Hey /tg/, I want to run a naval campaign in your typical fantasy setting. Suppose gun powder has not yet being invented so cannons are out of the question, does it actually make sense to replace cannons with ballistas for ship broadsides?
I suspect not, otherwise people would have done it in real life. But what's the real reason why ballistas are a bad idea on ships?
just cave and use magic-powered cannons.
Or say magic is the reason ballistas work on ships.
>>46606408
Instead of broadsiding, in a naval campaign I made I just had one mounted at the front of the deck.
Traditional naval combat was more about boarding each other and beating their soldiers.
>>46606408
>I suspect not, otherwise people would have done it in real life. But what's the real reason why ballistas are a bad idea on ships?
I'm no expert, but I imagine a Ballista would hit with enough force to actually pierce the hulls of ships, and even if they did, the damage would probably be pretty minimal and easy to patch up. A Ballista makes a "piercing" wound, a cannonball blows apart everything around it.
>>46606531
I'm sure you can make a sort of blunt tipped ballista bolt to have a similar effect to a cannonball?
>>46606408
>people would have done it in real life
are you saying that they didn't?
>>46606674
The point is more the mass and velocity, not the damage type. Unless you built a ungodly ballista that fires cabers, I can't see how switching from broadhead to blunt would help much.
>>46606531
As far as I know, most pre-gunpowder naval combat was done with archers and boarding actions by the same sorts of men who fought on land, or else with fire. It was gunpowder that created the broadside, and it didn't really exist before that for the reasons you're stating.
>>46606408
Check out 300: Rise of an Empire for pre-gunpowder naval combat.
Teams of rowers are essential for acceleration. It's all about ramming, archery and boarding.
>>46606734
It may be possible to build super powerful ballista in absence of gunpowder. Obviously you can't just scale up a crossbow to huge size like pic related and have it fit on ships. However ballistas are actually torsion weapon that store mechanical energy in twisted strands of sinew mounted on wooden frame. If gunpowder is not available but steel is relatively easy to get in your world then it may be possible to create steel framed ballista. And just like how a steel prod arbalest is much more powerful than a wooden crossbow, a steel frame ballista would be capable of supporting much thicker/stronger sinew arms than a wooden ballista.
If you let certain fantasy animal in your world to also produce sinew that's stronger and capable of storing more energy then the result would be a very powerful weapon in a small physical package capable of firing cannonballs. Of course it will be as heavy as carriage mounted cannons if not more so.
>>46606531
Ballistas are good antipersonnel weapons, they could be used on ships but they wouldn't be very effective at damaging the ship. They'd be used in the same way as archery to clear the decks of troops. Boarding and ramming would still be a key component of naval warfare though, since you aren't going to broadside a ship with bolts. there isn't reason why they are a bad idea on ships, they just don't do the same things as canons.
>>46606408
Of course that all changes if you include more fantastical elements to your ballistas, like enchanted bolts that explode into shafts of lighting upon impact, or by making them so huge that they can sink ships. The elves in warhammer use both techniques and remain the novel power in their setting even without canons and ironclads
>>46606734
Thrown stones; use skorpion. Profit like the ancients.
If magic cast things like delayed fireball in runes on it.
Hmmmm actually fireball bolts would make ballistas extremely deadly against wooden ships. Basically in real life when explosive shells started to replace solid balls the days of wooden ship were numbered.
I would say if fireball bolts was really a thing you wouldn't have broadsides, individual ballista will be so good at sinking ships that you would only carry a few with you and mount them on centerline barbettes.
>>46606408
>But what's the real reason why ballistas are a bad idea on ships?
Why would they be a bad idea??? Scorpios to clear the enemy deck, ballistas would be useful to hook and pull the enemy ship towards you.
Catapults would probably replace cannons better on dealing damage from broadside, but remeber that there were "ballistas" that launched stones.
You need to learn more about antiquity, anon.
>According to an estimation by Lionel Casson, Ptolemy's forty was an oversize catamaran galley, measuring 128 m (420 ft). The twin hull arrangement with a central working platform was designed for stability in sea battles with catapults and could carry 3,000-4,000 marines.
>[Catapults] became a part of every up-to-date fortress and siege train, and gradually they began to be deployed in the more mobile warfare of the battlefield. At sea they may have played a role in the naval arms race that led from the trireme, with its three banks of oars, to huge vessels with as many as 40 banks. Evidently the underlying assumption was that catapult fire could decimate the enemy boarding force while their ship was still too far away to grapple or ram. The larger the ship was, the more catapults it could carry and the more stable its firing platform was. This interpretation, then, sees the catapult superceding hand-to-hand warfare at sea as the cannon did 2000 years later. Eventually the advent of the new battle tactics, of armored ships called cataphracts and of Roman efforts to dominate the entire Mediterranean combined to reduce the size of warships once again. In a political parallel to land warfare, the influence of the citizen-rower was diminished in the process. Werner Soedel and Vernard Foley
>>46606408
Not for full broadsides, at least not for more than one-shots. Balistas take time and tremendous manpower to reload.
You could however go the way of the original LEGO pirate ship and mount a number of Balistas on swivel mounts along the deck or even in turret-like installations.
If you want to screw up other ships then, use fire bolts with heavy bodkin points like already suggested. Or have them trail strong lines with hooks to catch and damage the oars, if your setting has rowers.
Ancient naval warfare was mostly archers and mounted ballistae clearing the deck before the ship either rammed with enough weight to utterly fuck up the other boat or throw grappling hooks and pull up to board with marines. The last thing they'd want to do, if they could help it, was sink the other ship after a tedius exchange of fire. That's be risky for them and then they'd be unable to capture the extremely expensive ship
