Big ballista and siege models

[MihaiV]

the problem is this:

I must make a big stone thrower, and have no ability to edit the animation files, so must choose from two possible ways of making the model for this:

1 - make the stone thrower based on the onager animation
disadvantages - no bow tensioning during arming phase, since eliminating the link to the arm of the ballista is a must

advantages - strong looking 4 wheeled chasis

2 - make the stone thrower based on the animation for vanilla ballista
disadvantages - possibility of using only a 2 wheel chasis and maybe adding two RIGID(no animation while moving) wheels of smaller size to give the impresion that the weapon is on a somewhat mobile platform. As far as my experimentation with the model can tell me, using 2 wheels on such a large device would look somewhat funny and players would wonder how are 6 men able to move that "beast" only using 2 wheels.

advantages - able to tension the bow arms during arming

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Awaiting suggestions, in the meantime, i'm starting to think of how the chasis would have to look in both cases

[tone]

I'm hoping that Elendil may be able to help out on the animation side.

Of the two above I think I'd probably go for option 2 with two rigid wheels if necessary, if there's no success with the other option.

[Elendil of Númenor]

I haven't tried animating engines before, but I can give it a go - it can't be much different than working on units, can it?

[MihaiV]

I have tried the following, posting so you don't try the same things:

1- add bones for both ballista and onager to the same model - screws up animation
2- used above model with animation from ballista when firing and from onager when moving - good animation when moving, really bad animation (whole body of ballista behaves erraticly) when crank/firing
3- impossible to open animations from engines(as far as I know)
4- add same bone to two wheels, one wheel spins around the other in a circle, the only way this would work is if both weels were paralel not one behind the other

[tone]

Except that you'll probably need to add some new bones to the skeleton

[tone]

We ought at some point to try and get the helepolis working, but it's not a priority.

[tone]

So where is this going to go?

Syracuse ought to have it to start with.

What other factions to get? maybe all greek factions in their elite barracks just in their capital?

[pacco]

maybe all greek factions in their elite barracks just in their capital?

I´m for it.

[rory o'kane]

This kind of thing was carried around by Roman legions - perhaps once the marian reforms kick in, then they should have them available wherever there's a legion available.

[tone]

as big as this huge one?

[rory o'kane]

feck - where's Josephus when you need him!? hang on. there's a passage about the size and power of some of the Roman catapults/ballistae used in the siege of Jerusalem.

incidentally - the repeating ballista was used in the ancient world - it was known as the polybolos.

Ah, here we are. According to Josephus, the largest Roman catapults/ballistae could throw stones of up to one talent in weight. The problem is, Josephus (a Jewish historian who switched sides and documented the Roman siege of Judea) doesn't tell us whether he meant a Roman talent, which was was 32.3 kg, or the heavy common talent, used in New Testament times in Judea, which was 58.9 kg. Being Jewish, he'd have been more familiar with the second one. however, either way, we're talking machines that could hurl rounded boulders over 30kg to quite large distances - at least out of effective arrowshot from a high rampart, which is roughly 300m or so. i think you'd need a machine that big to pull that off.

i just did some simple calculations to work out the diameter of a sphere of limestone that weighed as much as the Roman talen (32.3kg) - it's 28.69cm, which is roughly 11.3 inches. that's a fairly sizeable ball of rock. the talent that the jews would have used is roughly 2/3rds heavier again. Peter Connolly, the author, estimates that a talent was 40 kg. we're talking about some sizeable chunks of rock here,