Durin The Deathless

I know you have heard this at least ten thousand times but I'm gonna say it anyway, When are you guys gonna be done? I mean come on! It's been what? Four years? This Mod isn't going to take as long as it took for Tolkien to write the book is it? I would very much like to play this before I die of old age. I am not a Game Designer (quite obvious isn't it) but four years!?! It didn't take EA that long to make the game and they had to make it from scratch, you at least have something with which to work. Dain you are quite obviously a better team leader than your predecessor, as most of the work done so far has been accomplished during your 'reign' and I thank you for that, I only hope that you all can finish this mod before we all die (whether of boredom or old age). I am therefore closing my account and saying good-bye.

Sincerely,
Durin the Deathless

Banner for Khazad Guard, The Inscription at the top is Baruk Khazad in Angerthas Runes, and the thing in the bottom left corner is a dwarven ring of power.

 Erebor.JPG   11.73KB   12 downloads

Actually Khazâd ai-mênu means "The Dwarves are Upon You" but anywho.

Here's my first try, not very good but I'm gonna spit out a couple more later.

 Erebor.JPG   11.36KB   9 downloads

The Letters on the Hammer are L and B and the Inscription on the anvil is "Longbeard"

The Gondor trebuchet do pack and unpack, just look at the renders and screenshots

The Mordor catapult is reloaded by the troll, and is on wheels so it doesn't need to pack/unpack.

Terribly sorry please forgive my ignorance, I should have had a look before I spoke, I had not seen the model recently and the memory was foggy.

A lot of stuff isn't mentioned in the books

True, but it is also not mentioned often in history, if the book had mentioned them and history had not (or vis versa), I would not say anything. However since neither speaks of fire arrows being used (well at least not often), then common sense dictates that they should not be used. If you read Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Tolkien then you will discover that he felt not that he was inventing a story, but that it was being revealed to him slowly, as if it was part of this world's history; thus the weapons and tactics used would be similar.

I realize that some of this may not be possible, and even if it is it will most likely be a big pain in the rear; but reflecting upon the book, and medieval history, the Trebuchets would be more realistic if you had to pack and unpack them, such as in Age of Empires II; I'm just saying since you changed the skin to look more like a real treb, then it would make sense that something that large wouldn't be mobile one second, then move to kill something the other second; same thing applies to the Mordor Catapult, and Isengard's Balistae (If indeed you are going to keep EA's idea of using the balistae).
Also Fire Arrows is kind of a stupid upgrade, they are never mentioned in the book, and in history they're extremely rarely used, I'm not exactly sure what you would replace them with, maybe like barbed arrows, or steel arrowheads, or something; for taking down ents and buildings it could be like Rome: Total War, switch to fire arrows, but either decrease the accuracy of the arrows (if you can script that) or damage against normal units, because in putting on the flammable material and fire the arrow would be slower and less accurate (which is one reason why they were almost never used).