![]() The things are heavy you can’t just pick them up and move them if you find out that you’re hitting 50 yards short because it rained yesterday. You can imagine what it would do to accuracy if the right spring is ever so slightly looser than the left spring, and even if you’re using a one-armed catapult, you need to pay close attention to whether the spring needs to be wound tighter or looser to maintain the same point of aim. On top of that, because the springiness of the torsion springs is highly sensitive to factors such as humidity, the springs require constant adjustment to maintain performance. In that sense, trebuchets are fairly cheap (assuming you’re campaigning in a part of the world where wood is abundant). The real guts of a catapult-the torsion springs-require the deaths of a great many cattle to provide the necessary sinew. On the other hand, trebuchets only really require wood. Catapults, by comparison, are relatively portable (emphasis on the “by comparison” a stone-throwing catapult can easily weigh upward of 2 tons). Trebuchets were the most powerful catapults used in the Middle Ages, and they were important weapons during military siege attacks on enemy fortifications. You just can’t take trebuchets with you on campaign, even disassembled, without the most extraordinary feats of logistics. The one real advantage that they have is not tactical but strategic: Trebuchets require an incredible amount of wood. Now, when it comes to stone-throwing catapults, whether of the two-armed or one-armed variety, those are basically inferior to trebuchets. Then again, trebuchets don’t shoot darts, so the whole comparison is kind of wonky. When it comes to the maximum range of any catapult, ever, catapults definitely have trebuchets beat. Because “catapult” covers a fairly wide range of machines, it’s accurate to say that trebuchets have a longer range than a catapult when projecting stones at fortifications. This is also why I list range as only a half advantage of a catapult. This is a capability that a trebuchet simply does not have. You can imagine how accurate, long-range anti-personnel fire could be quite useful in a siege, both to suppress defenders and simply to demoralize them. Dart-throwing catapults were, I kid you not, used to snipe individual soldiers off of fortification walls from far beyond bowshot (the longest range attested for a dart-thrower is 700 yards the longest achieved by modern reconstructions something like 400-still way beyond the effective range of any bow ever made). They were frighteningly accurate, as both ancient sources and modern reconstructions attest. It’s important to note, therefore, that catapults do more things than trebuchets do.
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