Shooting the balista with Foltest

[kaius]

Shooting the balista with Foltest

Now that's why I liked Foltest and prolly why Geralt liked him too: he takes things into his hands.

In the Prologue, as soon as the ambassador of Nilfgaard is dismissed and Geralt has to use the spyglass to help Flotest aim the balista, is it possible to hit "the bastard"? I tried aiming high, low, but both if I say 3 degrees or 2 and a half, the target ducks and the bolt goes high.
Am I just not gifted with siege weapons or is it just impossible to hit?

 

[227]

Am I just not gifted with siege weapons or is it just impossible to hit?

On the Xbox you aim at the person on the left, but on PC you have to aim at the person on the right. It's a little bug that's been around forever. If you're on the PC, aim here:

 

[kaius]

Yes it worked.
Thank you, it never ocurred to me that the "the one with the plume" meant "the one without the plume"...

 

[nstiver]

Yeah it's stupid. Unless I am missing something big, this is a bug they have not corrected.

 

[pedric]

I play TW2EE on my PC. I went through this section of the game my first time through using an XBox 360 controller. IIRC I could actually aim correctly. I could aim at the guy with the plume and kill him. This time through I am using mouse and keyboard and thanks to this thread, was able to kill the guy with the plume by aiming at the guy next to him.

Thank you so much for this post and the solution post!

 

[jedi31293]

Hmm, interesting. I always just assumed it was impossible to hit him. Any major differences of hitting vs. missing?

 

[GuyNwah]

Hmm, interesting. I always just assumed it was impossible to hit him. Any major differences of hitting vs. missing?

Not much. If you miss, you will fight him later. I always aim the left center crosshair on him, and haven't missed in many tries. So there's some "give" in the evaluation of the azimuth, but seemingly much less in the elevation.

This made me go look it up. It turns out that measuring angles in "degrees" is of early origin (probably Babylonian, since they used the 1/6 turn as their basic angle and a base-60 number system suitable for dividing that into 60 degrees) and would not have been out of place in gunnery of this time IRL.

 

[grumbold]

No wonder, it was driving me crazy....

 

[BenDav]

I think its supposed to be 1.5 degrees....read it somewhere...

 

[mastone1981]

You need to use the arrow buttons on teh keyboard ...mouse doesn't work

 

[GuyNwah]

Works fine with the mouse. Works better with a trackball, because a trackball holds absolute position better. Just hit the space bar when you have the center (II) horizontal line on the heads of the targets.

 

[mastone1981]

Works fine with the mouse. Works better with a trackball, because a trackball holds absolute position better. Just hit the space bar when you have the center (II) horizontal line on the heads of the targets.

didn't work for me he kept shouting 3 degrees, only when i used the arrow keys it worked

 

[Wazhai]

I've never had trouble hitting the bastard unless I specifically wanted to avoid killing him. If you were to aim a real ballista, would you aim at someone's head? Or at the tip of the barricade? This is where I aim.

 

[GuyNwah]

I've never had trouble hitting the bastard unless I specifically wanted to avoid killing him. If you were to aim a real ballista, would you aim at someone's head? Or at the tip of the barricade? This is where I aim.

IRL ballistae were highly accurate and often used as anti-personnel weapons. They had a U-joint mount that allowed them to be aimed quickly, none of this cumbersome jackscrew technology depicted in the game.

As with any projectile weapon, if you're sighting along the barrel, your point of aim is going to be above the target; if you're sighting from above, as depicted in the game, your point of aim will be below the target at short range but above at long range. So whether your point of aim is going to be low, on target, or high depends on your knowledge of the range of your weapon and the range to the target.

The Essentials of Archery: How to Aim

 

[Wazhai]

What we have in the game is far from a faithful representation of real aiming in any way, shape or form. Either way, from such a distance I highly doubt anyone would bother to try and hit someone in the body. To me, it seems much more logical and likely to aim at the barricade, seeing as it's a pretty big target and there's no chance for it to duck. The force of impact on the wooden construction is much more likely to cause greater damage than a lucky shot at a single person. The cutscene demonstrates this quite clearly.

 

[GuyNwah]

The ballistae of the game are pretty much fanciful, anyway. IRL the ballista was a sniper's weapon, highly accurate at long range, and its ammunition, bolts comparable in size and weight to javelins, was not so heavy as to have any ability to knock down fortifications.

In a real battle, Foltest would have brought in an onager or mangonel to knock down Etcheverry's barricade.