Questions that don't deserve their own thread

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>>2180452
I'd say good initiative in any case to keep shitpostig down. I believe part of it was a morale impact and then part of it to shoot siege towers etc. down.

>>2180452
Surely this fucking thing overpenetrates anything it hits.

>>2180469
Yeah, probably. But I mean, won't a catapult or treybuchet do more damage, since the projectiles are likely to keep moving (rolling) even after it hits? If you shoot a giant rod towards a mass of people, you'll hit one, maybe 2 guys. Seems ineffective versus infantry, as far as I can see

>>2180491
That technology wasn't very much developed yet I believe. Also, harder to aim and to load compared to this thing.

>>2180510
I guess that's the tradeoff with most artillery of any kind.
For example:
Towed 17pdr.
-amazing penetration (for the day)
-easy to aim
-moderately fast reload
-however smaller round makes for less HE content
Karl Gerat
-rediculously powerful
-HE could level a city plaza
-however, harder to aim, reloading took hours

>>2180510
Huh, that makes sense I guess.

File: scorpion.jpg (365KB, 2097x1029px) Image search: [Google]

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No, the ballista was for firing payloads of stone balls.

Scorpio was for throwing big arrows.

>>2180528
Now that looks like a knight-killer. Are you sure? I read that it shot both, but that it "eventually became primarily a bolt-thrower"

>>2180510
>>2180491
>>2180452

Roman siege weapons were not typically to be found on the battlefield. They were used extensively in fortifications, either defensively, or as part of a wall of circumvallation. In that context, a siege, they were used to keep the enemy battlements clear of organized resistance. The Romans were skilled artillerists and their engines were highly accurate.

Generally speaking the ballista was not used to breach fortification, though it might be used to break up the wooden battlements (hoardings) that are often built on top of stone walls. The Romans preferred rams, siege towers, ladders, mining and direct assault where possible. The scorpio was similarly not used in a pitched battle in the field, but as a fixed emplacement in siegeworks or to defend their own walls.

The Greeks were much more keen on these kinds of engines and indeed they conceived of them. The Romans adopted them here and there, but the Roman way was to wage simple war perfectly, rather than scientific war indifferently.

in Caesars book about civil war they besiege some town and the defenders have engines that shoot 12 foot long iron tipped bolts. Presumably they were used to kill people.

>>2180541

Just look at the ballista, in OPs pick. See how it's angled sharply upward. It's for arcing bombardment of fixed fortifications, and was too cumbersome to either realistically bring to a battle in the field, or to aim in any meaningful way during a battle.

The Scorpio (>>2180528) was a flat trajectory device for hurling large arrows large distance with great accuracy. Might have been useful in the field, but the Romans didn't really use it that way. See >>2180547

>>2180452
What >>2180528 says.

The thing in your picture threw stone balls of a decent weight. 26-70 kilogram ones.

>>2180528
Medieval people used a similar device in siege and naval warfare.

Shot bolts weighing up to a couple of kilograms. It could go through shield and armor in a single shot, hell I believe it was even dangerous to crossbowmen behind thin wooden structures.

File: Pompeii, House of Vetti, Punishment of Ixion.jpg (480KB, 939x1024px) Image search: [Google]

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What happened to Roman fresco painting after Vesuvius erupted? Are there any surviving examples?

Also why did it seem to disappear over time while mosaic survived well into Byzantine times?

File: onager.jpg (1MB, 2379x1548px) Image search: [Google]

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>>2180491
The Onager was a Roman thing. Also it was tiny.
>>2180510
The Trebuchet was already invented.

...in Han China, with men pulling at the lever.

Our idea of the deadliness of ancient small arms is exaggerated by TV and video games. A crew-served weapon like a scorpio might appear to be overkill, but it wasn't. Against a big formation of heavily armored enemies a scorpio strong enough to shoot a lance through a shield a hundred yards away sure beats arrows and javelins.

Modern reconstructions are capable of amazing accuracy at very, very long distances.

It also happens that for some reason, crew-served weapons are far more accurate under battlefield conditions than small arms.

File: 320px-046_Conrad_Cichorius,_Die_Reliefs_der_Traianss%C3%A4ule,_Tafel_XLVI_(Ausschnitt_01).jpg (29KB, 320x220px) Image search: [Google]

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Romans absolutely DID use heavier projectiles in open, pitched, not just standard infantry and missiles, like the above posts claim.

They weren't gargantuan siege engines like the Ballistas and catapults seen there, but they were quite an upgrade from simple archers/javelin men. They ranged from hand held crossbow-like weapons to chariot-borne scorpions.

File: 10-roman-military-innovations-facts_2.jpg (87KB, 770x578px) Image search: [Google]

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>>2181085

reproduction

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>>2181093
titus is pleased by this

>>2180452
It shoots rocks.

