Yeah you farm lets say 30k of stone right when the siege starts. Lets even give it a best scenario and say you had 75k stone already farmed ready to turn into boulders. Thats 500+ shots. Thats barely enough for a double layer of t3 walls and a vault.
There doesnt seem to be splash damage anymore so you need to hit the exact same spot to do any damage. The treb is not accurate having a cone even if you keep the settings on the treb the same. Even if you put the treb set up timer back to the way it was. The upkeep on a siege is redic.
Now factor in defending the treb and fighting off enc speced naked running up and clearing the treb of its mats. This isnt new, this was something needing to be done in the previous treb version but add the fact that you need to go further and further away from your treb to keep farming stone as every tip you are clearing more stone around the area out farming the spawn rate.
Imagine that experience vs just spending an evening farming up the explosives you need to get through the doors and just doing that.
Seems like the trebs place currently is to either offline raid or kill t1 maybe t2 bases. Doesnt really seem worth it given the stone cost
Effectively most bases are constructed in a way that you can only do indirect damage with explosives. The trebuchet is a huge advantage here. And regarding the farming, I still don’t get it. The damage output of 150 stone is tremendous in comparison to the jars… Who is seriously gonna claim dragonpowder is worth less than 150 stone. The only thing that holds you back from using the trebuchet here is the amount of organization it takes in comparison to brute forcing your way in with jars. With the new angle system its even easier to hit narrow spots like cave entrances and ceilings between vaults. I like the idea that you create the damage with engineering instead of farming.
After the building HP boost and then again the recent nerf, explosive jars are extremely underwhelming. People just use them so much because they are the last resort in an encrusted and grindy based raiding meta. Orbs used to be state of the art, but again - this vital option was taken from us.
I remember raiding a couple of bases which were too low to be protected entirely by the bubble. Still took me 30-50 jars to destroy a single one of the ground foundations. Only tiny amounts of damage/jar came through and it was a grindy bit of business. Now compare this please to the building costs of black ice. Plainly ridiculous. And this was only possible because the owners of those bases were unaware how high the jar range actually is. If a bit of a foundation is covered by textures you do almost no damage. If you build on a stone pillar there is (without exploits) no space where you could even place a jar.
Maybe its not the idea to kill the vault with treb boulders? Vaults barely take damage from trebuchets, so raiding bases like this require combination of different raiding materials. Probably easiest to destroy the ceilings or foundations that support the vault if its not standing on the ground.
Most of the times its already enough to remove the climbing protection and then you can go in with your orbs, arrows and jars and precisely blast what you need to be gone. People will be forced to build different now.
And by the way… you don’t need a complicated raid tower. An elevated point and climbing protection is enough with the new range. Then just use the trebuchet while a friend guards your raidplatform with a repairhammer.