[rottndog]

There’s another reason the counterweight is hinged...this helps to better transfer the potential energy in the weight to the kinetic energy of the projectile. Also, a proper trebuchet is mounted on wheels, as the rolling motion during the swing action of the arm also better transfers energy to the projectile.

I’m not an expert...I just saw a show on PBS, where they actually built one to a medieval drawing, and gradually figured out what worked best.

[rottndog]

They built two different styles:

Nova Builds a trebuchet

[sionnsar]

There’s another reason the counterweight is hinged...this helps to better transfer the potential energy in the weight to the kinetic energy of the projectile.

Need to stop and consider this because it's not intuitive. Given that the change in elevation of the counterweight is significantly less with a hinged weight, there's less potential energy to transfer.