VI Ballista
| Ballista Crew | |
|---|---|
| Unit Type: | Artillery |
| Combat Stats | |
| Charge: | 1 |
| Attack: | 0 |
| Defence: | -2 |
| Armour: | 1 |
| Shield: | None |
| Speed: | 6,10,11 |
| Morale: | 2 |
| Notes: | 2 turns to build |
| Unit Costs | |
| Recruitment: | 175 |
| Upkeep: | 10 |
| Unit Restrictions | |
| Buildings Needed: | Siege Engineer |
| Unit Card: | |
Unit Description
The ballista is pretty much worthless as artillery. The range is not long enough, and it can only kill one soldier per shot. It is fairly easy to counter with light cavalry, and needs to be protected for an extended period of time to be of any use. In sieges, it can damage gates, but the short range means the crew will suffer from enemy defensive fire. Another problem with the ballista in the Viking campaign is that the Siege Engineer allows for both the ballista and the catapult, so no extra teching is required for the much better siege engine.
Best used when defending, placed on a (small) hill safely behind your lines so it can shoot over your soldiers' heads during combat. Target heavily armoured and expensive troops like heavy cavalry and knights, as it ignores armour, is fairly accurate, and will kill the target outright.
Artillery Statistics
| Missile Statistics - Artillery Type: Ballista | ||||||||||||||
| Ammo | Range (meters) | Accuracy | Lethality | Power | Armour Modifier | Reload Time (sec) | Minimum Crew | Turnable | Firing Arc (deg) | Blast Radius (meters) | ||||
| 40 | 200 | 0.9 | 10 | 40 | 0 | 10.7 | 2 | yes | 5 | 0 | ||||
The ballista bolt does not penetrate anything or bounce, so once it hits something it is removed from play. The bolt does not arc, and the ballista cannot depress fire below zero degrees, so care must be taken when placing the piece on the field. It needs a fairly flat killing zone, with no trees or buildings in between it and the target.
Is it possible to mod in penetration, to allow 1 bolt to kill more than 1 man? (PROJECTILESTATS.TXT, HitSoldier = PENETRATE?)
| Medieval: Total War | Viking Invasion : Military | |
| Spearmen | Armoured Spearmen | Dismounted Nobles | Dismounted Royal Bodyguard | Fyrdmen | Round Shield Spearmen |
| Swordsmen | Berserkers | Celtic Warriors | Gallowglasses | Highland Clansmen | Viking Carls |
| Axemen | Huscarles | Joms Vikings | Viking Landsmenn | Woodsmen |
| Missile Units | Archers | Bonnachts | Irish Dartmen | Kerns | Pictish Crossbows | Welsh Bandits |
| Peasants/Militia | Militia Sergeants | Peasants | Urban Militia | Viking Thralls |
| Heavy Cavalry | Mounted Nobles | Royal Bodyguards |
| Missile Cavalry | Pictish Mounted Crossbows |
| Light Cavalry | Horsemen | Mounted Sergeants | Pictish Cavalry | Viking Raider Cavalry |
| Artillery | Ballista | Catapult | Mangonel |
| Ships | Boat | Curragh | Drakkar | Jarnbardi | Longboat | Snekkja |
TBD - this is the first unit/artillery piece that I'm putting in. I'll use this one to experiment and finalize the layout before going through the process of adding the rest of the units.
Need to figure out a way to get the Unit Navbar to drop below the floating unit template on the right, so it's centered and out of the way when a unit doesn't have much description.
Use this to finalize the VI color scheme, the unit stats, missile stats, and navbar are all present for checking against eyebleed. 2 of these 3 are currently shared with the regular MTW campaign units, do we need VI specific unit/missile templates? Can a color value be passed into the template? The syntax of "style" looks like this would not work.
