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I'm interested in thoughts on mortars.

They are designed to be usable for defense as well as offense - but are people using them that way? What about offense? How are you using mortars and how do you feel they're balanced for player use?

Thanks all.

I'm not a fan of the forced miss radius size, personally. A good shot should be able to at least get close to their target.

I would like to see slightly more accurate shots, and more practical uses for EMP mortar types for offense.

Just my 2¢

I have not felt a compelling need to start using them so honestly I haven't really experimented with them much. I've found other solutions to the situations where they might be useful.

I think conceptually I was turned off by the ammo requirement; not that I think it's a bad idea, I just figured I could find solutions where I don't have to keep track of ammo at all.

EDIT: I also have not played around much with sieges of other bases, so I haven't had the opportunity to try them offensively.

I used to never use them for anything, but with A16, I have been using them to break down pirate defenses before I siege camps. I have to say that in the future when the random gen for encampments gets updated with more building types and bigger bases they will have a greater use. I do have to say tho, maybe make a mortar an object like beds and other furniture that can be uninstalled and moved. It would make transport way easier than hauling around a bunch of steel.

I build them when I get around to research them, but I have never prioritized mortars. They are useful in a few situations, but the amount of ammunition (and thus steel) you need is too high given how inaccurate they are.

I just used some last night on a manhunting pack of wild boars outside my base. My colony is walled in so everyone was safe, and I just kept launching mortars at the pack. I got most of them before they wandered off. I got them all hauled into my freezer too before they spoiled!

I don't find them very effective for offense normally simply because of the accuracy. I will burn through so many shells and a very low percentage of them will actually do any damage. The manhunters were different because they mostly stay in the same place so they were a big non-moving target. If raiders were attacking my walls and moving around it would be a different story. I'd probably end up hitting my own walls or turrets as much as the raiders.

With that being said, I'm not honestly sure how you'd fix it. If they were more accurate they would be WAY WAY WAY too overpowered. I guess I'd rather spend my steel on turrets and guns than on the shells. I could deal with the inaccuracy if I didn't have to pump steel into keeping the ammo stocked. It would be a good way for the colonists who may not be good shooters to be able to help out in base defense. I haven't had any sieges on my current colony yet, but I would probably use incendiary against those since they stay in one place and the fire would distract them. It would be worth using the shells if I knew eventually I'd get their mortars taken out.

I typically don't even build them until pretty late in the game when my regular defenses are in place and I have the steel to spare for the ammo.

My current colony has a incendiary and explosive mortar behind the colony walls. Used it on enemy attacks aswell as on BEAVERS!
When I start attacking other colonies i will probably take a mortar with me.

Quote from: O Negative on January 12, 2017, 04:26:06 PM
I'm not a fan of the forced miss radius size, personally. A good shot should be able to at least get close to their target.

I would like to see slightly more accurate shots, and more practical uses for EMP mortar types for offense.

Just my 2¢

I also think that the mortar is VERY inaccurate, which is pretty annoying when you miss at least 5 shots on an enemy raid thats waiting to attack. Ofcourse it shouldn't be too accurate, because then it would become too OP. But a bit better accuracy would be nice.

I don't use the emp mortar yet, but will put one up soon, just in case of a mechanoid attack. But i don't see any other use either. Not sure how the emp responds to electronical machines (in the colony) but if it shuts it down (and an colonist should fix/turn it on again) it could be very usefull for offense.

Those are my thoughts about it.

TLDR: I like the mortar a lot, but is a bit too inaccurate. EMP mortar seems usefull for only 1 situation.

I don't use them. 

I HAVE used them for defense before, but abandoned the idea.  I found them to require too much micro, both in efficient setup and operation (making and setting up the shells and stockpiles with oddly arranged roofing to keep them from deteriorating, and then manually assigning colonists to man them, then fire (or hold fire) at specific places) - and after all that, actually hitting even the big cluster of enemies I was aiming at is a complete toss up.

I've never even considered them for offensive raiding.  Take the amount of setup and multiply by 10 or more to research and set up the drop pods to get the steel over, or train, feed, bring, and safely store enough draft animals to haul the supplies.

I've begun using the "more vanilla turrets" mod (i try to minimize turret use overall, so using a couple of really strong turrets appeals) and the devastator mortar seemed a more viable late late LATE game option for defense (still not offense).  shoots 5 shot bursts in a slightly smaller radius, no shell use, but uses about the same power as a sun lamp.  Seems a but overpowered, but i REALLY appreciate not having to micro artillery shells as well as having half a chance to hit near where i'm shooting.


I'd probably use them again (for defense only most likely) if ammo was removed and they were treated like other guns

Once during an early colony I had a psychic ship drop down in a place with absolutely no cover from which to shoot it and no sniper rifles. I decided to build a mortar and knock it out. I fired several hundreds of steel worth of shells at it and got only one hit in. Eventually it ramped up it's psychic power to the point where everyone in my colony killed each other. That was my first and last experience with mortars.

Mortars work well against colonies because of how much stuff there is to hit. Even if the mortar misses the primary target, it's likely to do some damage to something. But as for player use? There is absolutely no threat that a mortar can handle better than a sniper rifle.

Quote from: Limdood on January 12, 2017, 04:42:54 PM
stockpiles with oddly arranged roofing to keep them from deteriorating

That's what equipment racks are for

I tried to use them a few times, but always ended up either forgetting or disassembling them. Fire rate is too low, accuracy is beyond horrible and AoE is too small to compensate.

I just watched a video from the middle east, you know, the one where they launch one shell right after another and sometimes disappear in an explosion. Why not do the same?
Basically, a freshly installed mortar will have same properties as before, but then things will change.
1. Each consequent shot will increase accuracy a little. It's how artillery works anyway. Easily implemented in code.
2. Each change of target position will decrease accuracy proportionally to the range. Once again, should be pretty easy to implement.
3. Pawns take time to inspect mortars before shooting. They could do it faster, or skip inspection at all, at the risk of mortar explosion. The faster you shoot - the bigger the risk. Could be implemented using a drop pod fuel slider.
4. Accuracy and aiming time should be considered.

So you could have a set of defensive mortars that will perfectly cover the whole colony entrance, but you can't aim them at siegers or sappers. You could launch one shell per minute, or risk a little and launch two, or risk a lot and send the whole stack (and yourself) flying. Sieges will become a lot more deadly if raiding artillerist happened to be trigger-happy, but also more hilarious if they pick short inspection time and blow up.

Never used them as of A15. Or more precisely, I've built them, or acquired them from siegers, but so far I've never found a reliable use for them, and I generally avoid using something, especially for defence or attack, if I can't rely on it (to get the job done). I can imagine scenarios where they might be useful, but whenever one of those actually occurs I always seem to have at least one better option available for dealing with it. Meaning the mortars have always just sat in the corner and resigned to Plan B/C/Z duty.

Ii haven't played A16, but I can imagine several scenarios where they would be useful for attacking other bases (as others have already mentioned). Although as before, I can also imagine having better options available for dealing with that problem as well. But that's just based on theory and not practice, so it doesn't deserve as much weighting as feedback from practical experiences. Edit - Although I could see myself using them to attack a base with, even if they weren't anywhere near the best option, simply as a form of revenge and slow torture.

I will try and think of what changes I would need to see in order for me to personally find mortars more useful.

I haven't used them in a last alpha or two, so I'm not if it's still accurate (hence I didn't vote), but they previously made a decent way to slow enemy siegers, by hitting their mortars with EMPs to stop the loading counter. That was modestly effective, but I'm not sure it is worth the steel to keep it up for more than a few hours.

I don't know if it can still happen or if it really got patched out, but the ability to force individual enemy pawns to retreat by hitting them with EMPs was a nifty feature (or bug?) I remember from several alphas back. If it can't, they probably wouldn't be of much defensive use in the vast majority of cases.

I usually only play on medium difficulty (I hate losing colonists) so I use mortars a lot. They are a very safe, but somewhat costly, way to defend your base.

-I will poke a poison ship to get the centipedes to spawn, then run away with my fastest colonist. THen I will mortar the crap out of them until I turned the inevitable firefight in my favor.
-They are great to thin out huge end game manhunter packs. YOu have to be willing to have 100+ shells ready to go and 6+ mortars to fire them to start to get a lot of impact from them, but they can be very destructive on packs.
-Of course they are an excellent counter to sieges. I can usually land a shell in the first barrage completely forcing the on-foot attack on my base before they get to launch a single shell back at me. Again power in numbers here. WIth 4 mortars firing, you might not land a shell in time. With 10+ firing together, you will very likely destroy their mortars and take out 2-3 raiders.

I love mortars and have a couple suggestions to improve them.

-UI: The UI is not very intuitive, I can never remember if the checkmark means it will fire or will hold firing
-Loading: If you try to force load 8 shells with 8 different colonists at the same time, it will only work if you have 8 separate stacks of shells. Otherwise you get a message that they can't, and you have to wait for other colonists to pick up a shell before you can order the next.

I've only used them a few times, honestly, back before A16, so defense was all there was. The amount of time and effort needed to get them supplied and working, and then to use them is prohibitive, especially when the enemy is likely moving to contact, so you've got to try to guess where they'll be when the projectile gets there; Then the chance that the projectile consistently goes wide of the target... It's just not worth it.

I doubt it matters much, but I'm a former Forward Observer, and I've got a perspective on indirect fire weapons. First, for even a half-trained troop, it's actually pretty fast to load and fire. As part of my training, we were required to go to the gun line and put some rounds downrange, and I put 6 rounds down down in a couple minutes, before they told me to stop; This was on a full-scale artillery piece, not a mortar, which I expect would be considerably faster. Accuracy is questionable on modern IDF, assuming that the math is good (it usually is) and the observer is good (we get to be). After that, it's largely wind resistance, and is based more on high-angle vs low angle. Mortars are always high-angle, so tend to be somewhat less accurate, but also tend to shoot much shorter distances, where the wind has less effect, so it balances out. Typically, something between eyeballs and lanyard is seriously off, you get effect-on-target because the blast radius is usually comparable to the area of effect, especially with larger artillery pieces.

