Siege Weapon Concept: War Mounts

TheShadowScout

Thinking about it some more... why not have three siege mounts for each alliance, one per race? Three different types... maybe?
- one "ranged artillery" carrying some special siege weapon (a rock throwing giant riding a mammoth? A horse-drawn wagon with some crude cannon? Or something like the the welkyn-stone powered ayleid costal defense system in one of the AD quests?), but weak at close range?
- one "slow & armored" siege beast that has powerful close range attacks, lumbers up to gates and walls to smash them down, takes insane amouts of damage to put down, can one-shot enemy players foolish enough to stand in its way, does bonus damage against walls and gates, but is annoyingly slow and can be outmanouvred?
- one fast moving "close assault charger" that has less HP then the others, and does no extra damage against fortifications, but is fast moving and good against massed enemy troops with AoE type attacks?

AD:
Altmer - Mage Platform (artillery)
Bosmer - Great Lurcher (armor)
Khajiit - Senche-Raht (assault)

DC:
Breton - War Wagon (artillery)
Orc - Siege Tower (armor)
Redguard - Duneripper (assault)

EP:
Nord - Mammoth (artillery)
Dunmer - Stilt Strider (armor)
Argonian - Wammasu (assault)

WraithAzraiel

Personally I would leave the Dwemer out of the running for these but I LOVE the idea.

Some Recommendations:

- To make it fair, and to encourage the expansion of guild systems. Have it cost a great deal. IE: if in the future when/if these are looked at as a possibility, grant the ability for individuals to donate AP gained (to a cap) into a guild bank just as you might donate gold. And boom, a guild will be able to afford this much more swiftly than any individual would. Limit of 1 on any person (bank or bag) at any given time.

- Have these behemoths be worth 10/20 or 11/20 siege so that there's never more than 1 attacking a particular keep. That would allow them to be as powerful as 10 single pieces of siege equipment and get away with it.

- Have it take a few people to operate. Maybe 3. 1 to drive and work the frontal attacks. 1 to do something else that I can't think of right now and 1 to sit swivel at the top to use a bow to aid the horde of fellow attackers on the ground with some sort of ranged attacks.

- Don't make the driver(s) immune to damage but give them a nice bit of reduction. Say 30-40% reduction to incoming damage. And should the driver die, his place can be taken by another attacker. Same with the rest of the occupants. Until the siege beast is destroyed.

WraithAzraiel

Also

For EP, I give you - THE BATTLE NETCH

Gidorick

@TheShadowScout I really like the thought process of your ideas... but the additional Mounts would really just be replacements for current siege weapons and you are suggesting dividing the power of the one mount between three.

I really think the War Mount should be an EVENT when they step onto the field. Players should exclaim "oh schnikies!!" when they see a War Mount take to the field. They should be able to attack

In particular, I am considering the power that a Senche-Raht should bring to the field. These beasts are formidable war machines that can topple forests. They shouldn't be nerfed down to quick-attack soldier attacks. They need to be able to BUST down some walls!

TheShadowScout

I was more thinking about how to make them different. Not intending to make the assult class merely soldier attacks, just imagining it might be better at that, while the others might be better at other things... Thus the basic "ranged attack - melee tank - melee area attack" setup, though that was just off the top of my head.
And I agree that they shouldn't be replacements for siege weapons... they should be much more. A one beast siege all by themselves. Horrendously expensive, but worth every AP.

Gidorick

oh, gotcha. I was seeing a battlefield full of huge beasts where that's the focus of the battle... hehe. That wouldn't work. I do think having multiple War Mount types would be pretty awesome and would give players a choice in what they want the War Mount to do.

I can agree with everyone that first, ZOS needs to get mounted combat working.

Shunravi

Ok, so I went and got some screens. I used the fighters guild circle as a size reference. as its late, and im tired,im just going to dump the pics here. Now, I have this suspicion that they are resizing things.... I already touched on it with the Senche skulls pics. it feels that they readjusted the sizes of several things, but these size comparisons are accurate enough.

