Mortars: Useful or not?

Started by Tynan, January 12, 2017, 04:21:54 PM

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How much do you use mortars?

Defensively and offensively, with some regularity
28 (11.9%)
Defensively only, with some regularity
47 (19.9%)
Offensively only, with some regularity
2 (0.8%)
Rarely
103 (43.6%)
Never
56 (23.7%)

Total Members Voted: 235

Tynan

I'm interested in thoughts on mortars.

They are designed to be usable for defense as well as offense - but are people using them that way? What about offense? How are you using mortars and how do you feel they're balanced for player use?

Thanks all.
Tynan Sylvester - @TynanSylvester - Tynan's Blog

O Negative

I'm not a fan of the forced miss radius size, personally. A good shot should be able to at least get close to their target.

I would like to see slightly more accurate shots, and more practical uses for EMP mortar types for offense.

Just my 2¢

GiantSpaceHamster

#2
I have not felt a compelling need to start using them so honestly I haven't really experimented with them much. I've found other solutions to the situations where they might be useful.

I think conceptually I was turned off by the ammo requirement; not that I think it's a bad idea, I just figured I could find solutions where I don't have to keep track of ammo at all.

EDIT: I also have not played around much with sieges of other bases, so I haven't had the opportunity to try them offensively.

PotatoeTater

I used to never use them for anything, but with A16, I have been using them to break down pirate defenses before I siege camps. I have to say that in the future when the random gen for encampments gets updated with more building types and bigger bases they will have a greater use. I do have to say tho, maybe make a mortar an object like beds and other furniture that can be uninstalled and moved. It would make transport way easier than hauling around a bunch of steel.
Life is Strange

Serenity

I build them when I get around to research them, but I have never prioritized mortars. They are useful in a few situations, but the amount of ammunition (and thus steel) you need is too high given how inaccurate they are.

MisterVertigo

#5
I just used some last night on a manhunting pack of wild boars outside my base. My colony is walled in so everyone was safe, and I just kept launching mortars at the pack. I got most of them before they wandered off. I got them all hauled into my freezer too before they spoiled!

I don't find them very effective for offense normally simply because of the accuracy. I will burn through so many shells and a very low percentage of them will actually do any damage. The manhunters were different because they mostly stay in the same place so they were a big non-moving target. If raiders were attacking my walls and moving around it would be a different story. I'd probably end up hitting my own walls or turrets as much as the raiders.

With that being said, I'm not honestly sure how you'd fix it. If they were more accurate they would be WAY WAY WAY too overpowered. I guess I'd rather spend my steel on turrets and guns than on the shells. I could deal with the inaccuracy if I didn't have to pump steel into keeping the ammo stocked. It would be a good way for the colonists who may not be good shooters to be able to help out in base defense. I haven't had any sieges on my current colony yet, but I would probably use incendiary against those since they stay in one place and the fire would distract them. It would be worth using the shells if I knew eventually I'd get their mortars taken out.

I typically don't even build them until pretty late in the game when my regular defenses are in place and I have the steel to spare for the ammo.
"In vertigo you will be..."

"Relax, people. It's a teeny indie game; don't kill it with love." - Bozobub

Spudra

My current colony has a incendiary and explosive mortar behind the colony walls. Used it on enemy attacks aswell as on BEAVERS!
When I start attacking other colonies i will probably take a mortar with me.

Quote from: O Negative on January 12, 2017, 04:26:06 PM
I'm not a fan of the forced miss radius size, personally. A good shot should be able to at least get close to their target.

I would like to see slightly more accurate shots, and more practical uses for EMP mortar types for offense.

Just my 2¢

I also think that the mortar is VERY inaccurate, which is pretty annoying when you miss at least 5 shots on an enemy raid thats waiting to attack. Ofcourse it shouldn't be too accurate, because then it would become too OP. But a bit better accuracy would be nice.