But here's the big thing: You never fire just one round, unless you're registering, training, or (potentially) trying to move the target. (This also excludes guided IDF, like copperheads and the like) Even with a single mortar, you can put several rounds downrange in less than a minute, so even if the first one misses, it's very unlikely that the subsequent rounds will.

I wouldn't want you to try to make a deep artillery sub-game (though you could; IDF is a very complex art) but if I had a single change request, it would be that: more rounds per shot. More expensive, but it would greatly increase the effectiveness of mortars against mobile targets.

Mortars are extremely useful, almost indispensable, for the psychic and poison ship encounters, because of how effective EMP mortars are and how slow moving the mechanoids are.

OTherwise they're pretty useless except against on the rare occasion you get a big group of tribals all hanging out in one place and not moving. Against any moving target they're an utter waste of time and effort.

Offensively, the enemy always attacks as soon as the mortar is built, so it's useful to pull an enemy out of it's base and make them attack your defended position but not useful as an actual weapon, just useful because it triggers the AI.

The other big issue with mortars is they don't automatically de-draft like with drafted colonists so you get a lot of mental breaks from forgetfullness.

I only use mortars to counter the enemy's mortars. Rarely for offensive combat, I just stealth raid :D

Building a row of steel deadfall traps is much better for eliminating the opponent.

As a dwarf fortress style of player, mortars aren't much of a threat, obviously. And they're not much use to me either. Enemy mortars are effective against player townships because they're outside and often so large that the siege will hit something with nearly every shot. For them to be useful to me, I have to mass them, getting half the colony (6 of the default soft cap of 12) to spend much of the day shelling to get any useful effect. The forced miss radius really butchers their effectiveness and with vanilla combat being a case of who puts out the most bullets from the furthest range, I really do seem to need a platoon of bombardiers to get anything done. As one other poster said, mortars and artillery from mods in general, even CR, are a plan Z that I just never get around to using. They just sit neglected, on the off chance I get a hundred tribals massing for an attack.

Plain mortars are good against big raids (that wait), especially tribal raids. You need around 4 mortars for consistent results. They're decent against pirate raids, but absolutely terrible against shielded raids.

EMP mortars are good against psychic ships and shut down sieging pirates. They have huge blast radius and amazing duration of 30 seconds. They are interesting because they let you swarm mechanoids with short range, even melee weapons and animals, a stark break from usual mechanoid tactics. I have a feeling they would be good for defending against mechanoid raids, because you can safely shell your base with them as long as you don't rely on turrets.

Incendiary mortars - I haven't tried them much, but they are the trickiest, just like incendiary IED. They might need a different base design and approach, similar to psychic animal pulser. I need to experiment with them. If someone knows a good use for incendiary mortars, let me know !

Neither mortar is good against manhunters.

In my opinion the biggest issue is: mortars are way too high in the tech tree. And expensive. You need Smithing, Machining, and then mortar research! What if I buy or loot shells ? Nope, Machining is still required. What does Machining enable ? Sniper rifles.

Also, mortars would be more useful if I could just manufacture specialized shells instead of making special mortars. That might make stockpiles bigger and interface more complicated, but building 4 normal mortars + 4 EMP mortars to handle all kinds of threats semi reliably (normal pirates and shielded pirates) is absurdly expensive. Requiring separate research and construction for each type of mortar prevents people from experimenting.

I'll use a mortar if a huge siege comes around otherwise meh. They have their moments but otherwise are useless.

Quote from: b0rsuk on January 12, 2017, 06:16:21 PM
Also, mortars would be more useful if I could just manufacture specialized shells instead of making special mortars. That might make stockpiles bigger and interface more complicated, but building 4 normal mortars + 4 EMP mortars to handle all kinds of threats semi reliably (normal pirates and shielded pirates) is absurdly expensive. Requiring separate research and construction for each type of mortar prevents people from experimenting.

Oh yeah, I completely forgot that it's like that. Yeah, I can see absolutely NO reason why it should be implemented like that, and recalling, that's a big reason why I didn't use 'em much, because I'd have to build at least 3 to get all of the effects; With the current research tree, I don't even see myself bothering. Singular device, different rounds would make a lot more sense, and I wouldn't even care overly much if the EMP rounds still required additional research.

I have a hunch incendiary mortars would be good to use divide&conquer against attackers. Any organic enemy hit by incendiary mortar will be split from the main attacking force, and they you can  gun them down one by one. But this is really an AI issue. Once raiders become smart enough to regroup before entering defender range, it won't work anymore.

Also, I feel bad about incendiary mortars because they make the land barren. Rimworld fauna and flora regrows very poorly. It's a bit like calling toxic fallout upon yourself.

I like the mortars as-is, frankly. Following the age-old principles of warfare; if your weapons can't be accurate, they should at least be numerous. 6-8 mortars will definitely ruin a centipede's day... eventually. Probably before it gets to your killbox and lights all your pawns on fire.

I haven't done too many base raids, so I'm not sure what tactics I like for those.

As the game develops, I imagine mortars will be a great offensive tool. I don't think they need to be removed or changed.

The fact that people don't use them is simply because there are much better alternatives for both defense and offense (sniper/hunting rifles outrange anything and the AI can't deal with kiting when you use them, and turrets/traps are more reliable on defense than mortars, costing no ammo, which is another thing that should be considered --- adding ammo requirements to guns and turrets).

Mortars are very useful for hitting a large target consisting of multiple buildings spread out over its miss radius.  They are completely useless for hitting individual targets.  Which means they're great for pirates trying to make a player's life miserable but useless for players shooting back.

Is this Working As Designed?

If not, then you might want to implement Spotters.  After firing a round, a pawn within an observation radius can report back to base how far and which way the round missed.  The next round should be targeted more accurately.  The third even closer.  And so on.

The logic shouldn't be too hard to code.  Just test to see whether a pawn is within the observation radius when the round lands, and then auto-reduce the miss radius by some fraction.  Any strike which is not observed causes the miss radius to return to default for that mortar.

I like the idea of mortars or some long range heavy hitting weapon that is expensive to use. However, in Rimworld I find it cumbersome, wasteful - due to inaccuracy AND time. I find a more effective strategy against siege raids and ships is to just send snipers and whittle them down. When the siegers attack pull my forces back into an ambush.

I tried attacking with mortars on a pirate base, once. While the idea sounds cool, I found it also very ineffective, again, snipers and long range weapons fire faster and are more reliable. Against tribal bases it would be more worthwhile - because there are more targets bunched closer together. And you can allocate more people to ambush when they try to stop you.

The resource cost and tech involvement are both too high for a weapon this unreliable.

They are too inaccurate in most situations. Incendiary can be fun, but sometimes rain gets triggered far too early. How about some kind of zeroing in mechanic to make consecutive shots on a static target more precise? Designate prefire target zones?

@Shurp

I think CR has a spotting system in place. I know at least that artillery that have direct sight to a target don't need to be force fired and will engage autonomously. Its implementation of ammo also unifies the mortar types. One mortar. Want to lob HE? Drop HE down the tube. Want to lob EMPs? Drop an EM shell down the tube. Want everything to burn? You know the drill.

Quote from: Serenity on January 12, 2017, 05:01:37 PM

Quote from: Limdood on January 12, 2017, 04:42:54 PM
stockpiles with oddly arranged roofing to keep them from deteriorating

That's what equipment racks are for

Indeed, I find it baffling that everyone does not place an equipment rack full of shells next to their mortars.  It's probably the best use for equipment racks in the game...

Quote from: eadras on January 12, 2017, 10:39:32 PM

Quote from: Serenity on January 12, 2017, 05:01:37 PM

Quote from: Limdood on January 12, 2017, 04:42:54 PM
stockpiles with oddly arranged roofing to keep them from deteriorating

That's what equipment racks are for

Indeed, I find it baffling that everyone does not place an equipment rack full of shells next to their mortars.  It's probably the best use for equipment racks in the game...

It's easier to place a roofed stockpile just because that way you can put a stockpile for shells directly where they stand to minimize walk time.

Mortars? Useful? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha...oh wait you're serious. They have never been useful. At all. I cannot think of one time, in all these years where I thought "hmm I should build a mortar." The inaccuracy is the first problem. They're so inaccurate my guys could fire all day and night and not hit a thing. It's always better to send a sniper over and take pot shots at the siegers than to try to counter mortar them (kill enough of them and they'll run straight into your kill box). They're also useless against mechanoids (IED's are probably the best tactic for those). The ammo cost is a smaller yet still significant issue. Steel more than anything except for perhaps components are my main constraint for how fast I can expand on most maps, especially non-mountain ones. So if the terrible accuracy and reloading times weren't bad enough the fact that they cost steel to use is the final nail in the coffin for these "wonder weapons."

About the only useful things mortars can do is make building outside of mountains a living hell because while they almost never kill anyone they destroy valuable things like crafting tables which cost STEEL and COMPONENTS to replace which, for at least the early-mid game, are in short supply for me. So yeah, mortars=annoying nuisance to fight, waste of resources to build.

If you want to fix these horrible weapons, the accuracy is going to need to be upped. I'd also recommend lowering the ammo cost and reload times. Or you could nerf everything else to be equally as terrible as mortars (decrease the accuracy of guns and add ammo for them). In the end it's all balance right? :P

Mortars have ONE significant advantage over sniper rifles: they can be manned by colonists who are crap fighters (but are not pacifists). That way they can still contribute to war effort. Frail, bad back, cataracts, one arm, peg leg - doesn't matter.

