Incendiary vs Explosive traps/Motars

[SpookCrow]

Which one is better in which situations?

[Lys]

I don't use traps, but for mortars I find explosive ones better for the general case.
Incendiary mortar shells are good against shielded raiders (explosive, at least with just 1-2 mortars, is too slow to get down the shield AND do any damage. Fire doesn't care about the shield). Also against manhunter packs, but only if you don't care that you will not be able to butcher the corpses. And of course, if you have an elaborate ignition tactic, i.e. you plant a whole field of something, wait until raiders walk through and blaze it all up. But that is not worth the effort imo.

Explosives deal more reliable damage in my opinion. If hit properly, they will instantly down/kill or at least get a good chunk of their health. Also incendiaries seem pretty useless against mechanoids, whereas bombarding a poison/psychic ship with explosives works very well.

[ITypedThis]

Personally I find explosives to be far superior in basically every situation, as they will always kill or seriously injure their target upon successful detonation/hit, whereas incendiaries hardly do any damage over a period of time and can damage player structures or destroy all of the phat loot. ('Course, multiple explosive shells will destroy things just the same, but they'll at least count one's enemies among them.)

[khearn]

I've read that incendiaries are good against siege raids, because the raiders will spend a lot of their time/effort fighting the fires in their camp area. Haven't ever had a siege when I had incendiary mortars available to test it out myself, though.

Incendiaries do have a slightly larger blast radius, but I've never seen a raider go down to just one hit from them like I've seen from explosive mortar rounds. It certainly is fun watching raiders run around on fire, even if it's not as effective as fragmentation rounds.