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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.

Mounted animals that don't break the game?

Tie usefulness of riding an animal would be tied to Handling skill. Pawn mounts an animal... they move at the animals max speed*(H. Skill/20). Pawns with low Handling (ie don't know what they are doing) would actually move slower if they mount an animal. Shooting would be worse when mounted by the same factor Normal % to hit*(H. Skill/20). So shooting a gun off a horses back is a bad idea if you don't know what you are doing so you need high shooting AND handling to be able to hit anything. Melee would not have as bad a penalty and you add the animals melee attacks. Both would have a penalty dependent on handling skill. Mounted animals would only be useful for moving fast, melee/shooting, and hauling. They dismount when they start other tasks. A mounted pawn should be able to haul more per trip as an advantage to riding (maybe 150 units/load).  Only animals above a certain size/intelligence can be trained up in riding (like they are for hauling) and maybe you need 10-12 trainings to make it an investment in the animal. Wildness slows down the speed of training so you aren't riding a rhino after a few days.

The possibilities are quite fun I think... beasts of burden, flash raids of tribal horsemen (Mongols on Rimworld!) - better get away fast!, a way to help that pawn with 2 peg legs become useful again w/o bionic legs, breeding herds for riding animals, Viking bear riders.