Quote from: b0rsuk on January 13, 2017, 12:05:19 AM
Mortars have ONE advantage over turrets or sniper rifles: they can be manned by colonists who are crap fighters (but are not pacifists). That way they can still contribute to war effort.

I call those people "human shields." Strap a shield on them and lead the enemies on a merry chase while your main guys do the damage.  8)

Quote from: LordMunchkin on January 13, 2017, 12:07:04 AM
I call those people "human shields." Strap a shield on them and lead the enemies on a merry chase while your main guys do the damage.  8)

Not if they have a peg leg etc.

I like them, but I only use  basic HE rounds, not emp or incendiary. I like to ping Mechanoid ships, I get shot too many times when I use the sniper rifle.

They need resources which I am happy to trade for the convenience.

I especially enjoy banging 6 of them out at a large raid, I have caused raids to flee entirely from mortar fire before now.

One request would be to use the UI to place a flag at what your mortars are shooting at, and be able to move this flg myself, and have it apply to all mortars. Manually targeting each mortar every time they change crew does get tedious. I would also like the crew to quit the weapon after a while if they get tired, instead of going straight to mental break.

Ok that was 2 requests ;-)

Quote from: b0rsuk on January 13, 2017, 12:08:48 AM

Quote from: LordMunchkin on January 13, 2017, 12:07:04 AM
I call those people "human shields." Strap a shield on them and lead the enemies on a merry chase while your main guys do the damage.  8)

Not if they have a peg leg etc.

That depends on your micro and positioning. The useless colonist might get incapacitated or die but they performed the vital service of slowing down the enemy while your really soldiers did the work. And if they get to crippled to go on (brain damage) just have one of your colonist shoot them in the head. Now their body can continue to service your colony as dog/pig/warg food. Colony circle of life and all that! ;D

Never use mortars. They require shells and shells took precious steel to produce. Only time I build them is when cargo pods crash with something like 40 shells inside. Otherwise - it's too taxing because steel is very limited.

You're fools if you think shells cost much steel. A mortar costs 250 steel to build - equivalent of 25 shells. So for the price of 4 mortars you can have 3 mortars with 25 shells, enough for several barrages.

Quote from: b0rsuk on January 13, 2017, 01:41:39 AM
You're fools if you think shells cost much steel. A mortar costs 250 steel to build - equivalent of 25 shells. So for the price of 4 mortars you can have 3 mortars with 25 shells, enough for several barrages.

But sniping them with rifles obtained from previous raiders costs exactly zero resources, is faster, inflicts less collateral damage (more loot) and trains shooting. And is absolutely safe as long as you micro it right (leashed AI for alien ships/sieges/waiting raiders is too exploitable).

The only drawback is sniper rifles are bit too lethal/crippling, so you probably won't get capture-worthy raiders this way. Then again, considering how long mortaring raiders will take, all downed ones will bleed to death anyway.

Right now there are two legit uses for them.
First, you fire a few incendiary rounds at an enemy siege. If there is no rain, the siegers get overwhelmed with the amount of fire, especially if you do it while they sleep. The amount of fire one round can create is just insane.
Second, you always have your HE mortars all loaded, and when the raid arrives, you fire them all. You just need one guy to do it. Most will miss, but if just one round hits, the damage it can do is huge, especially if there are a lot of people.

IMO, mortars and grenades should have two types of explosions - the one they have right now and a much bigger shrapnel one, dealing less damage over a large radius. It should be sharp damage, so that armor can negate it. To balance it, i think any type of cover has to stop it, and pawns run to cover as soon as they know they are being fired upon. That would allow tactics such as "we close in on them while they are pinned down by our artillery strike".

And we need direct fire artillery - kinda like inferno cannons, but stationary, to give raiders tools to break defences. Seriously, breaking a granite wall BY HAND? That would also justify putting embrasures into the game, as raiders would see that you have stone walls and go bring artillery.

Incendiary rounds should scatter small fires over a large radius, so that all fires can spread, giving a huge fire really fast. To balance it, I say different objects should take different amounts of time to ignite and to put down fire on them, say grass is really easy, but a tree or a wall is harder. That would make incendiary rounds king in dense forests and jungles, like they are in reality.

Mortars.. what are those?

Ok to be fair I used one in A15, well when I say one I mean a battery of 12. With the following caveats:

1: Only built when the colony was 15 years old and was able to support frivolities.
2: Twelve mortars were built.
3: Interestingly I needed twelve stacks of shells to use them, which means a hell of an investment.

From this hardened battery I used them once. agaisnt a siege, and yeah it worked, but it took two days for them to defeat the enemy.

So its labour, resource and time intensive, for almost zero effect unless your colony is phenomenally rich (As I said I had slightly less than 100K silver just lying around, 16 year colony with 40+ colonists), and thats their good point in defence. I do hear tell there's other types of Mortar such as EMP's and Incendiary, but the former would be utterly useless and the latter would limit the returns.

In offence, which I'll admit I've not tried as yet (its one of those play throughs where it all goes tits up), my first thought is "Oh look, at the amount of Tripple and Doomsday launchers I have picked up off my attackers"
Which take up massively less room and are much easier to use.

Incendiary mortars - are they good for summoning... rain ? Rain used to kick in after too much fire.

A single incendiary mortar with some shells might be good for raiding enemy base.

Mortars are better in larger numbers (5-8) but they are very costly and are incredibly inaccurate. I propose a possible "fix". You can introduce a second way to use a mortar. So you have the current version. One that fires blind and one that has a spotter. A spotter can relay coordinates for a strike. This slows down the rate of fire but increases accuracy. Maybe a Pawn with better research (brains) can designate targets faster. As is, mortars are more of a novelty than a requirement.

Quote from: talar1408 on January 13, 2017, 02:24:00 AM

Quote from: b0rsuk on January 13, 2017, 01:41:39 AM
You're fools if you think shells cost much steel. A mortar costs 250 steel to build - equivalent of 25 shells. So for the price of 4 mortars you can have 3 mortars with 25 shells, enough for several barrages.

But sniping them with rifles obtained from previous raiders costs exactly zero resources, is faster, inflicts less collateral damage (more loot) and trains shooting.

But cost of mortars dwarfs the cost of shells. That was my point.

More people should try EMP mortars. They are amazing and no collateral damage.

For me mortars are a late game commodity, when raid sizes grow to the point where a fight might end badly. Very useful against sieges, dont like them vs shipparts because the mechs might assault me due to low ship hp before I can kill them, sniper rifles are so much safer and dont consume ammo.
Never use incendiary because it lacks damage compared to explosive, and siegers put out the fire anyways. Havent used EMP all that much because they re even more situational than regular mortars, shield raids are too fast to get a good hit in, ship mechs get sniped anyways and vs sieges the explosive mortar is just better.
A portable short range mortar would be nice, less devastating but can be carried by a person, we could shell raider outposts that way or the odd raider might bring it along instead of a rocket launcher, to shell your defenses and colonists or the power supply in case you re holed up in some mountain.

Quote from: b0rsuk on January 13, 2017, 01:41:39 AM
You're fools if you think shells cost much steel. A mortar costs 250 steel to build - equivalent of 25 shells. So for the price of 4 mortars you can have 3 mortars with 25 shells, enough for several barrages.

A mortar or 10 more components? It's not even a question for me. As I and others have said many times over, everything mortars can do something can do better. There's also the opportunity cost for the labor. I'd much rather have my crafters focusing on making clothes, weapons, and armor than ammo. Construction isn't in nearly as much demand but my constructors often double as haulers so having a battery of mortars to build and inevitably replace (SOMETHING WILL HAPPEN) is just another logistics burden I do not need.

I use the Incendiary mortar is stall sieges. That's it. They are too inaccurate. Maybe make shooting or crafting (operating machinery? ) allow them to shoot more accurately scaling up to perfect shots with a 20 skill.

I, personally, have used them ... maybe twice? First with no ammo, and secondly when ammo became a thing and they are just too inaccurate  to warrant the ammo, which can be better used for I.E.Ds, id say balancing wise, make them more accurate but increase aiming time, soo if you want a decent assault you need more than one, but itll take longer per shot, id use them then!!

I use them all the time, but mostly because I find it fun. I can't say whether they're more effective than snipers, or building more traps.

If you're up on resources (and I usually am) they aren't too much of an investment, even if you only get 1-2 volleys off on most raids. If resources are tight I won't bother with them. I think the niche they occupy right now is fine. I would echo one suggestion though, that the various types (incendiary, EMP) be attached to different ammo types rather than different mortar types.

Quote from: Sinosauropteryx on January 13, 2017, 11:53:30 AM
I use them all the time, but mostly because I find it fun. I can't say whether they're more effective than snipers, or building more traps.

That moment when the shell launches and you follow it to the target. :D
I think if improved, they would be a great part of the game.

As many before have stated, mortars only shine against big immobile groups. i mostly
get them cause i love the idea of a bombarding and the sound is so satisfying when the shell goes off. I would like to see some more utility from them, like more types of effects like maybe a smoke screen reducing vision on the field (if there was a wind direction), maybe even being able to launch water bombs to fight forest fires from afar. Also launching captured pirate members at the attacking pirate crew would be hilarious

Wow- waterbombs suggestion is actually really cool.

I never specially build them or craft shells, but after defeating a siege i usually install a few incendiary ones at base, only to set next siege camp on fire, as a preparation before attacking it with pawns. Otherwise they are too inaccurate and slow to fire on approaching enemies. During offence (which i used only a few times as a way to acquire supplies from some almost innocent tribals during migration), i thing that sniper rifles are preferable, as mortars are too heavy to justify bringing additional 3 muffalos, and as you are usually outnumbered you will need to draw enemies out to some easily defensible terrain anyway. For more uses for shells i thing that some weaker and stationary alternative to single-use rocket launchers would be nice (recoilless rifle on a tripod or something simmilar?)

