Catapult Repurposing

There are actually three categories here. Direct fire, indirect fire, and tracking weapons. Direct fire weapons tend to have the shortest range, but high accuracy. Indirect fire weapons use a high ballistic trajectory, and have much more range, but are inaccurate. And tracking weapons are expensive, but have long range and are accurate.

A non-tracking missile is an indirect fire weapon, in my opinion. It is inaccurate in a different way from an artillery shot with random deflection. But there's no problem designing an indirect fire weapon with the special feature of being unusually accurate for an indirect fire weapon, as long as it has appropriate downsides. Low rate of fire and inferior range for cost compared to shell artillery probably being chief among them.

Ledarsi no you are wrong.

Direct fire artillery has more range than indirect fire mortars.

A ballistic trajectory implies it enters into low orbit.

Mortars can have more explosive at the same range as an artillery shell.

Wow, did my suggestion that the catapult could do well as an anti-air turret just spark a debate over artillery?

I don't follow...

Also, some of the quotes I see aren't even from this thread, I don't see why you don't just post in that thread, as it would be more on topic... Though I could be missing something, who knows.

All quotes are from this thread.

Removing the catapult entirely, creating flak AA, and naming it the catapult isn't that great an idea.

The way you suggest implementing T2 AA doesn't give it any AoE. It is just the harder hitting, slower firing big brother of the missile defence tower. It would not solve the problem that mass T1 air or T2 air represent.

The catapult is basically long range anti ground. So unfortunately your thread just attracted the ideas presented in that thread.

Ok so first off, mass T1 spam is already easily dealt with by rocket turrets for the most part, though T1 fighters can do it very well too. Second of all, my suggestion does not necessarily mean no AOE, i just think that the AOE should be tweaked. Third of all, it's slower firing at longer ranges, the closer the get to the tower the faster the rate, and since they would probably be cheaper, you would have more of them, to deal with a T2 bomber spam, along with all the other air defenses you should have. Finally, making a flak turret and calling it catapult is the opposite of what i suggest, i suggest you change the catapult to an anti-air weapon and tweak it so that it can 1 or 2 shot T2 bombers with an AOE that is related to its damage output (if it two shots, a larger AOE, if it one shots, a smaller AOE)

Also, had to press ctrl-f to find the quote I thought was from another thread, was hidden in the middle of a paragraph and i missed it, my bad.

Why do you bring mortars into this?
For any artillery on a flat surface there are always 2 firing solutions to their target, high trajectory and low trajectory, unless the target is at max range at which both high trajectory and low trajectories converge into 1 firing solution.
Direct fire, traditionally, only means that you shoot at something you can see with a relatively flat trajectory. Sure it happens in PA, but saying that an artillery piece is using direct fire just because it is using a low trajectory firing solution is a bit of a misnomer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_fire

No, that is incorrect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trajectory_of_a_projectile

In game, the Holkins/Pelter Artillery can't hit stuff behind cover (mountains).. by definition, that means that they are not indirect firing.

Mortars are brought into it because, in terms of scaling, catapults are roughly equivalent to a mortar launcher. Very roughly. They have less range than the biggest artillery gun. Unlike a ballistic missile proper, which has significantly more.

And as we're talking about a ballistic missile. . . . Ballistic does imply that it enters into low earth orbit or up into the high atmosphere. . .

Edit: oh wait lol. That comment referred to other weapons. Sorry. My poor reading comprehension

When I test the Pelter it switches to high trajectory if the target can't be reached by low trajectory.

Um. No. A ballistic trajectory is a parabolic curve, while direct fire is more or less a straight line. Technically, everything is a parabolic curve, but in practice a rifle or a tank just points its gun more or less directly at the target.

There is less difference between a mortar and a howitzer than you realize. They are fundamentally the same technology, but have different sizes. Both are ballistic weapons, which is synonymous with saying they are indirect fire weapons.

