minalia wrote:The key difference is about the caliber of the ammo employed and distance. Their shoot bigger bolts that can pierce big fortifications walls at a very long safe range. Ours can pierce rooftops and piss off folks who are busy trying to relax in a bath.
That's not something that can be easily managed. It's not a simple matter of just making the ballista bigger. There also has to be enough tension in the bow-cable to fire a bolt that massive at such a long range. And also a drawing mechanism powerful enough to pull said cable. The tension could probably be achieved via a pulley system like modern compound bows, but the drawing mechanism is another matter entirely. At the very least, it'd be a two-person crank with a two-handed grip for each person. Or more pulleys. Not to mention the difficulty in achieving accuracy with it. With that much power, the difference between overshooting the wall and burying a 10 foot long shaft 8 feet into the ground in front of it would be extremely small.