Please consider adjusting the ballista...

[LonomisBlack]

Okay, so look... lets compare the ballista to the next nearest "siege" weapon: grenades. Using base stats, only 12 grenades are necessary to blow apart a stone foundation, 4 for a reinforced doorway. With the current patch changes, around 25 ballista bolts are necessary to do the same to a stone foundation and 10 for the door (if you can even hit it from the coast which, since the ballista is so expensive and destroyed on pickup, you'd be crazy to put on anything other than a mobile base).
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In comparison, the grenades are cheaper, still long ranged, only require a hand to launch, and are the clear choice in siege alternative when compared to the EXCESSIVELY EXPENSIVE ballista/bolts. If you insist on having the ballista be this weak, why not just reduce the resource cost concurrently? If the ballista were comparable to a crossbow, like say 10x more expensive for this example since it's effectively just a really big crossbow, the resource cost would STILL only be 70 metal, 100 wood, and 350 fiber. This is considerably more reasonable than current requirements. Even if it were 20x more expensive: 140 metal, 200 wood, and 350 fiber would be a STEAL compared to the current 500 wood, 300 metal, 250 stone, 200 fiber, 100 thatch, and 100 hide required now. In fact, in terms of item worth, this makes the ballista around 75x more expensive than a crossbow and when compared to a grenade, roughly 150x more expensive.
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inb4 "nerf the grenade".

P.S. If you're worried this is too op for primal, that's fine... just nerf cost as well. DPS will still be affected due to reload time, aim time, etc. The only way a raided base is worth it is if you make more than you lost raiding it in the first place. Strategy 101. The ballista is not worth it.

[LordBeef21]

Amen. The ballista is just not practical anymore. :/

[Lustmoerder]

This change is aimed directly at the primitive servers and those there that cried that their stone princess castles could be breached.

[Myst?c]

Originally posted by nevarine:

Originally posted by Lustmoerder:

This change is aimed directly at the primitive servers and those there that cried that their stone princess castles could be breached.

Its great to see the developers focus solely on 1 server type when modifying content... really keeps everyone happy...

they only needed to mod one version, maybe make prim another conversion like sotf, to allow updates to be seperate

[Lilkinsly]

On normal PVP servers, there are multiple options for destroying stone and metal structures.

On primitive structures, there is tools / weapons and the Ballista.

The Ballista was probably never designed to be the main siege weapon in normal pvp.

[Lilkinsly]

Originally posted by nevarine:

Originally posted by blade.blaster56745:

they only needed to mod one version, maybe make prim another conversion like sotf, to allow updates to be seperate

I mean, from what I can tell, primitive servers are just running a mod anyways... (correct me if im wrong there)...

Perhaps a better idea would be to finish the base game first, and perhaps let the modders fix their own stuff...

Primitive servers are not running mods. The engrams available to them are just restricted.

[Jesper / MrJones]

I believe the Ballista is intended to be "base defence" from high lvl dinos and used on platforms. Now we at least have a defence, if an enemy show up with a bronto+platform and a few rexes.
I play on primitive btw, but I still think it would be nice defence on a normal server as well. Try test it on dinos instead of buildings :-)

[Myst?c]

Originally posted by Jesper / MrJones:

I believe the Ballista is intended to be "base defence" from high lvl dinos and used on platforms. Now we at least have a defence, if an enemy show up with a bronto+platform and a few rexes.
I play on primitive btw, but I still think it would be nice defence on a normal server as well. Try test it on dinos instead of buildings :-)

200 damage, try going at a 50k attack rex wtih that, i play on a server on pre nerf, so try 100

[Lilkinsly]

Any private server can go into their ini files and adjust the engrams available. The devs did it for all their primitive servers.