Hills are an impediment to indirect fire weapons, they don't only block direct fire. They also affect indirect fire weapons, although a high-trajectory firing solution is usually available, it may be less accurate, require moving closer to the target, and it will be difficult for a forward observer to get line of sight on the target if it is behind a hill. Cresting the hill will get you lit up immediately by enemies on the other side, so you are forced to fire blind unless you can somehow go around or use a helicopter.

A ballistic missile is just a guided projectile that follows a ballistic trajectory instead of a straight line. You are thinking of an ICBM, or intercontinental ballistic missile, which has an enormous booster with incredible range.

That is not what ballistic means.

I think you are confused about your terminology, stormingkiwi. A trajectory is "ballistic" if it is a high-angle firing solution, regardless of whether it is a shell or a missile. Mortars are made to follow a ballistic trajectory. Pistols are not. Theoretically you could calculate a firing solution for a pistol on a high ballistic trajectory and hit targets at ridiculous distances, but nobody can do it.

Likewise, some missiles are direct-fire, such as RPG's and ATGM's. Others follow a ballistic trajectory, such as rocket artillery, cruise missiles, and also ICBM strategic nuclear weapons which have intercontinental range and enter low earth orbit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_missile
A missile becomes ballistic after it runs out of fuel and it enters unpowered flight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guided_missile#Etymology_and_usage

Cruise missiles and rockets typically does not count as ballistic missiles. Cruise missiles is basically an airplane with powered flight while the flight of rockets is powered during the whole flight or too a much higher degree than a ballistic missile. I guess the definition between rocket and ballistic missile is kinda blurry though.

A ballistic curve is a parabolic trajectory that occurs whenever you throw an object upward in an environment with gravity. Throwing a baseball at a high angle is a ballistic trajectory.

Shells are propelled by an explosion into a ballistic trajectory, and by their very nature are incapable of altering their course in mid-flight. A shell follows a parabolic trajectory and has no ability to do anything else since its entire course was determined from its initial impetus.

Rockets and missiles differ from shells because they have boosters that provide thrust during their flight. This means for a period early in their flight they are not following a ballistic trajectory. But once their rocket is exhausted, they become a ballistic projectile just like a shell with no booster.

Missiles meant to be used against ground targets are typically "ballistic" missiles in that they are designed using solid-state rockets that expend all of their fuel in one burn and then fall on their target. They are ballistic missiles, just not very large ones. Whereas an artillery shell gets all its impetus instantly at launch, a ballistic missile gets its impetus during its launch phase, after which it is essentially the same as a shell.

However, cruise missiles do actually have variable-thrust engines such as a turbofan, which would make them more like aircraft than ballistic missiles in some ways. But they all have solid-state rockets which execute a single continuous burn and then are done, after which they transition to cruise on a variable-thrust engine like a plane. I don't know if they are powered through their terminal phase, or if they fall onto their target.

If I were to design such a missile, I would definitely want to leverage the huge amount of distance that can be covered by unpowered flight using inertia to reduce the amount of fuel and weight to get the same range. There is no need to carry enough fuel for powered flight all the way out to maximum range. Especially when the ballistic component of the flight path is the simplest.

If you were to design such a missile, you would waste a lot of fuel and make your missiles easily detectable by radar. You would also make them easy to intercept, avoid, shoot down or otherwise countermeasure.

l
Correct about confusion. Check that post again. Quote the very next paragraph . Specifically the bit where I missed you talking about ballistic objects in general, and thought you were talking about ballistic missiles specifically.

1) Ballistic doesn't mean 'goes high, then falls'.
It means only subject to gravity and air resistance.

Which means when you shoot a pistol or drop a rock on your foot, both the bullet and the rock are on a ballistic trajectory.

Nothing whatsoever to do with angle. Check wikipedia again. A bullet is designed to be a ballistic projectile. A rock that you drop straight down is also ballistic. What that means is that you can use projectile motion to calculate where it will land.

2) correct. But seeing as I'm not comparing a mortar to a howitzer, but a mortar/howitzer to an artillery gun...

The pelter is odd. There have been instances where it bears less resemblance to a howitzer and more to a field gun, while the reverse iisalso true.