Mammoth;



Wamasu;



Boss Wamasu



Another boss Wamasu



Duneripper;

(this guy was hard to flank)




Boss Duneripper



So, make of it what you will. Yes, in general, Wamasu are smaller. they are still rather large, and can get larger.

Soloing fully scaled dungeons to get some of those pics was tricky. But fun.

Also, having seen piles of this overworld boss' corpses near the DSA wayshrine, I could swear he was larger. did they resize things, or am i just tired?

Gidorick

Awesome @Shunravi! I'm taking 2 things from these pictures.
1: Mammoths are smaller than I thought they were.
2: Both the Wamasu and the Duneripper bosses are plenty large to fit a few players!

That Wamasu looks fierce!

Gidorick

Man, placing the Mammoth next to the Wamasu and the Senche-Raht and I'm concerned for the Mammoth! Lol. So you think the Wamasu would be good for the Daggerfall Covenant?

Throren

Wamasu are native to Blackmarsh. I don't know why you keep trying to give animals from one factions lands to a different faction.

Gidorick

The faction we are having trouble with is the Daggerfall Covenant. That's why I asked if it would work for the DC... We have PLENTY of options for Ebonheart Pact And I thought the Wamasu was in the southern regions but I didn't know if I had missed them in high rock or something.

So the ONLY viable option for daggerfall is the Duneripper?


Eh.... I like the giant Dwemer spider. The Duneripper just doesn't seem Imposing enough.

Throren

I'd rather trade imposing for more lore friendlyness

Gidorick

Don't we get a dwemer spider pet in Bangkorai? That's in Daggerfall. Didn't the Dwemer make large centurion constructs? don't people in tamriel enjoy tinkering with dwemer technology?

So there are dwemer machines in Daggerfall Covenant areas.
The dwemer made large war machines.
There are people that seek these things out and tinker with them.

Why would the existence of a large dwemer war mount be against lore? Just because we haven't seen a dwemer construct such as this doesn't mean it can't exist.

Throren

Because huge constructs of that size are still fairly rare and we would have no way to control them nevermind where the Covenant would manage to get a large amount of them to use in lore.


Plus an army of dwemer robots running around would be silly.

Why do these have to animals/creatures? Why not movable siege weapons?

Why not like a large carriage or platform of sorts drawn by horses or something else. Like big battle chariots with a ballista ontop or something.

Gidorick

Lol. Because the entirety of the concept came from me asking "hey... how could Senche-Raht fit into ESO?"

Throren

You could still have Senche-raht though

AD get Senche-raht
EP get a mammoth maybe with some kind of structure on their back for a rider + archers



and maybe for DC something like this but drawn by large armoured horses or even Orsinium bears. Maybe even a small catapult/archers on the carriage to make up for lack of size/strength compared to Senche-raht/mammoth

Gidorick

Ding! Awesome! having a war chariot drawn be bears would be pretty cool, I admit.

Forestd16b14_ESO

Ebonheart pact war mount is Dovabear.

Merlin13KAGL

I suppose when the battle's over, winning side has a barbecue? Dropping something of that size should come with AoE environmental damage (shockwave, crushing, etc)

The rideable spider seems a little odd, but I could see some Dwemer obtained siege weapons being interesting. Screw Drill battering ram, anyone?

Launching automatons over the wall could be interesting too. Think they'd have to be equal opportunity aggro though (you'd have to kill them when you showed up, as they'd be ticked off.)

Regarding size, I could absolutely see Wamasu having a place on the battlefield there are a couple oversized ones in both Crag and in Arx.

Dunerippers would be outstanding, Right up the the moment they sand-drive with you mounted.

dodgehopper_ESO

I like the idea, but perhaps we should ask zos to be more creative?
Argonians could have wamasu
Nords mammoths
Dunmer a silt strider
Bosmer a walking tree
Khajiit the senche raht
Redgards the duneripper (or elephant)
Bretons a... Not sure... Something magical like oversized mudcrab
Altmer a huge atronach
Orcs a mutant bear

MLRPZ

And What about my AD dunmer dragonknight ? ^^
a giant mechanic mammoth drawn by bears ?

