User:Dree12/Siege engine guide

Siege engines, when used correctly, can be potent defences and greatly assist in proper fortress defence. Although ballistae are indisputably more powerful, especially when used with metal arrowheads, even the lowly catapult has its own quirks — being able to fire many of them in a line is one of the most evident.

Proper usage of siege engines requires two main details to consider: the operators, and the operations.

Siege operators

There are four important things to remember about siege operators:

1. They are civilians. This means that when manning their stations, they will flee if enemy units approach too close. It doesn't matter if there is no actual path, it's the mere distance that triggers it. On the plus side, they don't get unhappy thoughts from being "Activated" for the military - it's just another civilian job.
2. Training siege operation is very slow. Start early.
3. Siege engines do not fire quickly, so you want high skill to make the few shots you get count.
4. Once trained (some years later), they can be trained up in other civilian skills that are useful whenever they're not at their stations. (See cross-training for suggestions.)

With these in mind, pick the proper civilians to do siege operating. If any migrants had arrived with the siege operating skill, no matter how little, picking them could result in several months or even years cut off from their training time. Otherwise, choose dwarves without any other important jobs; masons, being constantly in high demand, may not be good choices.

Design

Catapults

Unlike traps, siege engines can be positioned in many different ways. For example, it is possible to position a row of catapults, all firing at the same time. A selective stone stockpile should be placed nearby, ideally forbidding economic stones (which dwarves will not fire.

Fortifications are just as useful for catapults as they are for archers, and will help protect your siege operators from enemy fire. Unfortunately, they will not stop the from running away on sight of an enemy.

Operations

Please bear in mind that this is very long term stuff (10 years). Only by having highly trained siege operators and high quality siege weapons can you shoot accurately.

• Start off with two miners and a wood cutter trained to proficient siege engineer status

• After your fortress has about 50 dwarves, build a siege workshop, place it at the front of your fort near the battlements and designate a custom stockpile within the battlements that can take only ballista arrows. Designate another custom stockpile that can take only regular stone.

• Make sure only one of your dwarves is set to have siege engineering as an active labor. Change that dwarf's orders to have nothing but siege engineering enabled. It may help to give that dwarf a custom profession title (such as SIEGE) to distinguish that dwarf from others. When new Mechanic or Siege engineer dwarves arrive, make sure to disable siege engineering for them.

• You'll need wood. Lots of wood.

• Get the siege engineer dwarf to build 18 catapult parts, place them inside behind fortifications (which catapults CAN shoot through), designate a custom stockpile of regular stone within the battlements.

• Train six dwarves to legendary status with mining or another fast-training skill: their high attributes are absolutely necessary for siege operating. All operators should have no job orders other than their stat-training and siege operating. When there is no mining to be done, set six catapults to "fire at will"

• After the catapult parts are done, get the siege engineer dwarf to build about 100 wooden ballista arrows. Don't bother with metal arrowheads as they'll use 3 pieces of metal each, and that certainly adds up.

• Now that his or her skill is at a high level, your siege engineer dwarf should be able to build superior quality (*) siege engine parts with about a 75% success rate. Build about 40 catapult parts and 40 ballista parts.

• Build ten catapults and ten ballistas with a MINIMUM of superior quality (*) components in an alternating sequence along your well stocked battlements. Dump any inferior components.

• By this point your miners/operators should be at a high level of skill, possibly legendary. This gives your superior quality weapons a devastatingly high rate of fire and awesome accuracy.

Alternative training program

This works well if you have a secure above-ground enclosure, a statue garden or farm plots with a surrounding wall, or a privatized plateau, as it can avoid cave adaptation while training (and the engines could be placed where they also have a useful field of fire). At a minimum, a wall with an interior area of 6x6 is barely adequate for two practice engines, stairs up and recovery trench, but a training facility could be built entirely underground.

Embark with a Proficient Siege Engineer. (Training takes far too long, and it's not a moodable skill.)

After the first caravan departs and your fortress begins to settle in, build your Siege Workshop near access to the topside if possible — parts are heavy, and clutter a workshop quicker than other finished goods. Manufacture a half-dozen or a dozen (or more) of one type of siege weapon part, enough for 2-3 decent engines - higher overall quality is better, if you have the logs and time to spare. Choice between ballista/catapult is up to you, but don't worry about building up ammo supplies - you will have some stone lying around, and one ballistae arrow per engine is enough for training. No rush, don't have to be done until your operators are actually ready to practice.

If possible, build theses close to the dining hall and barracks/bedrooms - not too close (see noise), but close enough to reduce travel time. Dig a channel (double-wide if for ballistae ammo) on one side that can catch ammo, and add a wall (or drawbridge) behind that, plus a ramp or stairs down behind the engines to access the fallen ammo in the trench. (If ballistae, take precautions against accidental friendly fire accidents.) If the location allows the engine to be turned and used when needed, so much the better, but this is mainly for training for now.

Side view

    ss>  |       ss> = siege engine (fires to right)     |  = wall or drawbridge backstop
   X...__         X  = stairs/ramp                          ... = access tunnel to trench
                  __ = bottom of channel for ammo catching       

Once your first wave of immigrants shows up (first Winter or second Spring or so), pick a bunch to become "military" - don't decide who will become what, not quite yet.

Put them to training on pumps, mining through soil and/or bookkeeping to improve attributes. "Tough" recruits chase more attributes and go into military training, where sparring will be dangerous and injuries expected - "Very Strong" recruits, with no other attributes, become siege operators, for lugging heavy ammo (and to avoid hurting each other during sparring). (Agility is universally beneficial, dealer's choice.)

Set your chosen few to firing the siege weapons into the wall asap, as soon as they have some useful attribute increases - you aren't looking for uber-dwarves, just something above peasant level. If you want, use cross-training to allow them to become useful masons when the need arises, though this delays their siege training. (This can be done sooner if you have a lot of urgent building projects, or later once they have achieved acceptable levels of siege operator.)

If you want to manufacture more ammo, you can set a stockpile adjacent to the engines and designate some haulers, and that will speed training some, but the walk down to retrieve ammo is not a long one.

Add more trainees and training engines as your work-pool grows. Final numbers depend on your needs, defensive plan and environment.

Once they've trained to Legendary (some few years?), they can be fully cross-trained to be productive while not firing the engine. Give them beds near their final stations, and don't forget to train replacements before accidents happen.