Wizard of Id by Parker and Hart for April 02, 2020

But at least you got a “hole in one”.

No you fool, you built the trebuchet to short!

Give it a high arc next time.

Oh, and your walls are too thin.

Why is it “fire” when no fire is involved? Shouldn’t it be “launch”?

I still think it’s China’s fault for sending a catapult that’s too small. Wasn’t the “m” for the millions of people who would fall at impact? /s

Back it up about 4 meters and it should clear the wall…

And it leaves a hole just big enough for a Hun to crawl through.

Listen to the science, shorty.

Back to the firing range…

You figured that someone would have had the sense to test this out BEFORE the war started!

Somethings gotta give….wooooosh

Had the Fink made the arm of the catapult longer and farther away from the wall, the payload may have cleared the top of it as the arc of the trajectory would have been higher.

Build a platform for the catapult. And rather than using an onager a trebuchet would clear your wall, have better range, and faster reload time.

Back it up 30 feet.

To all those saying “move it back some”, that wouldn’t help at all. The arm ends in a vertical position, meaning the projectile would always go straight out horizontally (actually, it’d curve downwards but the curve would start with a zero-vertical vector.) You need to have the arm stop when it’s approx a 45-degree angle leaning backwards to get the most range (that, of course, discounts any angular acceleration it may still be making at the time. So maybe about 35-40 degrees before the vertical may wind up with more range. But anything before the 45 would give more height but less horizontal range.)

Well, now that you have a projectile window, you can start using “live” ammunition: cows and peasants.

Next time, don’t use the " Toulouse-Lautrec" model.

The next round should achieve greater velocity and a longer range.

Poorly chosen angle of launch. Even a half decent engineer could have worked that out.

Maybe if you just move a little further back from the wall.

This is not a time to sacrifice ROCKS on OUR Gddess (called Mother Earth) that people need to give a CRAP about?