Re: Spelljammer Construction System (Part II)

>>Actually, you could have eight or nine heavy catapults loaded at a time,
>>and when you get into combat just have a couple men running from catapult
>>to catapult, firing but not reloading.
>
>Actually, no, that's not possible.  It can be done with smokepowder or
>chemical propulsion weapons, but not with any torsion devices.  They
>deteriorate over time,  Leave a catapult like that for 24 hours or so and
>all you'll have accomplished is destroying your catapult. Now,  if you see
>a battle coming and have time to load them all just before hand, that would
>work pretty well.  They can sit for a while, just not for a length of time
>which would make routinly running with loaded weapons feasible.

This isn't mentioned in the rules, but yeah, it makes sense. I think I was
just thinking about the passage describing visual differences between say,
Friendly ships (unarmed crew, no large weapons armed), Threatening ships
(all large weapons armed), and Hostile ships (weapons armed, packed to the
gills with troops shouting for blood). :) I suppose that, if you wanted to
get the most from your heavy weapons, you could take a round or two of MC
penalties while using your riggers to load the weapons at the very
beginning of a hostile-looking encounter, before anyone gets in range of
each other. But you're right, you couldn't just load a catapult and leave
it sitting; not with normal materials.

Hemlock