Fougasse

[BetaSpectre]

I'm simply appalled at how worthless normal Mortars are, but if they were...holes in the ground with shells directed sorta kinda at my place. I'd believe it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fougasse_%28weapon%29

Mortars IRL are pretty darn standard in accuracy. You calibrate to the XY and it hits assuming wind is on your side. And decent sniper will get close.

IMO there should be more progression to the Mortar, and it'd be fun to have more options.

[StarBlazer]

Like the sound of this :3

[Silvador]

Maybe assigning a second colonist to the mortar, who has high shooting, can increase accuracy via the second colonist acting as spotter.

[daft73]

Neat ideas. Possibly a spotter, or even binoculars for better accuracy.

[Gennadios]

I like the ideas.

A temporary hole in the ground that aims at only one location when you build it. Usable on crashed ship parts and sieges, not OP

And two people manning mortars, although in their current state, I'd only use them for crashed ship parts, no point in tying up a colonist with good shooting + extra when I can just march them over to where the bloodbath needs to be made.

[Silvador]

I like the ideas.

A temporary hole in the ground that aims at only one location when you build it. Usable on crashed ship parts and sieges, not OP

And two people manning mortars, although in their current state, I'd only use them for crashed ship parts, no point in tying up a colonist with good shooting + extra when I can just march them over to where the bloodbath needs to be made.

I don't know about you, but I rarely actively assault a raider group, especially a large group. I like to actually keep my colonists at least partially alive and capable of fighting the next time my settlement needs defending. Strolling up to a siege camp full of armed and armoured raiders is a suicide mission.

[Apophis]

I don't know about you, but I rarely actively assault a raider group, especially a large group. I like to actually keep my colonists at least partially alive and capable of fighting the next time my settlement needs defending. Strolling up to a siege camp full of armed and armoured raiders is a suicide mission.

Well, you can lure melee siegers to your base with just one guy with a gun and you can stab normal siegers in their sleep (one by one), so attacking a siege party is not so strange.


However, on topic; the mortars in Rimworld do not have a computer system and are not calibrated either, so the accuracy of mortars nowadays is not possible here, I think it would be like mortars in WWII.
A more simple mortar that would not require research does sound interesting though, a simple hole in the ground with quite terrible aim.

[Silvador]

You think people just shoved mortars in the ground, pointed them at the sky and hoped they hit a target? Before computers, people actually learned about such things as angle, velocity and the effects of varying degrees of wind. They also often had scouts or spotters that fed the people manning the mortars with information such as range to a target, how fast the target is moving and in what direction, if it is moving at all, obstacles in the way and wind speed as well as wind direction.

Pre-modern mortars were no less accurate than mortars used today.

[Monkfish]

The only difference between a modern mortar and an old one is that modern ones have computers that make the calculations for you, whereas old ones need the calculations done manually (by referring to range tables).

A fougasse, dug properly, would be less accurate than a modern mortar, but not by much, though they're utterly useless against moving targets unless you know that they're going to be passing through an area beforehand.

[Kagemusha12]

I like the ideas.

A temporary hole in the ground that aims at only one location when you build it. Usable on crashed ship parts and sieges, not OP

And two people manning mortars, although in their current state, I'd only use them for crashed ship parts, no point in tying up a colonist with good shooting + extra when I can just march them over to where the bloodbath needs to be made.

I don't know about you, but I rarely actively assault a raider group, especially a large group. I like to actually keep my colonists at least partially alive and capable of fighting the next time my settlement needs defending. Strolling up to a siege camp full of armed and armoured raiders is a suicide mission.

If you have one or more talented shooters with sniper rifles, it actually is a good tactic to let your people march to the siege camp and station them at long range of your sniper rifles and then give your snipers the permission to fire.
If they react to the sniper fire (which usually only happens if someone got severely wounded) it will only be a local response by 1-2 siegers standing around the person who got hit who will march into your direction (and if they do so, they come into range of the weapons of the other colonists you brought with you (i.e. those who have no sniper rifles but shorter ranged weapons) thereby getting quickly decimated).
Finally their morals get so weakened that they break their siege and either flee or, if a few of them actually assault, they will be quickly repulsed.

With this tactics I usually repulse sieges without any enemy mortar shot getting fired (sometimes, if I was able to station myself in range of the building site of the mortar even, without the mortar successfully geting built )