don't even have basic sword cav, just champions)

 

Giving every civ a ram + nerfing catapults/bolt shooters to death killed the siege diversification in my humble opinion

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1 hour ago, Alar1k said:

I really miss ... a23 

Substitute the dots with almost any of the current balancing issues, you will get a valid comment. ;) 

I also think that the issue is not whether catapults make too little or too much damages but rather what's the point of making catapults when you can make rams. 

 

Since not every civilization has access to the same sieges (and especially catapults), all sieges need to be able to achieve about the same results or balance between civilizations with different type of sieges will be broken. For example, balance can't be made such that it is expected that catapults are necessary to break a turtling player or a player without access to catapults will have no answer in that scenario.

Similarly, since not all civilization have access to archers, making archers a natural counter to catapults does not make much sense. Some civilizations will be better equipped than others to deal with catapults.

 

As a way to differentiate catapults from other sieges, a23 chose the path to allow catapults to do something that other civilizations could do anyway with other units, although differently, kill units through splash damages. Similarly, to make sure that most civilizations could deal with catapults and not just those with archers, the choice to have very high pierce/low hack armor made sense since melee/sieges would be their natural counter.

 The current design of catapults might be more realistic than a23, but it is way less interesting from a gameplay perspective.

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