>>2180632
>It also happens that for some reason, crew-served weapons are far more accurate under battlefield conditions than small arms.
Being on a crew served leaves you calm and efficient. You're usually out of direct danger and you have simple, mundane tasks to occupy mind and body in between shots.

Also, they're stabilized. Shaking hands will fuck up a crossbow shot, because the hands are the only support.

Crew served doesn't have that issue.

>>2180554
>was too cumbersome to either realistically bring to a battle in the field
It was disassembled when travelling and reassembled when needed. Hardly more cumbersome than a trebuchet.

>>2181402
>Hardly more cumbersome than a trebuchet.
....you mean the things that almost never saw field use in histopry despite existing everywhere in europe, all of china, all of the midde east and asia minor, much of north africa, and more places besides?

I can think of ONE field use off the top of my head, among the centuries it saw uses in and various forms it took.

Byzantine manuals advise bringing one small one with an army for field use, but we have zero examples of them ever doing so. Nobody else even advocated for it.

>>2180590
Likely because Mosaic was hardier, less susceptible to aging, leading to more good examples of it surviving rather than traces of Roman frescowork.

>>2181431
That's because you can't think of examples, not because there are none.

Even a cursory glance at the wikipedia page reveals a shitton of actual deployments, from Chinese to early islamic conquest, Byzantium to the Crusades, and China again in the anti-mongol years.

>>2181694
>Even a cursory glance at the wikipedia page reveals a shitton of actual deployments,
No it doesn't. You get the strategikon mentiong that the exist, but that is all, with no examples of byzantine field use given. The page says the Arabs made excellent use of them, but does not give examples. It says nothing about field use at all.

ONE battle is listed, and it deals with them bombarding ships, not troop formations fighting in open combat.
One example is not a shitload. It's a parsity. It's an utter lack of mention for an extremely old and well known device, to coincide with a lack of use for something it wasn't meant or suited for.
EVERY other example of their use deals with the counterweight variety, and they're all sieges. The thing siege artillery is useful for.


If you're going to lie, try lying about something more obscure than the contents of a short wiki page.

>>2180452
i think the idea was to impale several man, create gaps and break formations
but as far as i know it was mostly used by the romans, who fought barbarians who cared very little about maintaining formations, marching packed together and shit like that... so there's probably more to this than i know

>>2180452
You can fire rocks out of ballistae you know

Imagine trying to have your archers deal with a testudo. Don't do much, huh?
Now try a ballista...

Can anyone recommend books about medieval arms and armor? Like good academic quality, not a fucking picture book like most out there.

I have Ewart Oakeshott' books. They are good for swords but poor for everything else.

>>2181784
Try the Knight and the Blast Furnance.

Haven't read it myself, but everyone who's anyone seems to say it's THE book on armor.

Storm of spears is fucking godly, but only if you want to know hoplites and everything about hoplites in incredible, well researched and experimented upon detail.

>>2181789
Cool, thanks anon. I'll check out the first one.

>>2181738
Please actually read the wiki page. Not only are a lot of examples given, but they are only given as examples of revolutionary or breakthrough uses of the device, suggesting many more 'mundane' periods of use.

>>2181885
List the field uses.
I'll wait.

>>2181893
Battle of Caishi
Conquests of Saladin
Siege of Zvegminon
Siege of Nicaea
Second Siege of Tyre
Siege of Acre
Siege of Stirling Castle
Battle of Ashyun
Siege of Lisbon
Siege of Karlstejn
Siege of Damietta
Siege of Fancheng and Xiangyang
Siege of Burges
Siege of Rhodes
Siege of Tenochtitlan

All just some examples taken from the wiki page you're disparaging, most very well sourced, with the exception of Ashyun.
Can't wait to see you cherrypick and NoTrueScotsman your way out of this. Ftfy I'm not doing your medieval history homework anymore man

>>2180452
It shoots stones or bolts, it goes very far and one missile kills many men or can knock down a wall.
It's artillery.

Why wouldn't you want it?

>>2181920
haha, you know he is gonna try to cherrypick his way out of this one

>>2181920
Are you confusing use in the field with deployment? Because almost everything you listed are sieges, not in field battle. Nobody is contesting the fact that trebuchets were effectively used in sieges all over the place. Use of trebuchets in set piece field battles however is uncommon.

>>2180452
Didn't the Romans also shoot round stones with ballistas?

File: Wheeled Catapult.jpg (19KB, 267x400px) Image search: [Google]

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>>2182051
Battle of Caishi was a typical Chinese riverine battle actually. Which is a land/naval op.

Also in China, if a siege weapon had wheels, it was meant for field use. They had versions of the pulled catapult which had wheels such as the "Wheeled Tiger" Catapult as opposed to the bog standard "Crouching Tiger" Catapult which was bigger and affixed on the ground.