Catapult

This topic is in need of spading and has automatically been added to the spading category for the following reason: one of the most poorly understood buildings in the game (pre-season 3), needs lots of spading. The page was tagged by: Discordance 17:58, 30 July 2011 (PDT)

Catapult
The catapult is a special machine which allows you fire all kinds of things into the World Beyond: very useful for preparing the ground for faraway expeditions!
Category	Buildings
Sub Category	Watchtower
Blueprints Blueprint	Construction Blueprint (common) common
Parent building	Watchtower Watchtower
Action Points cost	40
Resource cost	Twisted Plank×2 Wrought Iron×1 Patchwork Beam×1 Metal Support×1
Unlocks	See list

Once upon a time, some tinkerers decided to make a weapon to rain mass destruction on the incoming hordes. This resulted in a towering structure with a long stretchy handle and a cup at the end. Unfortunately, it took forever to crank up and tended to misfire, explode, break, or otherwise completely and utterly malfunction. And it wasn't a very good weapon either.

Uses

• Once the Catapult is built, a new icon called "Catap" appears next to the area where you can find links for projects and the watchtower, workshop, etc.
• A operator will be assigned immediately once built. There is no way to re-assign another unless the chosen operator dies. When they die, you need to go to "Catap" page and press the button "Randomly select a citizen for the job" for the system to assign another as the catapult operator again.
  • The assignment is somehow based on activity rating. The system will pick any citizen with 5 stars first. Otherwise it seems to be completely random. The system may pick anyone from 4 stars to 0 star without any particular preference.
  • The selected Citizen Citizen will get a message from The Crow that they have been selected as the catapult operator, and that they should go to the catapult area.
• When you get to the Catapult area you will be given an option to enter (X,Y) coordinates to launch one item in your inventory.
  • You can catapult anywhere in the map. There is no limit.
  • You can only catapult one item per shot. This action requires 4 , or 2 if Calibrated Catapult Upgraded Catapult is built.
• Most items are safe to catapult and have zero chance of breakage or destruction.
  • Heavy object Heavy object can be catapulted safely too.
• Containers like Manbag Manbag or Shopping Trolley Shopping Trolley are said to be not transportable by the catapult. (please confirm)
• Those items are not safe to catapult and will break on the zone they hit when catapulted:
  • Exploding Grapefruit Exploding Grapefruit always breaks into Unrecognisable Remains Unrecognisable Remains
  • Water Bomb Water Bomb, Exploding Water Bomb Exploding Water Bomb??? (please confirm)
  • Furious Kitten (partially digested) Furious Kitten (partially digested) becomes 1x Unspecified Meat Unspecified Meat
  • (and possibly other animals?)
  • (any more items?? Please add.)
• The Catapult has roughly 10%-20% chance to shoot imprecisely.
  • An imprecise projection causes the object to land 1 away from the targeted zone.
  • The log will not indicates the shot is imprecise but state where the item is catapulted into. You will know it is imprecise if the location it lands does not match what you input.

Notes

• In a Meta town, they will manipulate the selection by asking only 1 to log in after The Attack The Attack and perform all sorts of activities to get 5 stars before triggering the selection progress. This ensures only the one they want becomes the catapult operator.

Texts

When an item is catapulted:

[Citizen] has catapulted ______ into the following sector: [x,y]!

When an item is catapulted but breaks:

?? (blurb missing)

Changes

• In Season 3:
  • Primitive Catapult was renamed to Catapult.
  • The description changed slightly, the old one was:

  The catapult is a special machine which allows you fire all kinds of things into the World Beyond: very useful for preparing the ground for tomorrow's expeditions.

External links

• Catapult - Official Die2Nite.Com Help Section