Some ballista information and balancing ideas.

I'd say that's more of a problem with some of those maps, high terrain in the middle means that without any heavy preparation by the enemy team for said vehicle it can easily supply a constant stream of damage.

That and the fact that ballista bolts are a one time creation for that ballista as opposed to what they should probably be which is that you need to purchase them 1 by 1 and can carry a limited amount,similar to bomb arrows. Either that or make them much harder to churn out in large quantities and give them a decent carrying cap. (Let's say 5 per slot, but they' cost a fair amount of wood and perhaps a few stone each to craft [2 stone, 20 wood for example]).

I do agree that they are pretty much all reward no risk, while trying to think of a way to counter them on that specific map that I had to deal with them in the sundered kingdom (Klok's last upload), really the only way I could think of to effectively deal with them would be to either have someone constantly setting up defense for that or to just use them yourself, I'm sure there are other ways I'm not thinking of, but when you have 2 of them going up to the front and knights that can protect it (Especially from a good position), it's nearly impossible to counter.

Spoiler

I would think (getting off topic here) that a good idea here would be to re-implement the satchel (same way you get it as before for the TTH), they can spawn more often than kegs but do roughly 90-99% of the damage to a light (current vehicles excluding war boats?), they could only damage vehicles and would need to be attached to them, and could only be destroyed by an enemy attacking it off in time (similar to a keg or bomb but stationary on the object). I've been working on doing it myself, but a bit busy and still new running through this code heh, especially the vehicle stuff.

 

Continued from a conversation over here. Having the ballista only posts moved would be neat too.

Anyone decently smart will lock it as soon as it's put down, meaning that taking it over only stops them spawning, you still have to destroy it (fortunately you can do so by going builder on the ballista, but now you're stuck as a builder unless you go back to base).

Tipping it works if you have bombs as a knight to break the tiles (without wheels it's not quite so easy to tip it seems), and if you don't break the tiles well enough (which isn't fast at all for a knight) it will as you said do nothing, and also won't even change the trajectory.

Things I can think of to counter the 'locking' which is OP.

1)Remove the feature
2)Allow builders to create wheels at builder workshops, allow anyone to take thew heels and reattach them
3)Some sort of vehicle only damaging light-keg (I'm working on something now that might do the trick)
4)Increase the price of ballista or bomb bolts (which are the real problem, this is probably the easy solution).

 

I like this, mainly because it's much strategically deep then the other options you suggested, and actually increase the numbers of options available to players do deal with incoming attacks. Not only this, but it's a counter-attack mechanic, rather then just making offensive harder, like the other ones.

 

Done, a bit messy though since posts are ordered by time, so you kind aren't the OP anymore.

Personally, I would agree with Unnamed as far countering ballistas go, for the same reasons. Basically there's a real point to capturing a ballista.

As far as suggestion 1 is concerned, one of the reasons it was implemented was because they were waaaaaayyyyyyy too easy too push back. Basically ballistas weighed as much as paper. This meant that in litterally 2 attacks, an archer could make it fall off from where it was set and cause it to fall off. It was hilarious though cause when it fell, it tended to sort of fall upside down, but not completely. This caused people spawning inside to get stuck and flipping it wouldn't fix it generally since they would still be locked in. Anyways, if locking down were removed, maybe just make it heavier so it'd take something like around 6~10 arrows to push it back about 3 tiles? This way if it still manages to fall back, it's your fault for letting someone shoot enough times for it to fall down. Wouldn't solve the other problem though of idiots trying to drive it while you are shooting it.

I can see the whole ballista swapping direction on team capture (that klok suggested) sort of working, but the problem with that is that chances are that it can be more easily captured by the other team again since generally it's placed in a place where's it's advantageous for them and not you. Additionally, it's also very likely that it'll be a position where it's basically useless for your team to use anyways so even if you do manage to capture it and defend it, it'll still only be usable as a spawn point which doesn't really solve the problem.

 

I agree with being able to craft wheels for the ballista. As unnamed said, it's more strategic. But maybe the wheels should be crafted from the builder shop (CTF) or Workbench (TTH) instead of the siege workshop? You have to assume that the team that just captured the ballista was probably just under attack from the ballista, and the team probably won't have a siege workshop or enough gold to quickly get one after the onslaught.

 

I was talking with some fellas on mumble and we thought of this as a potential solution:
When the ballista wheels pop off they don't just vanish, instead they go into the inventory of whoever took them off, so if you die with that last second protect, IF the attacker has the time he can rummage through the bodies if he killed you on it and grab then to put back on. However this also means if you manage to throw them off a cliff, or go a bit back to get rid of them then toss them, or whatever you may do to get rid of them, that you can do so to avoid the wheels going back on.

Wheels should also be purchasable at a shop for a few wood or through any (whichever is more balanced) of the methods above, so that the person can't just throw them in their building and not just have that person waste twice the time to secure the ballista, as that's just adding a timesink not creating a proper counter.