When building catapults, armies had to include in their ranks those people capable of employing complicated mathematical formulas and turning them into machines of war.

While their appearance on the warfare scene dramatically changed tactics for quite literally hundreds of years, it was no easy task for medieval armies to create the machines of war they needed to help ensure victory.

The engineers were generally responsible for the production or mass production of larger scale weapons on the battlefield and leading up battle.

When building catapults on site, engineers had to rely on their own know how and the materials available to them, unless of course they transported the wood, sinew and in the case of some more complex catapults, the counterpoises and other materials with them.

When the idea was to create more simple machines such as ballistas or mangonels, the task of building catapults was much easier on site than let