How to make a Catapult - Collaboration of Designs and Guides

Hiya folks! This post is dedicated to tutorials that relate specifically to catapults. How to make them, how they work, their alternative uses as well as guides, designs and what not.​

Have a tutorial? Post it here!​

Have a video? Post it here!​

Pictures of awesome catapults? Here!​

I put together a simple tutorial for Medieval Engineers who are wanting to build a catapult that works more than 5% of the time. Haha! Obviously things will change as fixes and patches come our way so why don't we all work together to make this a dedicated topic for catapult enthusiasts and people who want to build their own. Perhaps even people who have built their own in real life? Erm...​

 

Scattarpult design
Coming Soon​

 

A catapult that shoots big rocks at relatively low velocity but with high accuracy due to little or no recoil. Will put rocks on the same spot on the target shot after shot. Will last for 20-30 shots (assuming you haven't screwed it up beforehand due to a loading error) but eventually the torsion spring will probably explode.

Can be operated from the platform without moving much if at all so rate of fire is like 1 round every 10 seconds. Not needing fly mode to operate might be important in survival mode someday, although at present there's no way to get onto the platform without flying.

The picture pretty much shows the whole design. From the nose to the front edge of the spring is 11 blocks. It's 12 blocks between the back of the spring and the front of the rope drum. The arm is a totall of 11 long from the connection with the spring to the end of the basket, and the basket is a total of 5 blocks wide. The rest, build to taste. It has no wheels because while the catapult sits pretty much still without them, with them it bounces badly and the axles and catch blocks explode on the 1st shot.

 

Yay people are working on this topic yaaaaay. Nice pult by the way!

 

Well thankee. Unfortunately, the entire subject seems a bit moot at the moment. Last time I checked the game (last night US time), blueprints were hosed. Instead of always pasting in as dynamic objectis, they came with block grid bounding boxes around them and defaulted to static. If you left them that way, you could place them nearly on the surface but they were static, utterly immobile. OTOH, if you hit J to place them as dynamic objects, then had had to drop them from like 5m up in the air so they broke on impact with the ground.

 

having built a few Trebuchets and Catapults on our property they translate well into this game there are a few physics issues that still have to be ironed out but I was going to post a working version of both But the Trebuchet arm broke when the wood link failed to break and sent the large 10X projectile straight down and then auto saved the wreckage so may be tomorrow

 

I discovered something interesting about catapults just now...

I had a catapult with an arm 10 blocks long. Starting at the outer end, I build an ammo box along the arm working wards the spring. In the end, the total length of the arm was still 10 blocks. I put the rope end at the top of the arm and had no trouble winching the arm nearly horizontal.

I then deleted my home-built ammo box and replaced it with the stock spoon/cup part on the end of the arm. I put the rope end on the back of the cup, so from a cocking leverage POV, the arm was now 2 or 3 blocks longer than it had been before. With this arrangement, I was only able to winch the arm back about 45^.

It therefore appears that the weight of the arm is more important than the length, and that the stock spoon/cup part is very light compared to a home-built box.

Sok, there doesn't seem to be any good reason to use the stock spoon/cup part. 1) it's flimsy, 2) it makes it hard to get a full cocking of the catapult, and 3) it's difficult to load with anything bigger than a small rock. OTOH, with a big home-built box, you can load rocks of both sizes, fire buckets, stone pillars, etc.

 

Catapult Ammo:

Besides the round rocks, you can shoot any dynamic object. Some work better than others. Some are probably best left to trebuchets when their rope functions start working.

It appears that to be able to damage buildings, the ammo has to be able to break itself. Thus, things like weight blocks, 1x1x1 wood blocks, chairs, chests, torches, etc., which don't break, don't seem to do any damage to buildings. Maybe they could hurt barbarians but we'll have to wait until we get barbarians to know for sure.

The fire bucket can break and is about the same size as a big rock can be loaded in any catapult that can shoot big rocks. It makes decent ammo. It loses velocity quickly after firing so is a short-range weapon, but it does do damage to the building when it hits. It also looks cool as it trails fire behind it in flight. Maybe someday it will set the castle on fire.

The stone pillars and the torsion spring make devasting ammo. They can all be loaded any box that will hold a big rock. Problem is, they're vary heavy so you need either a monstrous catapult or a trebuchet to throw them practical distance. However, if fired defensively from atop a tower, they could be effective against siege towers and rams.

I believe the king statue will make the best ammo of all. Just dropping it from a low height will destroy a large amount of castle. But a catapult isn't macho enough to fling it. Definitely need a BIG trebuchet .