By far my most common use for mortars is using EMP mortars against centipedes.

I find them useful to deal with sieges. I wish accuracy was better. The shell requirement doesn't bother me. It is the speed at which it fires. I end up with at least 3... that is the min number for effectiveness to actually hit a target in a timely manner. The only change I'd make is to tie accuracy to some shooting or gunnery skill.

Fun recent game ended b/c of a seige. Pirates showed up preparing to shell my tribal huts. I was still at the banging rocks together tech level and figured I'd wait them out till they fell asleep. NOPE... they showed up with two incendiary mortars and I'd just put down brand new hardwoods. So I attacked and lost hard. It was awesome I felt I had to attack b/c of those things. I like the mortars.

I recently used a mortar to defeat the mechanoids defending a poison ship. I placed the mortar on the far side of a hill (about 30 tiles away) and didn't have to use too many shells to cripple the mechanoids, then sent in a ground team to mop them up and destroy the ship.

I would request the ability to pre-range/sight in a target (with potentially cheaper smoke shells or something you could build), once ranged accuracy would be quite good until you changed your target and would have to be re-sighted again. If not pre-sighted then shots would become more accurate over time, unless the target moves or the mortar changes target.

This allows for pre-defined and prepared spots for mortars to be accurate, would allow for some really nice defensive points around chokes, with good accuracy but not OP super weapon. I would disable the ability to target a pawn with the mortar and just have it target a position.

Benefits:
* Good against sieges and Mechanoid Ships - Might need both encounters to have their behavior changed when being shelled, i.e. they know that eventually they will be blown up by the mortars, so either change tactics (take cover/start tunnelling into the colony) or trigger an assault
* Cheaper/effective use of ammo as more shots would land on target
* Promotes building multiple mortars, each with their own prepared firing position
* Rewards players who think tactically about choke points and preparing their firing positions
* Rewards players who are reactive, as cheaper smoke shells allow mortars to become accurate as they fire over time

I use them occasionally, but only late-game.

The EMP mortars are useful against the large melee-only pirate raids with shields. The inaccuracy doesn't really matter, the explosion radius is big enough to be effective. I've used them once or twice against mechanoid raids, but they weren't great. All they do is slow down the centipedes even more. As for the mech ship, meh. EMP grenades work fine and have zero chance of hitting my shielded units. I do like their longer stun though, but mech ships aren't a problem to begin with.

The explosive mortar is only useful against large raids that prepare for a while. They cause a ton of bleeding so you can forget about potential recruits, and most of the gear gets damaged.

Never used the incendiary mortar.

Explosive mortar is great against siege, especially when it reach the stack of mortar shells.

EMP mortar don't let mechanoids get the immunity and almost never miss thanks to is high radius so it turns mechanoids raids to joke.
Mechanoids can't move or riposte, colonists are not injured and take free shots.

It needs only 5-8 mortar per raid, which is less metal than a transport pod.

I've used Incendiary mortars mostly to distract besiegers while my snipers actually pick them off, but otherwise nothing has been especially effective. Though I haven't toyed with EMP mortars at all.

I play always Randy/intense and my colonies are open - that is I build a town like place with houses and defensive positions, but not walls or specially designed kill zones. In my current game there's no beef with tribes so I haven't yet built one, but in an earlier A15 game two tribes kept attacking all the time. There were few times a lucky mortar shot killed several attackers and saved the day, since quite often half of the colony were sick or recovering from their wounds. I consider mortars great help in defence. Now, I'm on my first game in A16, and planning to siege a pirate base soon.

Generally to counter-siege sieges reliably, and to safely bombard distant ship parts when I get to the point where I can reliably do that. Oh, and late-game tribal raids that are preparing before attacking; those are fun to rain shell (haha) on.

Haven't yet used mortars offensively, as I've not quite built up a sufficiently large colony to the point where I'm confident about assaulting while reliably handling things at home at the same time (around 15 people or so; my current best colony in A16 has 13 people, on vanilla with intense cassandra classic all the way through, and 126k wealth over 109 in-game days)

I use mortars for poison/psychic ships and for those delayed raids.  Occasionally I will use them for those bug events.  But not for a regular raid.

Also I like to use emp mortars after I've opened up a hidden room with cyber things inside.  If you EMP mortar the cyber things your team can pound them with regular ammo for EZ kills.

I use mortars all the time. But it get on my nerves that even a level 14 shooter have troubles hitting their damn target. plz fix Tynan.

I usually build the Incendiary mortar before the Explosive mortar mainly for the counter siege capabilities it got. The enemy is more concerned with putting out fires in their siege camp than setting it up which is a good thing.

Also i never use the EMP mortar. Why? Because of the lack of accuracy. Would rather use a explosive mortar.

I build mortars in almost every game. I love seeing the volley fire and I get a big thrill from returning fire at attack inn siege camps. Also I actually don't mind how in accurate they are, it makes a shot that finally connects with the centre of a enemy group that much more rewarding.

I actually really like the ammo system they have too, and think that q similar system needs to be required for turrets so they aren't just some lazy set up and forget defense system.
Maybe as a late game research have high energy cost laser turrets that don't use ammo.

But I really do like the ammo system. Don't really understand why so many people are against it tbh.

Oh, mortars ARE very satisfying to use, because results are spectacular when you luck out and hit. Someone mentioned above they make enemies bleed out so quickly because of long distance. This is not because of distance, but because explosives cause many wounds and hence lots of bleeding.

Anyone suggesting straight buffs to mortars - keep in mind mortars are used by sieging pirates too. Straight buffs to mortars buff sieges.

Time for a summary. Mortars:
+ can cause spectacular damage
+ good on laarge maps, especially with long travel times (snow, tall grass in rainforest)
+ work unpowered
+ no skill required, only pacifists can't use them
+ especially good against numerous enemies (Tribals)
+ very satisfying sounds
- expensive (resources)
- expensive (research). They require Machining, which gives you sniper rifles.
- unreliable (accuracy, rate of fire)
- bad against structures (psychic ship) and tough enemies (mechanoids, shielded, pirates wearing armor, thrumbos, elephants). Incendiary mortars would be ok except the only reason to raid another base is loot.
- bad on small maps
- useless against drop pods, infestations
- uses lots of colonist time
- sniper rifle is more than good enough against stationary enemies, except infestations it's just as bad against.

Tynan, refilling mortars after a raid is a micromanagement hell. There should be a button to reload mortars like rearming a trap that doesn't require manual drafting.

There should be some sort of scouting option, like a marking tool used by Pawns to give a spot that would have increased accuracy if fired at by the mortar. First shot is the standard inaccuracy while the second shot is now 'adjusted' to the marked spot and is now more accurate.

Sieges become more accurate only if the player doesn't prioritize killing the scout and now the player can risk a colonist going closer in exchange for more accurate mortar fire.

Motors in the current state of the game are niche, but they can be useful in certain situations.

For example, a massive tribal raid was about to hit me right after the mechanoid hive drop podded on my colonist's houses. All of my good soldiers were injured and in severe pain. The situation looked desperate. As the tribe was preparing for the raid I got my level one shooting cook on the incendiary motor. He managed to take out half of the the raiders before they could hit the base, saving most of my people from a grim end.

That being said, if I were playing Cassandra Extreme I wouldn't waste the time researching it. Motors aren't exactly optimal unless you are being sieged, but there are moments you are glad you had them and can be a useful addition to a colony's defenses.

Quote from: b0rsuk on January 14, 2017, 06:36:28 AM
Oh, mortars ARE very satisfying to use, because results are spectacular when you luck out and hit. Someone mentioned above they make enemies bleed out so quickly because of long distance. This is not because of distance, but because explosives cause many wounds and hence lots of bleeding.

Anyone suggesting straight buffs to mortars - keep in mind mortars are used by sieging pirates too. Straight buffs to mortars buff sieges.

Time for a summary. Mortars:
+ can cause spectacular damage
+ good on laarge maps, especially with long travel times (snow, tall grass in rainforest)
+ work unpowered
+ no skill required, only pacifists can't use them
+ especially good against numerous enemies (Tribals)
+ very satisfying sounds
- expensive (resources)
- expensive (research). They require Machining, which gives you sniper rifles.
- unreliable (accuracy, rate of fire)
- bad against structures (psychic ship) and tough enemies (mechanoids, shielded, pirates wearing armor, thrumbos, elephants). Incendiary mortars would be ok except the only reason to raid another base is loot.
- bad on small maps
- useless against drop pods, infestations
- uses lots of colonist time
- sniper rifle is more than good enough against stationary enemies, except infestations it's just as bad against.

Tynan, refilling mortars after a raid is a micromanagement hell. There should be a button to reload mortars like rearming a trap that doesn't require manual drafting.

I really disagree in one respect: EMP mortars are extraordinarily powerful against the mechanoid ship events. The EMP blasts can permanently stunlock the mechanoids and do no damage to your own people.

Quote from: Hieronymous Alloy on January 14, 2017, 12:50:45 PM

I really disagree in one respect: EMP mortars are extraordinarily powerful against the mechanoid ship events. The EMP blasts can permanently stunlock the mechanoids and do no damage to your own people.

I fully agree, EMP mortars are marvellous against mechanoids.

Everyone is praising the hell out of the emp mortars vs the mechs, dont they adapt to the emp and cant be stunned anymore after the first hit?

Quote from: Panzer on January 14, 2017, 02:13:37 PM
Everyone is praising the hell out of the emp mortars vs the mechs, dont they adapt to the emp and cant be stunned anymore after the first hit?