[☦]

Originally posted by Jesper / MrJones:

I believe the Ballista is intended to be "base defence" from high lvl dinos and used on platforms. Now we at least have a defence, if an enemy show up with a bronto+platform and a few rexes.
I play on primitive btw, but I still think it would be nice defence on a normal server as well. Try test it on dinos instead of buildings :-)

Except the damage vs. Dinos is pathetic. Ballista has been turned into a ping-pong ball launcher.

[Kevin]

I am not really caring if the ballista is weak verses structures. To be honnest that not what a ballista was designed to do. Catapults trebs and cannons were the flavor of the day for knocking down castles. Ballista were more anti personel with a small aoe, or for penertration through cover.

[☦]

Originally posted by Kevin:

I am not really caring if the ballista is weak verses structures. To be honnest that not what a ballista was designed to do. Catapults trebs and cannons were the flavor of the day for knocking down castles. Ballista were more anti personel with a small aoe, or for penertration through cover.

No, ballistas were a siege weapon designed to, imagine this, take out stone walls.

[Myst?c]

Originally posted by TAS Cheshire:

Originally posted by Kevin:

I am not really caring if the ballista is weak verses structures. To be honnest that not what a ballista was designed to do. Catapults trebs and cannons were the flavor of the day for knocking down castles. Ballista were more anti personel with a small aoe, or for penertration through cover.

No, ballistas were a siege weapon designed to, imagine this, take out stone walls.

or atleast put a big hole in said wall,

[☦]

Originally posted by blade.blaster56745:

Originally posted by TAS Cheshire:

No, ballistas were a siege weapon designed to, imagine this, take out stone walls.

or atleast put a big hole in said wall,

Yep.

[Myst?c]

Originally posted by TAS Cheshire:

Originally posted by blade.blaster56745:

or atleast put a big hole in said wall,

Yep.

i think that would be cool, hit a wall a few times with it and if your aim is decent you have made a small entrance thru that all, not quite the entire wall is down, but enough for a man, or small dino to fit thru, thought that will take a while to be implemented, poor engine has enough stress as it is

[LonomisBlack]

Originally posted by Kevin:

I am not really caring if the ballista is weak verses structures. To be honnest that not what a ballista was designed to do. Catapults trebs and cannons were the flavor of the day for knocking down castles. Ballista were more anti personel with a small aoe, or for penertration through cover.

"The Greek ballista was a siege weapon. All components that were not made of wood were transported in the baggage train. It would be assembled with local wood, if necessary. Some were positioned inside large, armoured, mobile siege towers or even on the edge of a battlefield. For all the tactical advantages offered, it was only under Philip II of Macedon and even more so under his son Alexander, that the ballista began to develop and gain recognition as both siege engine and field artillery. Polybius reports about the usage of smaller more portable ballistae, called scorpions, during the Second Punic War"
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballista
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What you're referring to as an anti personel weapon is specifically the scorpion/scorpio:
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"The scorpio was a smaller catapult-type weapon, more of a sniper weapon than a siege engine, operated by one man. The scorpio was basically an early crossbow, a "catapult with bolts", probably first invented by the Greeks, then later adopted and used on a larger scale by the Roman legions. This catapult used a system of torsion springs to propel the bolts."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpio_(weapon)

The fundamental difference between these is that the scorpio was basically a crossbow mounted on a stick/pole and the ballista was an enormous crossbow (like the one in ark) that could tear down walls. The power of the ballista came primarily from its enormous heavy metal tipped bolts that could compromise the integrity of particularly (you guessed it) stone walls. The mass and penetrating ability of the bolts would crack and undermine the structure of stone walls, in particular, to bring the entire thing down under its own weight.

The misconception here then is that people don't understand how a simple bolt could bring down a stone wall. "How could it punch through a wall?" "It's a slender bolt, what kind of damage could that do?" The thing is, the stone wall brought itself down under its immense weight after the bolt weakened its structural integrity by creating large cracks in the wall... like a flying pickaxe with a lot of punch. Think less "obliteration" and more "pulling the wrong piece in Jenga".
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