I don't use the emp mortar yet, but will put one up soon, just in case of a mechanoid attack. But i don't see any other use either. Not sure how the emp responds to electronical machines (in the colony) but if it shuts it down (and an colonist should fix/turn it on again) it could be very usefull for offense.

Those are my thoughts about it.

TLDR: I like the mortar a lot, but is a bit too inaccurate. EMP mortar seems usefull for only 1 situation.

Limdood

I don't use them. 

I HAVE used them for defense before, but abandoned the idea.  I found them to require too much micro, both in efficient setup and operation (making and setting up the shells and stockpiles with oddly arranged roofing to keep them from deteriorating, and then manually assigning colonists to man them, then fire (or hold fire) at specific places) - and after all that, actually hitting even the big cluster of enemies I was aiming at is a complete toss up.

I've never even considered them for offensive raiding.  Take the amount of setup and multiply by 10 or more to research and set up the drop pods to get the steel over, or train, feed, bring, and safely store enough draft animals to haul the supplies.

I've begun using the "more vanilla turrets" mod (i try to minimize turret use overall, so using a couple of really strong turrets appeals) and the devastator mortar seemed a more viable late late LATE game option for defense (still not offense).  shoots 5 shot bursts in a slightly smaller radius, no shell use, but uses about the same power as a sun lamp.  Seems a but overpowered, but i REALLY appreciate not having to micro artillery shells as well as having half a chance to hit near where i'm shooting.


I'd probably use them again (for defense only most likely) if ammo was removed and they were treated like other guns

DeathWeasel

Once during an early colony I had a psychic ship drop down in a place with absolutely no cover from which to shoot it and no sniper rifles. I decided to build a mortar and knock it out. I fired several hundreds of steel worth of shells at it and got only one hit in. Eventually it ramped up it's psychic power to the point where everyone in my colony killed each other. That was my first and last experience with mortars.

Mortars work well against colonies because of how much stuff there is to hit. Even if the mortar misses the primary target, it's likely to do some damage to something. But as for player use? There is absolutely no threat that a mortar can handle better than a sniper rifle.

Serenity

Quote from: Limdood on January 12, 2017, 04:42:54 PM
stockpiles with oddly arranged roofing to keep them from deteriorating
That's what equipment racks are for

koisama

I tried to use them a few times, but always ended up either forgetting or disassembling them. Fire rate is too low, accuracy is beyond horrible and AoE is too small to compensate.

I just watched a video from the middle east, you know, the one where they launch one shell right after another and sometimes disappear in an explosion. Why not do the same?
Basically, a freshly installed mortar will have same properties as before, but then things will change.
1. Each consequent shot will increase accuracy a little. It's how artillery works anyway. Easily implemented in code.
2. Each change of target position will decrease accuracy proportionally to the range. Once again, should be pretty easy to implement.
3. Pawns take time to inspect mortars before shooting. They could do it faster, or skip inspection at all, at the risk of mortar explosion. The faster you shoot - the bigger the risk. Could be implemented using a drop pod fuel slider.
4. Accuracy and aiming time should be considered.

So you could have a set of defensive mortars that will perfectly cover the whole colony entrance, but you can't aim them at siegers or sappers. You could launch one shell per minute, or risk a little and launch two, or risk a lot and send the whole stack (and yourself) flying. Sieges will become a lot more deadly if raiding artillerist happened to be trigger-happy, but also more hilarious if they pick short inspection time and blow up.

Calahan

#11
Never used them as of A15. Or more precisely, I've built them, or acquired them from siegers, but so far I've never found a reliable use for them, and I generally avoid using something, especially for defence or attack, if I can't rely on it (to get the job done). I can imagine scenarios where they might be useful, but whenever one of those actually occurs I always seem to have at least one better option available for dealing with it. Meaning the mortars have always just sat in the corner and resigned to Plan B/C/Z duty.

