Small catapult

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Revision as of 19:10, 31 January 2019 by Budzilla (talk | contribs) (No longer a minimum distance on the catapult.)
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Main / Skills / Carpentry / Fine carpentry / Small catapult

Small catapult
A Small catapult
Creation
Total materials
Result
  • Small catapult
Skill and improvement

Description

A small four wheel catapult designed to be dragged by one person. It could be used to hurl items at walls and fences.

Creation

Overall materials required

A list of all base materials required to create a Small catapult.

Usage

A catapult's primary use is the destruction of walls and gates. You can hit another person with it, but it's very difficult.

To use a catapult, you must first load it with ammunition. Almost everything can be fired, but rock shards and ores do the most damage. Quality and damage of the ammunition will affect the amount of damage done to your target. To load a catapult, activate an item in your inventory, right-click the catapult, and select Machine -> Load.

After you load the catapult, it must be winched. With every winch the catapult shoots 1 tile further. The maximum distance a catapult can shoot is 50. To winch a catapult, right-click the catapult after it has been loaded, and select winch. This distance is calculated including both the tiles that the catapult and the target are standing on.

To aim the catapult, simply drag it so that it points to the target. This can be improved with further precision by changing the firing angle. By default, the firing angle will be 45 degrees and it can be changed to be between 5 and 85 degrees.

Only when the catapult has winched at least 10 winches, you can fire the catapult. Right-click the catapult, select Machine and then select 'Fire'. If it was properly aimed and winched, you will either get a message in event window that you just missed the target, or a list of everything it hits. If it only says that you've hit nothing, your aim is off.

Catapults' trajectory is affected by elevation. Firing uphill requires more winching to hit the target, whereas firing downhill requires less winching.

Ammunition

Item Notes
Rock Shards Combined rock shards will do more damage
Stone Brick Less damage than rock shards
Ore Frequently used during raids, as it cannot be used by the enemy to repair walls and it's near worthless after shot.
Corpse Deal moderate damage and can be useful when other ammo types are unavailable.

Notes

  • The skill used when operating a catapult is Catapults.
  • Needs 21.0 body strength to use.
  • Can be dragged.
  • Although the description implies it can be dragged by an animal, it cannot.
  • Action timer for winching is affected by skill
  • Cannot be fired inside caves.
  • Any item launched with the catapult will be either heavily damaged or destroyed. Any item that is not destroyed will be at the target tile.
  • Starting power is determined by the number of winches. Power is directly related to starting velocity (E.G: 20 winches is 20 m/s)
  • Anything within a small radius of the landing position will take damage and the size of the radius is determined by the size of the thrown projectile
  • Catapults projectile arc is checked for any walls, floors, bridges or fences it hits. Otherwise it travels a full arc until it hits the ground.
  • Weight, quality and final velocity all add into how much damage it deals to objects it lands on (Metal and Stone do the most damage)
  • Catapults can fire over buildings and walls.
  • Catapults cannot hit guard towers.
  • Catapults cannot damage mine doors.
  • You can do a maximum of 20 damage to your target in one successful hit.
  • Catapults seem to be able to damage bridges (Thanks to Cenotaph for testing). Four Rock Shards did 8.0374664 dmg on a bridge of QL = 48.90988.
  • Cannot be operated with furniture or other "large" objects within 1 tile of it.
  • Cannot be operated if the tile it stands on is below water level.
  • Can be loaded into larger ships like the knarr or cog.

Freedom servers

It is possible to use catapults on Freedom servers, with following limitations:

  • On deed: can destroy anything (including owned houses) if given destroy building permission. Applies to ally and non-citizens as well.
  • Off deed: (including perimeters) can destroy any fence, wall or hedge, but not buildings, even if the building belongs to the user.

Tips

  • When attacking with a catapult during a raid, a good strategy is to use ore as ammunition. Ore does the same damage as equivalent quality rock, but unlike rock cannot be used by the defenders to repair or rebuild their walls.
  • Combine ammunition into 80kg shards in order to maximize damage.
  • Quality of ammunition not only affects the damage, but keeping quality 25+ generally yields a chance your ammo is not destroyed. This allows you in demolition situations to collect spent ammo for using again.
  • A spyglass is an excellent tool for measuring distance when winching