They do "adapt" to some extent but for whatever reason with multiple mortars they can be stunlocked.

I protest, with only one EMP mortar, they don't get immunity and stay stun.
Each 35 seconds, one of my EMP shell hit around mechanoids and keep them stun.
Try it yourself.

Right, but you still see the "adapted" message. It's just that with only one mortar you'll miss sometimes and there's a chance they break free. With multiple mortars it's virtually a guaranteed stunlock.

Quote from: b0rsuk on January 14, 2017, 06:36:28 AM
Anyone suggesting straight buffs to mortars - keep in mind mortars are used by sieging pirates too. Straight buffs to mortars buff sieges.

Good. They need a buff because sieges as is are a joke. I PRAY the RNG gives me sieges because the alternative is hordes of aggressive raiders with rockets, mechanoids, manhunter elephants, tribals, etc. While those might not kill me, they at least have a chance of doing more than mildly annoying me. Hell, I consider cold snaps, infestations, and zzt bigger threats than sieges atm.

IMHO, you can't just keep adding more enemies and in bigger numbers. We need radical changes to the combat dynamics like ammo and melee parry chance. :P

Melee has been changed by Tynan, in A17 a pawn with 1 in melee will have 10% or around chance of hit.

My "summary" was about mortars as a whole. I acknowledge the power of EMP mortars. But to use EMP mortars on defense, you can't rely on turrets.

But I rarely have problems with mechanoids, so EMP mortars tend to make easy (!) enemies easier. Once you have a plasteel turret, a sniper rifle, and a EMP grenade mechanoids are formulaic. You're not going to have an EMP mortar earlier than sniper rifle, grenades, or plasteel turret. Plasteel turret is very resistant to all centipedes and takes a while to take out by scythers, enough that it can be safely repaired by a colonist with personal shield.

Quote from: NeverPire on January 14, 2017, 03:09:15 PM
Melee has been changed by Tynan, in A17 a pawn with 1 in melee will have 10% or around chance of hit.

I believe you're putting words in Tynan's mouth (or fingers?).

Tynan did state (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=174.msg297927#msg297927) that he made changes to melee to further emphasize skill progression.
He never gave specific values related to those changes.

My apologies for the digression.

Quote from: carbon on January 14, 2017, 04:40:24 PM

Quote from: NeverPire on January 14, 2017, 03:09:15 PM
Melee has been changed by Tynan, in A17 a pawn with 1 in melee will have 10% or around chance of hit.

I believe you're putting words in Tynan's mouth (or fingers?).

Tynan did state (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=174.msg297927#msg297927) that he made changes to melee to further emphasize skill progression.
He never gave specific values related to those changes.

My apologies for the digression.

No, no, I have just take the original suggestion values.
It looked like Tynan agreed with it but I apologize I have extrapolated.

Come back to mortars.
I have just seen this topic https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=29509.0 and if it is implemented it adds interest to mortars.

They seem very useful for raiders, as they don't need to hit their target, being off 20 cells still usually does damage to something in my base...

They are practically useless for me with the miss radius being so extreme. Unmodded I would never use them.

Modded to be far more precise (yet still not pinpoint, but at least 20% of shells hit somewhat the target), they are very useful and a mid-late-game staple.

It's maybe just an impression but thanks to my experience in game I have realized than mortars hit more when they fire automatically than when I target manually something.

Does anyone have the same issue ?

The problem with mortars, as everyone has pointed out already, is the abysmal accuracy. This is great for enemy raiders who just need to hit something in your base to harass and distract your defenders. This is horrible for your own colonists, who must use it most often to target small moving targets.

Because of the garbage accuracy, unless you have half a dozen mortars firing simoultaneously, you're never going to put enough rounds downrange for them to be effective at anything but countering siege camps. And at that point you're throwing away dozens or even hundreds of steel per encounter to do something that a few snipers could just as easily achieve.

The only way they would be useful is if some form of supression were added to the game. Pawns near an area where a mortar shell landed would throw themselves to the ground temporarily, even if they're outside the explosion. That would help break up the huge clumps of enemies into more manageable waves and give mortars an actual purpose in genera combat.

Or they could be tribals believing their gods will protect them and just run through the barrage. No, suppression is not convincing for all cases. And mechanoids certainly don't give a damn about any threat, they don't even use cover.

Supression is a pretty big part of combat in real life, though, and the only things I can reasonably see not being affected by nearby explosions are mechanoids (as you rightly say) and maybe shielded pawns.

It is true that in real life, the best way to get through a mortar barrage is to just run through as fast as you can to minimize time spent in the danger zone. But I'm thinking in terms of the game here, and making pawns supressed, even just for a couple of seconds, would not only increase the utility of mortars in general combat but also provide a means for dealing with huge late-game clumps of enemies that doesn't involve killboxes or abusing the AI.

Besides, raiders can be on drugs, painstoppers and other stimulants. If you want enemies to scatter, incendiary mortar will do that because any organic enemy you hit loses control.

Mortars are strong, just not necessary versus normal sized sieges or ship parts.

Try facing a 15k+ point siege with only a couple guys with sniper rifles and you will realise how useful just 2 incendiary mortars are.

No changes required. Please do not listen to all the bad players that do not know how to use them.  :-X

Quote from: Britnoth on January 15, 2017, 09:30:36 AM
Mortars are strong, just not necessary versus normal sized sieges or ship parts.

Try facing a 15k+ point siege with only a couple guys with sniper rifles and you will realise how useful just 2 incendiary mortars are.

No changes required. Please do not listen to all the bad players that do not know how to use them.  :-X

Well yeah, a 15k+ raid with current raid scaling is like half of the planet's population on your doorstep, so its fair to assume they'd be pretty effective in that scenario.

Here's a way to look at it.  Which is a more effective use of resources for breaking up a mob of tribals heading towards your base:

(a) 250 steel & 4 components for the mortar and lots more steel for shells, or
(b) 150 steel and 4 components for an LMG?

Keep in mind that both require you to use a pawn and neither is very good at hitting any one specific target.

Quote from: Britnoth on January 15, 2017, 09:30:36 AM
No changes required. Please do not listen to all the bad players that do not know how to use them.  :-X

How about instead of insulting the rest of us, you inform us "bad players" about how to use them? And, really does a bad player use an option when they know there is a better one? An idiot does... :P

Quote from: Shurp on January 15, 2017, 05:33:57 PM
Here's a way to look at it.  Which is a more effective use of resources for breaking up a mob of tribals heading towards your base:

(a) 250 steel & 4 components for the mortar and lots more steel for shells, or
(b) 150 steel and 4 components for an LMG?

Keep in mind that both require you to use a pawn and neither is very good at hitting any one specific target.

Probably the mortar if it actually hits within the center of the group, as the LMG only hurts the exterior layer, which is usually the melee rushers who are bound to die anyway. Explosions aren't blocked by pawns.

"If it actually hits" -- but how often is that?  Yes, you can go "woohoo!" when you get lucky but on average which actually is more effective?

maybe reduce the damage but narrow the "rng" of where it lands? kinda useless atm unless target is not moving.

I think the 2 good ideas here would be:
1) Make different shells instead of different mortars. One could make incendiary shells cost 5 steel and 2 chemfuel or something, and EMP shells cost 1 plasteel and 5 steel.
2) Add zeroing in, the more a mortar fires at one location, the more accurate it becomes, down to a limit. This makes it much more effective vs ships and sieges, which are probably its intended uses.

Personally, I find mortars to be only useful against sieges, and rarely. I might come to a different conclusion after playing a while on a 400x400 map, but they are just too inaccurate and unreliable.

Mortars are luxury items tbh. Once I obtain enough steal from trading/ deep drilling then it's not that big a deal to throw a bunch of it into shell production which can be used to rain hellfire down on siegers which is the only use I've ever really found for it.

Perhaps have mortar accuracy tied to research skill. Realistically the skills behind shooting a gun wouldn't really apply to a mortars, but the critical thinking required for research can be applied to calculate where to shoot the mortar. And it keeps colonies from having enough hyper-accurate mortars that they can just wall themselves off and obliterate any attackers with just mortars.

I think Mortars are OK balanced and that they have their uses. Also imagine what a nightmare sieges would become with increased accuracy.

Just a roullete. It worth to shot once or twice. Not more. Just because it is faster to research new turrets and buld them, than deal some serious damage with mortar. Once I shooting at mechanoinds whole day and about 40 shells.
1 of 9 was down, and ship was still good.

So the mechanic should be reworked.
Each shot at the same spot will increase the chance of succes. Just because operator can make corrections and aim better.
So the mortar will be useful for static targets as they are IRL.

May be even less damage at the radius (100% center, 50% 8 tiles around, 15% 1+ far tiles)
But precise enough to get rid of turrets or wall.

Perhaps keep the mortars as they are but have a pretty strong negative mood for them exploding nearby.

"-20 : Under mortar fire"

I assume enemy pawns suffer from morale in the same way as user pawns?

This would then give mortars a purpose, to demoralise/scare the enemy, rather than outright destruction.  It probably wouldn't kill them outright unless you had the odd lucky hit but it would lower the number of enemy you need to kill before they decided "sod this" and leg it.

I've never used mortars in any "normal" game. I once used developer mode to see what they did, and how they worked. I was unimpressed overall and so I've never bothered to use them in a real game. The three things that make them, in my mind, so unimpressive; requires a pawn to operate, requires my time to use effectively, requires mortar shells. Those three things are enough to make me not consider them at all. I'd rather take my chances with a melee/ranged pair in close quarters. Like frags and shotgun, I feel they are more reliable, and less of a hassle to use. Now, I should note, I don't face off against mechanoids/power armored humans much.

