Mortar Teams

[RedStorm58]

I have heard that Ty is going to add Motar Teams, which will probably make players do two things. Make player actually get out of there base. And will make players go on the offense. Which are good things. BUT. I also have heard that the guys will just look for a defendable position and will bomb you until you come and stop them, or ,if you cant do that, will kill every single one of your guys. I am thinking is this good or bad?

[ApexPredator]

I like the idea even though I think it will make the game quite a bit harder. I am interested in seeing what direction Tynan is going to take with this. The plus side to mortars, range, being able to fire over wall/bags, AOE/splash damage. Some negatives I would like to see are slow setup/breakdown of the mortar to reduce their mobility and reduced accuracy. Will the mortars do heavy soft damage or a mix of both soft and hard?

[Untrustedlife]

He hasnt gone into much detail yet, and raiders WILL use them against you.
I don't mind the game getting harder, currently once you get to a point you destroy everybody that attacks you with no effort using mines.
At that point you will be begging for challenge.

[RedStorm58]

Imagine this. A motor team comes in, setting up shop. You know you are going to have to go otu there, but then, out of nowhere, a second message pops up. A regular raider party have arrived! The raiders approach shooting at your colonists, while the motars destroy your funnels and waffles and kill boxes. Your frontline has been destroyed and you make a hasty retreat to another part of town. The raiders, now provided with rubble as cover and a clear path into your colony, advance. You make a final stand trying to fight them off but then, the last salvo from the motars destroy what remains of your army. You have lost. That would be AWESOME. So ya, mabe it is a good thing 8-D Bye!

[Untrustedlife]

It would be the most intesne death ever.

[Tynan]

I'm thinking that they'll take a very long time to set up, and fire very infrequently, and not do thaaaat much damage. So they could be out there mortaring you for days.

I'm interested in protracted siege warfare because the long timescale links together the building and combat aspects of the game. Now you can build stuff during the siege, using the building mechanics and your skilled builders, to win a fight. That's interesting because you're making something economic into something tactical.

It's the same reason I want to do archaeology and have threats like, say, deadly robots who wake up on a timer, two weeks after being discovered, giving you a chance to build a killbox around them before they emerge.

Of course, this is all theoretical right now, but the design possibilities are exciting.

[hwoo]

will you be able to capture mortars for yourself? I love the idea of having my own mortar team duking it out with a raider mortar team. plus it adds offense options. have smoke rounds to cover the advance of your colonists as they move to flank incoming raiders.

also with the robot thing, would that give you access to higher tech after you killed them? just thoughts is all.

[Goo Poni]

I would hope that Mortars are wildly inaccurate, like, good luck actually hitting your intended target without massed Mortars and while they really hurt and probably incapacitate on a close call, the main source of damage would be structural damage (damage, not disintegration like grenades do, which I really don't think they should) and morale damage. Significant decrease to happiness, some fear and stacking so that people who witness repeated mortar strikes will suffer amplified effects (but not allowing 10 mortar strikes all at once to instantly apply 10 mortar debuff stacks). The idea being that you could break people without getting into a close quarters gunfight. I would also hope that Mortars are difficult to operate, requiring 2 or 3 people to man, and require missiles to give the missile item a use. That would mean that Mortars cannot fire forever and raiders would fire a few shells before then beginning their assault, nor can the Colony survive several raids, retrieve the mortars and then bomb all raiders in the foreseeable future to dust with battery fire. It would trivialize raids even more than the construction of efficient killzones with the "waffle" and the like.

[RedStorm58]

Actually, motars take less than a minute to set up. Mobile motars is simply a tube with a tripod. And also, do you know how easy it is to reload one? When i was 15, i went on a feild trip to a army mueseum. They let us touch and actually reload the motars. After a couple tries, i could launch four motars in less than 20 seconds. So i dont know what you mean about it being slow to set up. But i know you probably doing it gameplay wise. But if you do add motar teams, make them to be able to have napalm motars. Napalm: extremly flamible liquid that can get to tempatures of 32,000 degrees. MUWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. >; )

[RedStorm58]

And the motars were fake.

[Vastin]

Small mortars can be set up quickly - but they can take a while to sight in, either by doing careful estimations, or if you have the ammo, by firing and having a spotter 'walk' you in - so in effect they are pretty slow.

Of course, a futuristic mortar would sight itself in if you know where the target is, and the shell itself might even have corrective guidance - but the raiders in rim-world are lucky if their pistols work right, so I'm guessing they're using a makeshift tube with crappy old surplus shells. They'll be horribly inaccurate, and lucky if they don't blow themselves up with it after the first couple shots.

I'm already anticipating the first time I hear that <thump><tweeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEE><BOOM!> announcing the arrival of a hostile mortar team in the game.

[RedStorm58]

Ya, i am waiting for that to. Blowing themseves up.... But that means that when you use them, it has a chance of blowing up to.....

[RedStorm58]

Tynan, when WILL you bring in the motar teams? Please answer, i want to know(you could pm me if you want)

[Tynan]

I'm going to add them. Probably not in Alpha 2, though.

[RedStorm58]

Awwww!:-[(