Siege warfare for dummies

Harle

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Dec 24, 2003
Messages
135
A little guide on building and using siege engines

Step 1: Preparation:

In order to build a siege engine you need to have the siegecraft tradeskill. You get this by learning any of the available tradeskills from the tradeskill masters in either TNN or domnann.

You will also need the crafting tools, so get a smiths hammer, planing tool and sewing kit from the crafting merchants in TNN, Domannn, Housing or from the relic villages in the frontiers.

Step 2: Shopping:

At the border keeps there's a merchant selling all the items needed for building siege engines. Before you start buying, you need to decide, what you want to do with your siege.

- Rams are for attacking doors. You can combine up to 3 siege rams to build war/battle rams. A door can only be targeted by one siege engine.

- Ballistas are for attacking other siege engines. They are especially nice for taking out the oil pot, or enemy trebuchets. They can also be used against enemy players, but siege engines are their primary target. On keeps and towers you can build larger versions of the ballista, called pallintones.

- Trebuchets are made for taking down walls. If you destroy the wall of a tower, then the defender cant build any more siege engines ( oil, pallintone), and the walls no longer protect from aoe, pbaoe and volley attacks. If you destroy the wall of a keep you get a hole in it, and the hookpoints of that outpost pieve can no longer be used.
Up to 3 siege engines can fire on the same outpost piece.

- Catapults should be used to target enemy players. You can get special ammunition for catapults from the relic-villages, siegecraft merchants or by crafting it yourself.

Now that you know what to use, decide what siege engine you want to use. Select icon from your siegecraft crafting menue and palce it onto one of your quickbars. Delve ( rightclick, then shift-I) the symbol, and it will tell you what you have to buy.

Step 2.5: Diminutive siege

Now that you bought the stuff you needed you are probably standing in DL and are encumbered and can't move ;) This is where diminutive siege comes into the play. It greatly reduces the weight of siege engines, and also turns them into a single item, taking up less space in your backpack.

Any crafter with 800+ skill can craft diminutive siege. All you need is the items for the siege engine, and additionally a frosted gem of condensation and a flask of glacial essence. These alst two items can also be bought from the siegecraft merchant at DL/DC, or they can be crafted by a SCer/Alchemist.
You can build diminutive siege right at the merchant in DL, you don't need a forge or some other crafting object.
As for weight reduction: a diminutive siege ram weighs 76, while the parts normally weigh about 176.

Step 3: deploying the siege

Once you get to the action you will want to build the siege engine you brought along. Just press the button you placed on your quickbar and you will start building it. If you got a diminutive siege engine you will need to place the appropriate "deploy diminutive siege..." recipe onto your quickbar.

Some things to keep in mind:
- rams need to be built a bit away from the door. If you are too close, it will tell you that there is not enough room to build the item. If you want to build a battle ram, the make 2 siege rams close to eachother, then stand between the two and build the battleram. If you build another siege ram nexdt tot that then, you can combine them to a war ram.

- ballistas need a direct line of sight to their target

- trebuchets dont need line of sight - so keeping that in mind you can sometimes set up your trebs in a palce where the enmy pallintones can't hit you back.

Step 4: Controlling

1) Rams: once the ram is built click the door you want to take down, the click on the "Move" button. The ram will (slowly) move to the door. Once it has reached its destination click on "Aim", then on "Swing" whenever the swing-bar is full. You will get a text message, telling you how well you timed that swing.
Rams can and should be loaded with helpers. They also have to time theirs swings right to increase ram damage.

2) Other: Click on the target you want to take down, then click on "Aim". Watch for any messages telling you that you can't hit the target. If you don't get any of those, then start fireing whenever the siege is ready. Catapults and Trebuchets can also be ground-targeted. To do this, get a ground-target ( either by setting it yourself or by /groundassist ), control the siege engine, then make sure to clear your target, then press "Aim"

Step 5: Moving

Sometimes you will want to move your siege engine. To do that simple click the "Move" button on tthe control window. Once you clicked it you can move the siege as you would move a boat in ToA: simply click on the ground, and it will move to that ground-target. To stop the move-mode click on "Stop"
Rams can also be moved to doors in the way described in step 4, as long as they are in ~2k range of the door.


Enjoy NF :)


Disclaimer: I tried to be as accurate as possible, but if I got something wrong, feel free to point it out. Any grammar/spelling msitakes were put in on purpose and are for the general amusement.
 

Harle

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Dec 24, 2003
Messages
135
gonna bmp this once more - still lots of people clueless about siege :p
 

Ash'

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Aug 8, 2004
Messages
61
Dont forget Trebs are bad for keep/tower defence ! ya need pallintones up when under alb siege
 

Jayce

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 23, 2004
Messages
438
Can a mod please sticky this so it doesnt get lost in the post graveyard ?
 

Fluffybunny

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Dec 25, 2003
Messages
117
Lifter
Passive
Increases the max encumbrance of the character and the speed at which the character can move rams they control by the listed percentage.
10% 25% 45% 70% 95%
1 3 6 10 14
 

Ballard

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Oct 6, 2004
Messages
1,711
Any chance you could also give us some stats on the various types of ammo? pretty please
 

Vodkafairy

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Dec 23, 2003
Messages
7,805
greek fire is ae heat dd (around 200-300 dmg)
ice ball is ae cold dd (around 200-300 dmg)
stone shot is large radius dd (around 70-80 dmg)
 

Franya

Loyal Freddie
Joined
Jan 3, 2004
Messages
37
Thanks for that info... but it leaves a small question: How do you repair the siegemachines (Which skill?)?
 

Spamb0t

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Feb 4, 2004
Messages
966
another thing to think about when doing some 'serious' siege thingy where speed is needed, try to get a warlord(ml1+) to control the siege. as their 30% increased siege speed is alot

taken from vos:
"1 Siege Master - reduce all siege timers (load/aim/fire) by 30%
SeigeMaster is one of the best ML1 abilities.
It's passive (always active). It reduces all timers on siege engines by 30%. Because of thise, your able to attack with a ram 30% faster. So if your a Tank that normally operates Rams on doors, you now doing 130% Damage/Time to the door. That means 3 SiegeMasters operating rams, have the same effect as 4 rams on a door.
With the max rams per Relic door now, Siegemasters is a way to reduce the time it takes break down all 3 doors by 30%.
- Prayer

Actually, 30% faster equates to a 42.9% increase in damage."
 

YoungElf

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jun 19, 2004
Messages
46
Vodkafairy said:
how is that ?_?

each swing for 10 seconds normally, 70 seconds and 7 hits

each swing for 7 seconds warlord ml1, 70 seconds and 10 hits

all hits on 200 damage, first one without ability doing 1400 damage total, 2nd with ml1 ability 2000 damage

to get base 1% from that normal 1400 damage
1400 : 100 = 14

now see how many times that 1% goes into amount of ml1 damage done
2000 : 14 = 142,8571428571....%

the damage increase is quite lot if you can follow it in that simple calculation, partly I think mythic sucks with their % calculations

or if you want it in short and maybe bit more complicated: 1 / 0.70 x 100
 

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