Quote from: makkenhoff on January 16, 2017, 11:56:36 AM
I've never used mortars in any "normal" game. I once used developer mode to see what they did, and how they worked. I was unimpressed overall and so I've never bothered to use them in a real game. The three things that make them, in my mind, so unimpressive; requires a pawn to operate, requires my time to use effectively, requires mortar shells. Those three things are enough to make me not consider them at all. I'd rather take my chances with a melee/ranged pair in close quarters. Like frags and shotgun, I feel they are more reliable, and less of a hassle to use. Now, I should note, I don't face off against mechanoids/power armored humans much.

I disagree with the second one, in my game experience, my mortars have been much more precise when not manually controlled.

Mortars are great if you have bonus steel, usually you have shells from sieges anyway and they are cheap from traders, they really punish staging raids and help while blitz raid is still far wrecking meat spam and power shields alike...

Barrage itself is worth it enough for me.

Wouldn't an artillery spotter make things a bit too easy, though ? You would equip a jogger or fast walker with a personal shield and you could potentially obliterate a raid. Worse, it risks being too similar to sniper rifle in how it operates. You'd send one colonist to the area you want to clear of enemies and keep him as far as possible. Later in the game you have bionic legs.

The idea has potential, and Tynan could potentially improve raider AI later on (so they send a spotter). At the same time, it's an assymetric buff to mortars (better for people who use it well, but most sieges would be unaffected).

The idea of skill like Research affecting mortar accuracy is nice too (because Research = math and physics, calculating trajectory, taking wind/humidity/whatever into account. But I can see it using Shooting as well, if we interpret "Shooting" skill as "what they teach in military".

How about a research project for "advanced trajectory algoritgms" or something. It would improve accuracy/usefulness while not requiring much change to the game's code.

Also, more research items in the tree is always better if you ask me.

This is slightly off topic, but thinking about Forward Observers / spotters makes me wonder if Tynan will ever add camouflage or stealth mechanics to the game.....

Regarding spotters making it too easy - What if the pirates are doing the *same thing*? So instead of randomly blowing up your beds and livestock they're targeting *your* mortars?

Ouch!

Having one mortar and different types of shells would definitely be a big improvement

Mortars are currently interesting, because they can be manned by bad colonists and still be just as effective. Basing mortar effectiveness on a skill or stat like Manipulation would change that. It could be a bad thing.

Not useful well cause I have medieval mod installed and thew ballista there dosen't need ammo

I don't find them really useful, aside from countering sieges but even then I'd cross my fingers.  And for raiding, the costs it takes to make the mortars it doesn't feel worth it.  What I'd like to see is mortars miniaturized.  Like when I think of mortars, I picture those bi-pods connected to a tube mortars.  Not huge and gets the job done. Maybe make smaller mortars that act as furniture, so you can carry them around when travelling, but significantly smaller explosions when used.

Mortars are not very useful IMO. They take a lot of resources and if I want to attack something in the distance I prefer taking a group of  sneaky snipers...
Things I dislike about them:
- Extremely inaccurate: I understand they are suppose to be a "miss-hit" thing, but they're just completely annoying.
- Reloading takes a ridiculous amount of time.
- Resource Intensive: this is partly because of their lack of accuracy. You need to buy loads of ammo.
The only kinda effective way of using them is building lots of them and fire them all at once in a way to compensate the lack of accuracy and that just takes to many resources and space.

I love them on defense, especially versus late-game manhunter packs and tribals where a solid hit or two can pretty much stop the horde in its tracks or even send a raid packing with a few lucky strikes. Usually have a battery of 4 regular mortars with a pair of EMPs, which I find indispensable versus Mech raids and ship parts. (As long as they don't drop into my kitchen...)

Have to agree that they can be expensive and very time consuming to maintain a stockpile of ammo but I think if they become any more effective at hitting things this would be justified.

Another issue I have with them is aiming priority seems to be proximity, with all my mortars shooting at the one Jogger with bionic legs 50m ahead of the pack, which naturally results in a lot of missed rounds while that juicy blob lumbers up between the craters. My suggestion would be to have them auto target clumped enemies, or give the option to select and aim multiple tubes at once so at least I'm not just clearing the snow for the rest of the raids convenience.

Quote from: OverlordMark on January 16, 2017, 10:52:11 AM
Perhaps keep the mortars as they are but have a pretty strong negative mood for them exploding nearby.
"-20 : Under mortar fire"
[...]
This would then give mortars a purpose, to demoralise/scare the enemy

I agree with this one. Remember the strong psychological effects people got from being under artillery fire in WW1...

Quote from: guruclef on January 18, 2017, 01:07:58 PM

Quote from: OverlordMark on January 16, 2017, 10:52:11 AM
Perhaps keep the mortars as they are but have a pretty strong negative mood for them exploding nearby.
"-20 : Under mortar fire"
[...]
This would then give mortars a purpose, to demoralise/scare the enemy

I agree with this one. Remember the strong psychological effects people got from being under artillery fire in WW1...

I also agree on this.

Also, as difficult as it may sound, I'd like to see smaller area with blast damage that outright kills enemies and a large area where it *may* be possible to get hit by shrapnel. Modeling each piece of flying shrapnel would be hard so I guess there could be a code-based instant secondary explosion with 10-50 % chance to get hit by sharpnel, depending on the distance of the first explosion.

Rather than being a weapon that either does nothing (misses) or makes hamburger meat out of raiders (direct hit), I'd like to see it as something that wounds, demoralizes and slows down the enemy before pawns engage them - especially if it is going to stay as inaccurate as it is.

TLDR: more small wounds, less hamburger meat.

Quote from: Cimm0 on January 19, 2017, 07:40:52 AM

Quote from: guruclef on January 18, 2017, 01:07:58 PM

Quote from: OverlordMark on January 16, 2017, 10:52:11 AM
Perhaps keep the mortars as they are but have a pretty strong negative mood for them exploding nearby.
"-20 : Under mortar fire"
[...]
This would then give mortars a purpose, to demoralise/scare the enemy

I agree with this one. Remember the strong psychological effects people got from being under artillery fire in WW1...

I also agree on this.

Also, as difficult as it may sound, I'd like to see smaller area with blast damage that outright kills enemies and a large area where it *may* be possible to get hit by shrapnel. Modeling each piece of flying shrapnel would be hard so I guess there could be a code-based instant secondary explosion with 10-50 % chance to get hit by sharpnel, depending on the distance of the first explosion.

Something like that is already implemented for the doomsday rocket launcher so it's seems easy to add but I'm not sure if it is a good idea.

Quote from: Cimm0 on January 19, 2017, 07:40:52 AM-snip-

Maybe CR, Combat Realism, has what you're looking for? Most explosives have fragmentation and their effective range extends beyond that of the initial blast. It can be stuttery when fragmentation spawns though  due to how much of it there is.

CR indeed had shrapnel and it was DEADLY!

It was so effective that I could almost see PFC Hudson from Aliens touching a mortar tube in some weird, ambiguous way with a gleam in his eye, saying "Check it out! Colonist-targeted high explosive fragmentation mortar. VWAP! Fry half a tribal raid with this puppy".

While I did like it, it was also too effective for the price it had - launching a barrage from 10 mortar tubes would absolutely slaughter any kind of stationary attack force, making it quite OP.

Pretty sure the last time I used mortars they didn't require ammunition. Maybe I'm wrong, but it's been a couple of years anyway. I've found no real use for them, although back in the day they were handy for starting random fires.

I found them too inaccurate and inefficienct when I could just send a few snipers out (for seiges) or a whole army (crashed ships) and get the work done.

Quote from: LordMunchkin on January 15, 2017, 06:07:39 PM

Quote from: Britnoth on January 15, 2017, 09:30:36 AM
No changes required. Please do not listen to all the bad players that do not know how to use them.  :-X

How about instead of insulting the rest of us, you inform us "bad players" about how to use them? And, really does a bad player use an option when they know there is a better one? An idiot does... :P

Try rereading my post.

Mortars come into their own the more enemies there are.

2 incendiary mortars are enough to stop any siege from setting up in my experience. They can be preloaded beforehand, so as soon as a siege starts to set up they can be fired instantly.

Just because the current vanilla game does not send you raids large enough to require you to use a feature, just not mean that no one is currently happy with the effectiveness of that feature.

An idiot plays on a low difficulty level and assumes because they never need to use X, that no other player needs to use X.

If mortars are bad in vanilla outside of some specific corner cases like Extreme difficulty and laaarge maps and year 3+ colonies, then there's nothing left to prove. Calling people who disagree with you 'idiots' doesn't make you right.

Quote from: Britnoth on January 24, 2017, 02:19:00 AM
Try rereading my post.

Mortars come into their own the more enemies there are.

2 incendiary mortars are enough to stop any siege from setting up in my experience. They can be preloaded beforehand, so as soon as a siege starts to set up they can be fired instantly.

Just because the current vanilla game does not send you raids large enough to require you to use a feature, just not mean that no one is currently happy with the effectiveness of that feature.

An idiot plays on a low difficulty level and assumes because they never need to use X, that no other player needs to use X.

Reread what? The grand two sentences you spat out so eloquently where you accused anyone who didn't agree with you of being bad players? Or how about your reply where you automatically assumed others are not only playing on a lower difficulty but are idiots for doing so? Please, do us all a favor and go learn some civility. Then you can come back and share your wisdom with us oh enlightened one. ::)

P.S. This is just a game in case you didn't notice. It's not a university, job, or competition. At the end of the day, your daily fiber intake is more important. So lose the attitude. It just makes you look like a fool.  :P

Quote from: b0rsuk on January 24, 2017, 02:57:26 AM
If mortars are bad in vanilla outside of some specific corner cases like Extreme difficulty and laaarge maps and year 3+ colonies, then there's nothing left to prove. Calling people who disagree with you 'idiots' doesn't make you right.