Molag_Crow

Brilliant idea!

13igTyme

I thought this thread was going to be about putting our mounts in a catapult.

MLRPZ

Could be nice aswell, guars hiting a keep wall for 15k

Alucardo

Aww yeah! Assaulting forts is becoming extremely boring. Siege wall, run through breech, siege wall, cap. Same old, same old. Rams can be fun, but ridiculously pointless when oil just straight up destroys it, so you don't see them very often.
I'm not a fan of mounted combat in general, but War Mounts could be a really interesting idea and a new alternative to sieges

Meshal

dwemer mount for nords or any of the other races! that's so breaking the lore, i think !

13igTyme

MLRPZ wrote: »

Could be nice aswell, guars hiting a keep wall for 15k

Exactly, who wouldn't want that?

GuyNamedSean

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Thinking about it some more... why not have three siege mounts for each alliance, one per race? Three different types... maybe?
- one "ranged artillery" carrying some special siege weapon (a rock throwing giant riding a mammoth? A horse-drawn wagon with some crude cannon? Or something like the the welkyn-stone powered ayleid costal defense system in one of the AD quests?), but weak at close range?
- one "slow & armored" siege beast that has powerful close range attacks, lumbers up to gates and walls to smash them down, takes insane amouts of damage to put down, can one-shot enemy players foolish enough to stand in its way, does bonus damage against walls and gates, but is annoyingly slow and can be outmanouvred?
- one fast moving "close assault charger" that has less HP then the others, and does no extra damage against fortifications, but is fast moving and good against massed enemy troops with AoE type attacks?

AD:
Altmer - Mage Platform (artillery)
Bosmer - Great Lurcher (armor)
Khajiit - Senche-Raht (assault)

DC:
Breton - War Wagon (artillery)
Orc - Siege Tower (armor)
Redguard - Duneripper (assault)

EP:
Nord - Mammoth (artillery)
Dunmer - Stilt Strider (armor)
Argonian - Wammasu (assault)

Yes.

WraithAzraiel wrote: »

Personally I would leave the Dwemer out of the running for these but I LOVE the idea.

Some Recommendations:

- To make it fair, and to encourage the expansion of guild systems. Have it cost a great deal. IE: if in the future when/if these are looked at as a possibility, grant the ability for individuals to donate AP gained (to a cap) into a guild bank just as you might donate gold. And boom, a guild will be able to afford this much more swiftly than any individual would. Limit of 1 on any person (bank or bag) at any given time.

- Have these behemoths be worth 10/20 or 11/20 siege so that there's never more than 1 attacking a particular keep. That would allow them to be as powerful as 10 single pieces of siege equipment and get away with it.

- Have it take a few people to operate. Maybe 3. 1 to drive and work the frontal attacks. 1 to do something else that I can't think of right now and 1 to sit swivel at the top to use a bow to aid the horde of fellow attackers on the ground with some sort of ranged attacks.

- Don't make the driver(s) immune to damage but give them a nice bit of reduction. Say 30-40% reduction to incoming damage. And should the driver die, his place can be taken by another attacker. Same with the rest of the occupants. Until the siege beast is destroyed.

And yes.

I would love having this along with cavalry combat, especially if the mounted combat counted toward siege weapons. As it is right now we've got stationary weapons that are very powerful but leave you a sitting duck. Any kind of mobile siege would be outstanding.

Gidorick

I definitely like the idea of different options for the war mounts, as long as there are checks and balances to prevent the battlefield from becoming over-run with war mounts. I think there could be a real danger of players wanting these things instead of siege weapons (for good reason!).

Having different mounts with different abilities could lead to players having to use the mounts tactically, could be interesting!

RDMyers65b14_ESO

In Orsinium, there are the six legged creatures that I forget the name of that is the size of mammoths. There are even mammoths (and pocket mammoths) and of course, war bears.