Mortar Building Materials

[FatMan]

I've noticed that you can construct mortars out of various materials, such as steel, plasteel, uranium, silver and gold.  Would building a plasteel mortar have any benefits over the normal steel mortar?  Has anyone tried this?

Also, does the skill of the operator effect the accuracy of the mortar?  In my experience it doesn't appear to.

Thoughts?  I will test this for alpha 10.

In the case that there are no differences, well i suppose i have some nice ideas regarding mortar functionality.

[Shinzy]

I don't know if the newest alpha changed anything
but in the past the only difference was it's health
plasteel one is more durable than the others

So you spill your beans Fat Man!

[FatMan]

My test results:

I took a very scientific approach to this.  I made certain to have specific factors, such as the range (100 spaces), shooter accuracy (99.2%), and i was very careful in recording the shots impact.

After an hour of testing, it seemed that all mortars are just as inaccurate.  The mortars very frequently missed by 10 to 15 spaces in any direction.  Shooter skill appeared to have no bearing on the accuracy; neither did the type of mortar.

In Conclusion, mortars are great for pirates attacking your base because the potential for them to miss the target but still hit something of value is very good.  Although you may cause some damage to stationary attackers (sieges or gathering tribesmen, crashed ships, etc), mortars are not a reliable defense weapon and should be used as a support, not as a primary defense.