Ii haven't played A16, but I can imagine several scenarios where they would be useful for attacking other bases (as others have already mentioned). Although as before, I can also imagine having better options available for dealing with that problem as well. But that's just based on theory and not practice, so it doesn't deserve as much weighting as feedback from practical experiences. Edit - Although I could see myself using them to attack a base with, even if they weren't anywhere near the best option, simply as a form of revenge and slow torture.

I will try and think of what changes I would need to see in order for me to personally find mortars more useful.

carbon

I haven't used them in a last alpha or two, so I'm not if it's still accurate (hence I didn't vote), but they previously made a decent way to slow enemy siegers, by hitting their mortars with EMPs to stop the loading counter. That was modestly effective, but I'm not sure it is worth the steel to keep it up for more than a few hours.

I don't know if it can still happen or if it really got patched out, but the ability to force individual enemy pawns to retreat by hitting them with EMPs was a nifty feature (or bug?) I remember from several alphas back. If it can't, they probably wouldn't be of much defensive use in the vast majority of cases.

stu89pid

I usually only play on medium difficulty (I hate losing colonists) so I use mortars a lot. They are a very safe, but somewhat costly, way to defend your base.

-I will poke a poison ship to get the centipedes to spawn, then run away with my fastest colonist. THen I will mortar the crap out of them until I turned the inevitable firefight in my favor.
-They are great to thin out huge end game manhunter packs. YOu have to be willing to have 100+ shells ready to go and 6+ mortars to fire them to start to get a lot of impact from them, but they can be very destructive on packs.
-Of course they are an excellent counter to sieges. I can usually land a shell in the first barrage completely forcing the on-foot attack on my base before they get to launch a single shell back at me. Again power in numbers here. WIth 4 mortars firing, you might not land a shell in time. With 10+ firing together, you will very likely destroy their mortars and take out 2-3 raiders.

I love mortars and have a couple suggestions to improve them.

-UI: The UI is not very intuitive, I can never remember if the checkmark means it will fire or will hold firing
-Loading: If you try to force load 8 shells with 8 different colonists at the same time, it will only work if you have 8 separate stacks of shells. Otherwise you get a message that they can't, and you have to wait for other colonists to pick up a shell before you can order the next.

DariusWolfe

I've only used them a few times, honestly, back before A16, so defense was all there was. The amount of time and effort needed to get them supplied and working, and then to use them is prohibitive, especially when the enemy is likely moving to contact, so you've got to try to guess where they'll be when the projectile gets there; Then the chance that the projectile consistently goes wide of the target... It's just not worth it.

I doubt it matters much, but I'm a former Forward Observer, and I've got a perspective on indirect fire weapons. First, for even a half-trained troop, it's actually pretty fast to load and fire. As part of my training, we were required to go to the gun line and put some rounds downrange, and I put 6 rounds down down in a couple minutes, before they told me to stop; This was on a full-scale artillery piece, not a mortar, which I expect would be considerably faster. Accuracy is questionable on modern IDF, assuming that the math is good (it usually is) and the observer is good (we get to be). After that, it's largely wind resistance, and is based more on high-angle vs low angle. Mortars are always high-angle, so tend to be somewhat less accurate, but also tend to shoot much shorter distances, where the wind has less effect, so it balances out. Typically, something between eyeballs and lanyard is seriously off, you get effect-on-target because the blast radius is usually comparable to the area of effect, especially with larger artillery pieces.

But here's the big thing: You never fire just one round, unless you're registering, training, or (potentially) trying to move the target. (This also excludes guided IDF, like copperheads and the like) Even with a single mortar, you can put several rounds downrange in less than a minute, so even if the first one misses, it's very unlikely that the subsequent rounds will.

I wouldn't want you to try to make a deep artillery sub-game (though you could; IDF is a very complex art) but if I had a single change request, it would be that: more rounds per shot. More expensive, but it would greatly increase the effectiveness of mortars against mobile targets.