Re: The Orc Battle - Wave 1
(OOC: I'm interested to hear what Kahan, Grung, Naj and Flint think about the 4 worst choices. As for rate of fire and our needs, it's hard to say. I originally thought that we might need to fire at least once every 8 rounds, if not faster, but if we did that we'd expend each engine's 10 shots within the first 2 waves of the battle. Per the latest info from Heath, this siege is likely going to last 6+ hours/waves, which brings me to the following concerns:
1. If we do in fact need to fire at least once every 8 rounds throughout each wave, we're going to be in trouble because we'll run out of ammunition fast. I would hope Heath wouldn't make things that hard on us, but it's a possibility.
2. If we don't need to fire that often (and I hope we don't), then we might be sacrificing much needed AOE, damage, and range capability versus the orcs' war machines (which is what I expect we'll primarily need our bombardment engines for) all for a faster firing rate that turns out to be unnecessary and a waste of an engine's damage potential.
3. If we're going to be facing the orcs' war machines in each wave of the battle, that means we'll be confronting them for at least 5 hours, possibly longer. If our ammo is to last that long, that means we'd be firing each engine at a rate of once per every half hour on average. That is slow enough that even heavy cannons (which fire once every 30 rounds) could conceivably be a very viable option.
Ultimately, sooner or later we have to decide on what we think is most likely to happen over the course of this battle and allow for some flexibility in our strategy (i.e. not throw all our eggs in one basket, so to speak). The fast rate of fire, low AOE/damage option is one basket. The slow rate of fire, high AOE/damage option is another basket. We might be wise to mix it up with a combination of both - some heavy/medium/light weapons in the gorge, and some light/medium weapons in the northern inlets. Here's one possibility:
1 heavy cannon (main gorge)
1 trebuchet (main gorge)
1 light catapult (main gorge)
4 light cannons (main gorge/northern inlets)
1 light ballista (between 2 northwest-most inlets)
sun ray (alternate between main gorge and northern inlets)
This would basically combine the best traits of various engines for different purposes. For fast rate of fire, you've got the light catapult and light ballista; for accuracy, you've got the light cannons and light ballista; for large AOE and heavy damage, you've got the heavy cannon and trebuchet; and for burning projectiles and Greek fire canisters, you've got the trebuchet and light catapult. There are other possible combinations which could work, but this is an example.
Anyhow, I agree with Borimer that we could do without medium cannons and bombards. If we're going for damage and AOE, I say we go all out and get a heavy cannon or trebuchet (I know I stated my misgivings about trebuchets earlier, but after Heath explained that squares on the map are much larger than in the AOE diagrams, it appears that obscenely terrible misses won't be as great a risk to our own troops as I had previously worried about).
Borimer, do you agree that we should avoid using these:
Great Bombard (19 THAC0, same AOE and turn rate/slower ROF/less damage than a trebuchet, can't fire burning projectiles)
Heavy Catapult (16 THAC0, same AOE and damage/slower ROF and turn rate/larger crew/barely more range than a medium catapult)
Heavy Ballista (17 THAC0, same turn rate/less AOE and damage/slower ROF/shorter range/larger crew/less concealable than a light cannon)
Medium Catapult (15 THAC0, same turn rate and crew size/less AOE/damage/range/targeting ability/concealability than a light cannon)
This message was last edited by the player at 09:31, Wed 12 Oct 2011.
