Is this a way to have more types of robotowers firing different kinds of projectiles?

[RubiconDecision]

There are two files involved in roboarchers and ballista and cannon towers: the descr_walls and the descr_projectile.

Recently Gigantus mentioned that these can fire automatically if unmanned by changing a value in the descr_walls:

Fire if nearby units or not

tower { full_health 600 control_area_radius 30 manned 1 tower { full_health 600 control_area_radius 30 manned 0

In addition, the descr_walls describes the projectile that fires

Kind of projectile that fires from robotowers

missile_level { stat 7, 0, arrow, 120, 10, missile, missile_mechanical, piercing, arrow_tower, 10, 1 stat_attr area shot_sfx TOWER_ARROW_FIRING shot_gfx fire_angle 90 ; unit size reload_ms flaming_reload_ms ; how fast they reload or efficiency of the firing projectiles. fire_rate small 1500 1500 fire_rate normal 1250 1500 fire_rate large 1250 1500 fire_rate huge 1250 1500 }

The descr_projectile can include many kinds of projectiles and their accuracy. Modders have traditionally have many levels of projectiles to be more penetrating, do more damage, be more accurate, flight arcs, etc.

Now I believe we can only have a roboarcher tower, a ballista tower, and a cannon tower for all kingdoms since they all look at those same files? We can't have a roboarcher that fires arrows, bodkin arrows, crossbow bolts, ballista, rocks from catapults, mangonel oil, trebuchet bolders, etc?

We can't have lots of different kinds of of these, and that's unfortunate since having siege equipment inside of settlements is often useless given the nonelevated position from firing from plazas or paths. In history, a trebuchet that fired from an elevated position naturally increased its range giving the defenders a good advantage versus the ground based trebuchets of the attacker. This meant as the attacker came in to attack the walls, their trebuchets took fire from the defender's trebuchets and were often crippled as a result.

Since we are limited to only three, is it still possible that we could give kingdoms a way that their towers would fire different kinds of arrows or projectives? This would create additional flavor of fighting one kingdom versus another. One might use bodkin arrows instead of ballista. One might use crossbow bolts instead of arrows.

Since cannons in towers should come very late in the game, since in history the existing towers for other artillery couldn't support those much heavier artillery, then it's a shame that we can't have trebuchet towers. Giving the cannon tower usually to the player as a result of steamrolling actions within the first 100+ turns results in weak AI kingdoms sieging powerful players. The AI is not at all that great at sieging strong walls at the citadel and huge city level.

Otherwise, I guess I could mod such that the arrow towers fired ballista, the ballista towers fired trebuchet boulders, and leave the cannon towers intact. Mostly the AI defends and so helping the AI to do this is beneficial for game balance.