[MOD] Ballista turret - [Now on Steam Workshop]

Modding Current Mods
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Ballista Mod!

Hi there!
Symbol Here

it’s been a while since i updated the Mythical creatures mod (a while being almost two years)

believe me, i’m working on it, for the last couple of workings, i worked mostly on making models and animations, with quite an amount of planning on gameplay and story(a lot of story)

recently though, i was a little exhausted, so I was taking a little break; I started playing the game again for some more inspiration and feel of what will work, and I figured I wanted to make a Ballista (yes, that suddenly)

So here it is!


(rendered in blender)

[G-drive Download link]

[Direct Download] (939.2 KB)

the mod is downloadable via the link above

How to install

to install it, go to where your StoneHearth is installed in, go to ‘mods’ and put the file in there
if you are using steam, you can go into your library, select stonehearth go into properties and local files, and open local files(or whatever it’s called)
if you installed it via humble you can find it where you installed it

the Ballista turret

A Heavy and longed ranged ballista with slow but powerfull shots

the Ballista has Extremely long range and Devastating Damage but has a rather slow Fire rate, make sure it has good protection

how to craft
to craft the turret, you will need a level 4 Engineer alongside components built by the blacksmith and the carpenter

Ballista Turret (crafted by Engineer)
Requires :
3 Bronze gear
3 Iron Gear
6 Steel ingot
6 Wood log
2 Ballista bolt 3X(crafted by Carpenter)

Ballista Bolt 3X (crafted by Carpenter)
Requires :
1 Wood log
1 Iron ingot

the Ballista is meant to be Tedious build, since it is so powerful

it is a late game defense that will hopefully kill of most of the weaker level raids so your military doesn’t have to run around because of some Entlings or Varanus

Big thanks to @Relyss and @Drotten for helping me out coding this, this is the first mod i tried to code myself (mostly) and though it is relatively simple and i copied the vanilla turret code, it is, in-fact my first coded mod

please post any bugs or issues you have, i will look into it as soon as i can

I Hope all of you guys Enjoy it! and i’ll see you later

Symbol Out!

37 Likes
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That… is one pretty darn nice animation there :smiley: .

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Also note to everyone, this mod isn’t particularly balanced, i set the damage that i thought was appropriate but i may be a little off there

I didn’t have time to playtest the damage and reload speed, so please give me feedback on how strong or weak it is in late-game

I will be play-testing it myself when i get the time, but i’m asking for some feedback from you guys

Thanks

Symbol Out!

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Haven’t had time to test it, but I’d say there are two basic ways of balancing it for a game like Stonehearth:

  1. Cost relative to regular turrets. If it costs (for sake of argument) 50% more to make, it should probably do 50% more damage too.
  2. Cost relative to footprint. If it takes up twice as much space, it should do twice the damage.

Now, sometimes games deliberately make costlier defences proportionately weaker to discourage turtling - think Starcraft 2 for example - but whether this is worth doing really depends on your philosophical approach to the game. The SC2 designers want players to go out and be aggressive to win, rather than hiding behind their own Maginot line… but does that apply in Stonehearth?

In addition to this, there’s an important difference between burst damage and damage over time. Suppose a goblin has 200 health, and I have a choice between a weapon that does 200 damage every 2 seconds, or one that does 50 damage every 0.5 seconds. If you average the damage out per second, both weapons are equal. However… I will prefer the first, because the latter weapon affords the goblin more chances to (a) damage me, and (b) run away etc. Sure, I have to wait longer between attacks, but each attack is also oh-so-very final :wink: .

What else… well you could add things like ammo considerations to it, but here you’d have to consider the size and frequency of the average raiding party as well, because if you never run out of ammo during a raid, and can always replenish your ammo between raids… well you’ve just made the ammo mechanic a bit meaningless :smiley: .

Oh, also crews. Actually requiring your engineer (or even just a plain old worker) to aim and fire it would make it proportionally much more expensive to use than any automated defence.