Best choice is to have choice.

Yes, mortars are most likely to hit vs tribal zerg rushes, but just because they may seem bad does not mean they are bad indeed or can not be useful.

I did not play A15/16 yet but if I remember right mechanoid ship parts are not falling for at least year or so when you start now. Mortars were one of few tools saving extreme difficulty colony vs psycho ship while having great value from crops and no way of sniping/rocketing due to lack of proper traders or silver to buy that.

Outlanders/raiders are indeed less likely to be hit but they usually have better quality troops compared to meat rush from tribals soeach kill/KO is worth more.

I never play mountain killbox fortresses so waiting out barrage is not valid option, its also much more fun for me to have some challenge with my power armor commando. Besiegers and their supplies are not something i would want destroy.

Staging enemies can be routed with coordinated barrage making them free loot delivery.

So be aware that Mortar research requires Machining research now. By the time you can build mortars, you by definition can craft sniper rifles. If you, like me, looted over 50 shells and got some from cargo pods, you still must research Machining.

Quote from: b0rsuk on January 24, 2017, 03:58:48 AM
So be aware that Mortar research requires Machining research now. By the time you can build mortars, you by definition can craft sniper rifles. If you, like me, looted over 50 shells and got some from cargo pods, you still must research Machining.

I would need it anyway most of the time for steel from slag, usually its best to save silver for other traders than bulk ones in early stages.

In vanilla RimWorld I never use mortars, they're just to inaccurate and their projectile speed is to slow to counteract that.
Though whenever I use modpacks, I lessen the forced miss ratio and increase the projectile speed to around double and then I think they're reasonably balanced.

i have concluded that mortars have a "critical Mass" kinda thing.

1-3 mortars is just shooting random praying to hit something
4-6 and you can murder a whole siege.
7+ and your just sadistic, but can do moderate damage to a raid that wish to spend time peppering

my basic setup is 4 flame, and 2 explosion.
EMP mortars are useless for defense. since mecanoids don't wait before charging, or make sieges.
and if you can afford to make a EMP mortar, your better of placing some EMP mines in chase of crashed ship part.

that's my 5 cent on mortars.

Only tried to use mortars when they were first introduced and haven't used them since.

1. Grossly inaccurate
2. Long load time
3. Long aiming time
4. Long shell travel time
5. Minimum distance makes no sense...fire a shell straight up and IT WILL come back down on top of you (barring wind direction).
6. Too expensive to build, given reasons 1 - 4.
7. Shells aren't infinite anymore, extension of reason 6.

Ultimately, I've found them unreliable.  A squad of 3 or 4 snipers = reliable, in comparison.

During the days after reading this topic I decided to try using mortars more, and actually have had very good results on mid-game defense. I'd say actually mortars don't need changes; the inaccuracy isn't as bad as some posts make it sound, in my opinion.

I use mortars as anti-siege defense but the accuracy are pretty bad (tend to use incendiary rounds to hopefully get fire near them). while the raiders don't need accuracy too much since the colony tend to be a huge target while there camp is a much smaller, harder to hit target.

but then again, i usually only use 2-3 mortars so maybe i need a few more

Quantity has its own quality. :P

I don't know if they got changed in Alpha 15 or 16, but in Alpha 14 (I skipped 15), I very much disliked Mortars. Their range and accuracy were very very poor. Unless I totally misunderstood the range aspect. Either way, mortar's were atrocious. Enemies move to fast to have any hope of hitting them with a mortar shot. By the time they get into range of the colonists, the colonists are murdering the raiders quicker than a mortar can fire. Automated turrets, even the vanilla ones, are able to kill all raiders (with colonist help, unless turret spamming).

Mortar's in real world military usage, are not for engaging moving forces. They are for use against stationary targets. The only time a mortar can be used against moving targets, is if the zone the targets are moving through, is already zeroed in on. Before hand. Even then, its no guarantee any of the targets will be killed. Mortars make a very distinctive sound. That can be heard long before they impact. Allowing infantry to scramble for cover or simply out of the area.

Mortar's are a poor defensive weapon. Much better at breaking a defense and or used by infantry teams on the move to assist in an advance. (Some might disagree, but this is what I know to the best of my knowledge.)

Quote from: DarkXanatos on January 26, 2017, 03:40:23 AM
Mortar's in real world military usage, are not for engaging moving forces. They are for use against stationary targets. The only time a mortar can be used against moving targets, is if the zone the targets are moving through, is already zeroed in on. Before hand. Even then, its no guarantee any of the targets will be killed. Mortars make a very distinctive sound. That can be heard long before they impact. Allowing infantry to scramble for cover or simply out of the area.

Mortar's are a poor defensive weapon. Much better at breaking a defense and or used by infantry teams on the move to assist in an advance. (Some might disagree, but this is what I know to the best of my knowledge.)

Thats true.
As a former Armored Artillery Soldier, I always mix up mortars and the armored Version.
Those are a lot more accurate, especially since the new Versions use Targeting Systems similiar to other Modern Tanks like the Abrams or Leopard.

But both Mortars and Artillery rely heavily on spotters to direct the fire.
Especially when friendly Troops are involved. Either to prepare for an attack, or to cover a retreat.
Spotters usually use a Laser Pointer to transmit the actual Target, very similiar to a sniper.
Or Communication to direct the fire ( 10 up, 6 right .. )
Finally. Once the target is locked only slight adjustments are neccessary and fire rates of
6-8 shells per Minute are possible. 4-6 for prolonged fire.
This Numbers are from the Armored, Hand-Loaded M155A Tanks I served on.

And it is true, that due to the configuration of Mortars they are highly inaccurate.
Short barrels with high yield using a high parabol flightpath.
Still, the should become more accurate the more they fire.
And the ingame inaccuracy puts me off. So I don't use them.

I liked the suggestion of giving mood modification for being under fire.
Being a Motivational weapon is the main use for artillery and grenades.
You fire/throw them to make sure the enemy moves away from there. The possibility to kill the enemy is a added bonus.

But since no AI in any wargame ever reacts this way, Mortars and Artillery are not correctly applied.

Following are my suggestions :

Mood Penalties for being under fire.
Increasing Accuracy, maybe dependend on shooting or science.
Research to further increase accuracy, increase firing rate
i.e. Autoloader using feeders, increased explosion radius, ..
The Ability to set prepared firing Zones and Targets
A movable target flag as suggested earlier, instead of single aiming.
Single Barrel, different Shells.
Special Shells -> Firefoam, Light, Fog, Cluster, Gas, Cows ..

Low Tech Variants like Catapults, Trebuchets for early use.


------
EDIT
------
Siege Christmas is really funny.
Just shoot whomever tries to build the mortars, and you get the most amount of ressources out of it.
Scouts trying to stop you get melee mugged behind cover.
Works nearly every time.

I used them when I had nothing else to do with my resources and wanted to pound siege camps.  But unless the enemies were standing around they were kind of useless.  Even with a dozen of them firing.  If they could be uninstalled, taken on raids of other factions bases, then maybe, but thats a lot of hauling that you also need to bring back.  So these days I would say I almost never use them unless I want to bust a siege.

A direct fire cannon that could hit an advancing attacker would be a lot more useful.  Maybe have it work as both direct and indirect so we dont loose the one good thing the mortar could do.  Just require some time to reconfig for use.

Before A15 I used them a little, but they are so inaccurate, and fire so slowly, they are a waste of the colonists manning them

Unless that colonist is himself a waste.  That's the one potential advantage to a mortar I can see: it can be operated by the old man with cataracts and a bad back. 

But it's easier to feed him to the pigs and recruit someone who can fire a sniper rifle instead.

Quote from: SpaceDorf on January 26, 2017, 01:02:46 PM
Mood Penalties for being under fire.
Increasing Accuracy, maybe dependend on shooting or science.
Research to further increase accuracy, increase firing rate
i.e. Autoloader using feeders, increased explosion radius, ..
The Ability to set prepared firing Zones and Targets
A movable target flag as suggested earlier, instead of single aiming.
Single Barrel, different Shells.
Special Shells -> Firefoam, Light, Fog, Cluster, Gas, Cows ..
Low Tech Variants like Catapults, Trebuchets for early use.

A lot of these are very flavorful and good additions to the mortar mechanics. I think the accuracy is fine as I find one incendiary mortar very capable of wining an engagement with 2 sieging mortars. Since AI pawns wont heal each other its only a matter of time before you burn a mortar or force them to attack. Its true Snipers can out perform mortars but it is not always a sure thing that snipers don't take fire back.
Were mortars shine the most pre A16 is Crash Ships Parts. I find snipers don't always have a clear shot and mechs like to run up with charge lances. Big maps can further add risk when your pawn have to walk along way for food and medical attention.

Even though feedback is probably plentiful by now and mine doesn't bring anything new to the table I will just drop my quick thoughts.

- They seem to be one of, if not the least cost efficient way of defending your colony.
- For me, I can never find the time to prioritize the research early enough. Hence, they become available later in the game, when they are even less useful imo.
- That being said, I dont find them being bad or terrible in any way, but they are the "lesser" option.

The thing I like about mortars is their ability to enable relatively unskilled pawns to do catastrophic damage to enemy. Mortars enable me to get more use out of my pawns.

I use them all the time now. A firefight is more accurate and reliable, but comes with a much higher risk of catastrophic damage to your pawns. Mortars are a free attack with no risk, so I think it's a nice balance with their unreliability. There is the literal cost of making the shells, but mid to late game they're not that expensive.

So far, they work great for fallen ships and defending against siege attacks. Haven't used em to attack other bases yet, but I imagine they're worth it once you get launch pods.

Quote from: Pushover on January 15, 2017, 09:13:20 PM
Make different shells instead of different mortars

+1

I'd also like to see the mortar replaced with a small field artillery piece that care fire direct and indirect and be moved.

