Editing Artillery (section)

==Siege Engines==

[[Siege Weapon|Siege Engines]] are mechanical devices used to damage walls or kill the defenders. Weapons like the Onager, Ballista, and the Trebuchet ([[Meme|which could launch a 90kg projectile over 300m]]) are considered the first forms of Artillery. 

Unlike what vidya and certain tabletop wargames will tell you, most of these weapons were too unwieldy and generally inaccurate to use against mobile targets. They were also too complicated and fragile to transport over long distances and had to be built at the site of conflict, which is why Siege [[Engineer Sapper Company|Engineers]] were their own specialization.

===List of Siege Artillery===

====Bolt Weapons==== 

These are Siege weapons that look like oversized crossbows, and are generally accurate enough with their bolts to snipe defenders on the walls, and were torsion (crank) powered. They range from the simple Roman Scorpio, to the [[Dakka|rapid-firing]] Greek Polybolos, both of which were developed from the much larger Ballista, which was initially used to throw small round projectiles, but would eventually fire more accurate bolts. 

Technically, though they look like Crossbows, all of these machines are more complicated than that, using a combination of springs and torsion to build up energy. Some Catapult designs actually make use of the "bow" design for added strength.

====Catapults====

Arguably, the most famous of those siege engines was the almighty catapult! The romans used it, the greeks used it, and oh-so-many lords and knights used it during the Middle-Ages. It wasn't the most precise weapon on the planet, but we'd lie to you if we didn't say that it as beautiful to see a flock of rocks raining on a heavily guarded castle like it's judgement day. Catapults were generally some of the simplest siege engines around, and as mentioned above, used torsion mechanisms for power. 

What made them supplant the Ballista was that you could use to basically throw anything more-or-less heavy with it; Boulders, would-be cannon balls, humans, barrels, literal sacks of shit (Yes, this did happen) over a longer, arcing trajectory and with more power. And it was one easier to build. Of course, it wasn't the most effective thing on the planet at destroying things, but the point of sieges was to capture a castle, not raze one. Why pass on the opportunity of getting a free castle? The best way to penetrate it was to simply injure the people inside.

====Trebuchet====
But when the need to [[Exterminatus|eradicate the infidels, burn their houses, slaughter their families, destroy their unholy temples and autels of doom]] came around, Europeans perfected of destroying shit really hard by inventing the next big thing in siege engineering; the motherfucking trebuchet. Ten to Eighteen tons of a massive wooden tower made out of "Fucketh thee, I farteth ast thoust general direction". 

The Chinese technically invented it, but it consisted of using <s>slaves</s> very brave and loyal soldiers to pull the projectile down and then releasing it. And then, reusing the design, engineers added a counterweight that would drop down with the force of a thousand suns to flung the heaviest of projectiles directly at the enemy at incredible speeds. A technological miracle of the XIIth Century to be sure, using the wonders of levers, momentum, and gravity to do most of the work. 

Started a trend among technicians and engineers to come up with new tools of warfare, most notably Da Vinci who made a whole bunch of sketches of a multitude of possible war engines that were all kinds of wonky.