4 Likes
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:astonished:
It sure looks cool, and thinking about it, it was damn time someone made something for the engineer :stuck_out_tongue:
I will play test it in an advanced town I have.

Edit: just did it. It is well balanced. Although I think that creating another category (balista) for its pieces was not necessary, maybe it could go into tools, or weapons. And (just my preference) the bolt could be made at once, without the need to have two pieces.

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Been visiting this forum for around half a year now but never posted anything.
However this looks so absolutely amazing I just had to comment something.

Incredible job man

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This looks amazing!!! glad the Engi is getting some more toys!!

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I agree with you! I want see more of the toys of the Engie and it’s becoming clear that Stoneheart would become a fantasy-steampunk strategy game! I’m sure that the Engie will play a key role for the strength of our army: I can imagine him/her creating more siege weapons, advanced weapons (crossbows for example), Steam Light Tanks, Faction-exclusive weaponry, gunpowder and open warfare in the future; don’t you all think the same?

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I do agree to some extent, though, i think thees turrets have a different category of damage, meaning they’re asymmetric in many ways, i believe the vanilla Turret actually does more damage per second, with it’s superior fire rate, but it falls short in range, i think this means this is more like the typical “Long Bow VS Short Bow” scinario, they are bolth fully capable of outdoing the other in certain situations, but they are still equal because each of them cover a different advantage from the other i think the Ballista falls into this as well, it’s not mobile, so it falls to the defense category, but it has high range and burst damage, and the normal turret has high overall/consistent damage, but with short range

this was Actually one of the ideas for the Ballista being a high-cost defense, since each bolt required one iron ingot, making the ballista need crafted ammunition was a big goal for me, but i couldn’t find how to make turrets require items to reload, so for now, it stays free, and the only reason to build ballista bolts is to make the ballista, though i do want to add the ammo reload if i can in the future

thanks for the suggestion!
this was actually for visibility, so the players can see the item immediately, i will eventually make the items have backgrounds(like FrostFeast did) so the player can see it, but for now, i wanted the mod out quickly and i wanted to test the ballista itself

also, on a side not, this (making categories for modded items) is probably a luxury of early modding, since in the future if we have tons of mods, having categories for all of them would be a mess

i do agree, and this was also a real thing to consider, i made it two pieces to make it extra tedious, kind like making the extreme and balancing it down, i will do some play-testing myself and come to a conclusion, though i do want all the feed-back on the subject of the crafting to see opinions of others

thanks to everyone els that commented as well, who knows, if we later get firing arcs, i might make a Catapult or Trebuchet as well

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You should get in touch with @linda about this. Back when the engineer first appeared turrets (and traps) required a “repair box” after firing a certain number of shots in order to be reloaded. However, it was deemed too tedious so it was removed. My guess is that the mechanic is still there, however, so making a “7 bolt magazine” that requires 7 bolts might be possible.

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Awesome Hyrule! Wonderful animation, and I like the idea as well - especially how you kept in mind not making it too OP : ).

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"if you never run out of ammo during a raid, and can always replenish your ammo between raids… well you’ve just made the ammo mechanic a bit meaningless ."
Don’t be too sure, it ensures that the turret needs to be accessible from the street. Which means once the enemies break down the door they could reach it.

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Unless you have ladders to access it and just take them down of course :stuck_out_tongue: …

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That’s tedious, like, really

Beacuse the turret can only fire 7 times max before needing to reload, and i’d expect 1strong raid or 2weak raids to exhaust all of them, i’d rather not have to deal with making a ladder every time we get attacked

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Thanks! I actually intend to nerf them by adding an ammo reload, we’ll see

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Whoo! over 100 Downloads! (Or rather, link clicks)

Thank you to everyone that downloaded, and played with the mod, it means a lot to me that you guys are enjoying it

I’m (@Drotten is, actually) looking into making the Turret be reloaded with actual items suchas the balista bolts thanks to @linda this will be a big part of balancing the turret

While i was play-testing the turret, i actually found it weaker than i wanted, i wanted 3 shots to kill a high level org, but it seems to take more than 4 on weaker ones, i will still look into it further with the gongs now being made in my game, (there’s also the fact that my town is completely sealed out, i may try later with towns with one clear open entrance and two and so-on)

I will also be looking into placement issues such as the indicator box(when placing) being off-center, and sight being longer than the attack range, making the turret unable to be undeployed or shoot when an enemy is in sight, but not close enough to shoot at

Thanks

Symbol Out!