I used 4 incendiary mortars in my A16 game until I built the ship. The incendiary mortars were rather underwhelming. I don't know what they do better than normal mortars. Incendiary IED traps are nice to handle melee attackers and even manhunters, but mortars ? Setting a couple of attackers on fire may cause their group to lose cohesion, but a normal shell would damage them much more instead, making them easier to down and consequently easier to make the entire force retreat.

As for cost of shells I generally get them for free - cargo pods. In many of my games I eventually get lots of free shells, medicine, etc.

Rarely use it... to me, I don't think its worth the steel cost investment to even make Mortars (unless i'm swimming in steel in the late game). They take a long time to reload, are wildly inaccurate, and thus not exactly useful. Its rather irritating as well since raiders who siege your base seem to be pretty accurate with their shots while our colonists are just atrocious.

One suggestion I'd feel maybe might be worthwhile is that if there is some way the game can be made in that when we have a pawn manning a mortar in base, we have an attack force that goes out to engage the raiders that are sieging us or don't attack immediately. A pawn from the attack force can then be used to like "laser spot" and call down a more accurate mortar strike on the enemy from a relative distance (like just slightly beyond sniper rifle range). That way, we can have the option of taking the battle to raiders and soften them up before we engage.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy is this a "should I buff the mortars?" question? Because it suspiciously sounded like it.

Players don't use mortars because mortars can't hit small targets, such as a small raider siege camp. Raiders use mortars because mortars can usually hit and damage at least some part of a base even if you can't hit your primary target.

I use them like... Always.

Usually I build eight normal mortars, in two sets. The sets are divided by walls so they look like a +. I then put an equipment rack on each side which only holds mortar shells.
And for backup I build one EMP and one incendiary.
Until now I defeated sieges up to 15 raiders with ease. The more mortars, the more useful they get.
That's why I always build eight mortars. Or at least six, under that you can't hit the broad side of a barn.

I use them to hit crashed ships, so that I don't have to siege mechanoids, but they instead come to me. Other than that, pretty much never use it to defend - they reload too long to be able to shoot more than once. Offense wise, colony bases are too simple nowadays for them to be much of a use. I can imagine that with better defended raider bases they can be useful.

Mortars are the most fun way to dispatch of enemies. The sound effects, the inaccuracy! The overwhelming joy when a grenade hits the target. If there was one thing I would change about mortars, it would be to create a single type of building for multiple types of ammo. It would make them a bit more useful for the buck (not sure if it was this way in earlier alphas).

In my last base I had 4 mortars set up that I would use to soften up incoming raids - I didn't feel like they were all that great as they would often miss but I would manage to kill/wound a few. 

For me their real use shines in through repelling sieges.  I used to run out to attack them putting my pawns at risk, but a few volleys directly at their artillery shells will force them to charge. 

I tried the EMP mortarts a few times for Mechanoid raids but found them somewhat lackluster - the reload time was too long and the accuracy was too low to make it a viable strategy, although for non-combatants I suppose it would make good use of them.

Another good use I haven't personally used would be against crashed ships, but I generally just lay IEDs around them and shoot them to get them pop out and die - I suggested in another thread to have them pop out if any colonist enters within a 2 square radius to prevent this exploit, so if that is implemented I may need to resort to mortars for that.

Agreed on separate mortar ammunition types making more sense than mortars themselves. 

I only use them, after I stole them from Sieges :)

Don't build them myself.

I build one of each the 3 options at some point and sometime there is use for them, like when enemy horde spawns enough far away from the base, i'd say that 1 on 4 times i get a good shot and weaken some.. not that useful but something. Against sieges i use long range snipers, maybe just some fire if it does not rain to have them busy estinguishing, not that essential tho

Quote from: Brutetal on February 20, 2017, 01:45:48 AM
Until now I defeated sieges up to 15 raiders with ease. The more mortars, the more useful they get.

This is a good point.  The bigger the enemy target is, the more useful mortars are.  Hitting an unopened ship part is virtually impossible.  But a large spread out sieging force is much easier to hit.  Kill enough of the defending pawns, the others rush your base and die... yeah, I can see that working.  Mortars could easily become more useful later in the game when your colony attracts larger raids.

Quote from: SpaceDorf on February 20, 2017, 06:14:54 AM
I only use them, after I stole them from Sieges :)

And this fits perfectly too.  The longer your base has been round the more mortars it can steal... and all the ammo you need too.

I dont see a point to constructing them on sight for offense i think they are extremely useful though in defense.

Definitely defensively. I generally use a standard mortar as well as a incendiary mortar. With those two firing in tandem, and a little luck, I can usually break up sieges before they begin.

You can't build your fortifications if your builders are too busy fighting fires!

I've never used EMP or incendiary mortars - the latter especially seems to be worth trying out on a denser vegetation mod map, where accuracy is less dangerous than the ensuing wildfire - but explosive mortars are terrible.  I built one once and wasted fifteen shots on a poison ship, only to kill absolutely nothing.  If they didn't come with ammo management issues it might be worth devoting colonists to lob supporting artillery fire over the wall, but as it stands a single IED and an ounce of preparation is far more effective.

I've reworked mortars based on the poll, so the poll is now obsolete and I'm closing it. Thanks to all who contributed!

I know it's too late, but I find mortars very useful (and fun!) defending against centipedes.

I never build mortars, spending the time and resources on a good a defensive position set up seems far more effective, and isn't completely nullified by non-camping enemies.

I know the poll was closed, but I figure I'd put my 2 cents in.

Mortars are VERY powerful, as they do high damage, pain effects (multiple wounds) and have a decent splash, but are pretty damn cumbersome.

Biggest issue is where aiming is extremely cumbersome, on multiple levels. Lets say I want to mortar an incoming raider : aiming at him directly means the mortar will hit when hes walked FAR away from the impact site, making it useless, so you must lead the target using your own judgement against them. It also tends to spread extremely wide at short ranges, which bothers me quite a bit, but I understand, I suppose.

Its also extremely slow, and not very reactable at all, but I understand this as a balance issue.

Overall, I like the mortars, they are also extremely useful against manhunting packs, as you can thin the heard.

Well I expereminted a bit...

I'm afraid to have no pics available, I just forget them so often.
I've basically built one looooong corridor to right before the only entry to my base. Even though it is damn long and full of rock chunks, the raiders will take because all other walls of my colony are four tiles thick.
Now comes the trick;
I have cramped the approx. 30 tiles long corridor with mostly granite chunks. At three points I drew kind of a line with marble chunks (different color). Now, if the raiders walk over the first line of marble, I fire all mortars on the second line. I set already the forced attack there, but hold fire. I click all mortars at once and unforbid fire.
BAMMM!  Up to 80% of the times I hit with most mortars direct hits.
I think a four tiles wide corridor should be even more effective. Will have to test that.

Just a cool input if you want a "legit killbox" that isn't just turret spamming ;)

You sir just described a coordinated fire strike on a prepared target, well done :)

Quote from: SpaceDorf on February 22, 2017, 05:02:37 PM
You sir just described a coordinated fire strike on a prepared target, well done :)

Yeah serving in the military and learning some military tactics had to be good for SOMETHING, right? *chuckle*

Wait, I thought the only legit tactics in Rimworld were sending masses of poorly equipped irregulars single-file against entrenched and hardened positions.  Have the pirates been doing it wrong the whole time?

Quote from: Hans Lemurson on February 23, 2017, 04:10:31 AM
Wait, I thought the only legit tactics in Rimworld were sending masses of poorly equipped irregulars single-file against entrenched and hardened positions.  Have the pirates been doing it wrong the whole time?

Of course not .. you are confusing player tactics with AI tactics :)

Quote from: Brutetal on February 22, 2017, 05:06:20 PM
Yeah serving in the military and learning some military tactics had to be good for SOMETHING, right? *chuckle*

I was armored Artillery myself , that is the biggest issue I have with mortars .. they just suck compared to the real deal.

By the way it seems that EMP mortars were actually nerfed in A16. I remember their blast area to be HUGE, now they're about half as big.

And nobody noticed until now ..


B0rsuk I think you just summarized the use of mortars in your post ..

I don't know what Tynan exactly did to mortars in A17, but he could kill two birds with one stone by making colonists automatically lead the target. Mortar shell has relatively low travel time, so while letting colonists shoot automatically is convenient, it's better to target manually against moving raids. I don't enjoy that micromanagement.

Quote from: b0rsuk on March 10, 2017, 07:30:53 AM
... he could kill two birds with one stone by making colonists automatically lead the target.

Brief block of instruction on how to plot an intercept course (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=30790.0).

OK, I take back what I said earlier.  Mortars aren't *totally* useless, as I just discovered:

My 5 poor colonists suddenly discovered 21 tribals milling about preparing to attack.  I knew they would overrun my static defenses too easily (yes, I'm playing without turrets again).  So I thought I could take the battle to them and shoot them, but several reloads proved that wasn't going to work.  4:1 is just awful odds in a straight shootout.

Then I remembered that I had snagged a mortar from a siege a while back.  So I loaded it up and fired several shells at the mob, and managed to kill 5 of them.  The rest charged my base, and this time I was able to kill another half dozen as they swarmed my killbox causing the rest to flee.

So, mortars do work against large AI squads milling about aimlessly.  And note this was a single mortar.  If I had actually researched and built several I might have been able to really mess them up.

I think that Mortars are a really useful thing to have in the game.
- I've used them for defense against other sieges, and against raiders.
- I've used them to siege raiders
Its so nice to see 10 mortars firing at once, and when they all land it makes for a really fun hail-Mary moment of pure destruction.
All that is balanced by the fact that we need shells, if we didn't need the shells I'd rush Mortars at day one.