5 Likes
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It seems there’s a typo in the description of the Ballista Bolt. It says “[…] uesd […]” rather then “used”. Also the “ballista” category in the carpenters crafting menu has no capital letter at the beginning, although every other category has.

Just two small things I noticed.

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Thanks for catching those typos! thees will be fixed when the next update rolls in

i intend to remove the Ballista categories from the crafters and merge them either to the weapons or tools tab to reduce cluttering and unnecessary space use

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Update!

Hi there!
Symbol here

today i bring a little update that includes some fixes and tweaks

i have texted the Ballistas in two fully grown village, that bolt are in hard mode and have went to the end of the Orc wars story-line

the images below are in the same village, and are place in more or less strategic positions (spikes from the settlement decor mod)

20170115162756_1.jpg2560×1377 374 KB

[main open entrance to the town, defended heavily with strategically positioned traps and turrets, including small ones]

20170115161824_1.jpg2560×1377 447 KB

[the back section of the town, defended by two turrets and a closed wall]

all and all, the tweaks i made earlier to my own mod (not the released version) revealed that the turrets are a little underpowered from what i intended

i’m sure the turrets are painfully powerful in the normal-mode playthroughs, but i vision this mod being a hard-mode mod balanced to play in hard-mode as a late game defense that will allow you to take a breather from all the intense raids coming to you in the end, not strong enough to stop a full raid on their own, but aid you significantly in defending with your troops, with a long enough range that you don’t need to worry too much about positioning your battle near your turrets

Reloading with items is yet to come, but i am trying to balance the turrets with it in mind

because of time, i did not play-test the updated mod, so pleas do bring more feedback on this one as well

so here we go!

Patch notes

  1. Increased the range of the turrets from 90 to 110

  2. Increased the damage of the turret single shots from 300 to 400

  3. increased health of the turrets from 250 to 350

  4. Sped up the time between shots from 12 seconds to 10 seconds

  5. Ballista max shots (magazine) has been shrunk to 6 from 7

  6. Ballista bolts are now crafted in bulk of Three, costing one iron ingot and one wood log crafted by the carpenter, thees are now named [Ballista Bolt 3X] and all existing Balista bolts should be converted into this item

  7. Becasue of [note.6] the Ballista bolt head is no longer craftable or needed to craft Ballista bolts

  8. Changed Ballista turret recipe to now need two [Balista bolts 3x] to craft

  9. Merged the Ballista bolt recipes with the existing Tools & Weapons category, they should now be located in thees tabs

  10. Added Background to all Ballista related recipes, this will allow the player to recognize the modded recipes quickly

    balista_bolt.png1024×1024 32.3 KB
    balista_turret.png1024×1024 47 KB

  11. Fixed typo on bolt recipes (uesd to used)

Important

from previous tests, it seems like updating the mod will not change the turret’s stats (range, damage ect) for already crafted turrets, so if you want the updated turrets, make sure to destroy (not undeploy, destroy) already existing or crafted turrets before crafting any to ensure the ones you place are the updated versions

everything aside that should work properly

the Download link is [HERE] and lso in the OP

please do leave any feedback or bug reports here so i can look into it as soon as i can
and i hope you enjoy it

Symbol Out!

20170115160601_1.jpg2560×1377 466 KB

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Hey, glad to hear you’re still updating this.

I’ll try it out as soon as I’m home and give you an update on what I think about them.

2 Likes