Mortars: Useful or not?

[jmababa]

Not useful well cause I have medieval mod installed and thew ballista there dosen't need ammo

[Keychan]

I don't find them really useful, aside from countering sieges but even then I'd cross my fingers.  And for raiding, the costs it takes to make the mortars it doesn't feel worth it.  What I'd like to see is mortars miniaturized.  Like when I think of mortars, I picture those bi-pods connected to a tube mortars.  Not huge and gets the job done. Maybe make smaller mortars that act as furniture, so you can carry them around when travelling, but significantly smaller explosions when used.

[FreyaMaluk]

Mortars are not very useful IMO. They take a lot of resources and if I want to attack something in the distance I prefer taking a group of  sneaky snipers...
Things I dislike about them:
- Extremely inaccurate: I understand they are suppose to be a "miss-hit" thing, but they're just completely annoying.
- Reloading takes a ridiculous amount of time.
- Resource Intensive: this is partly because of their lack of accuracy. You need to buy loads of ammo.
The only kinda effective way of using them is building lots of them and fire them all at once in a way to compensate the lack of accuracy and that just takes to many resources and space.

[Losttruppen]

I love them on defense, especially versus late-game manhunter packs and tribals where a solid hit or two can pretty much stop the horde in its tracks or even send a raid packing with a few lucky strikes. Usually have a battery of 4 regular mortars with a pair of EMPs, which I find indispensable versus Mech raids and ship parts. (As long as they don't drop into my kitchen...)

Have to agree that they can be expensive and very time consuming to maintain a stockpile of ammo but I think if they become any more effective at hitting things this would be justified.

Another issue I have with them is aiming priority seems to be proximity, with all my mortars shooting at the one Jogger with bionic legs 50m ahead of the pack, which naturally results in a lot of missed rounds while that juicy blob lumbers up between the craters. My suggestion would be to have them auto target clumped enemies, or give the option to select and aim multiple tubes at once so at least I'm not just clearing the snow for the rest of the raids convenience.

[guruclef]

Perhaps keep the mortars as they are but have a pretty strong negative mood for them exploding nearby.
"-20 : Under mortar fire"
[...]
This would then give mortars a purpose, to demoralise/scare the enemy

I agree with this one. Remember the strong psychological effects people got from being under artillery fire in WW1...

[Cimm0]

Perhaps keep the mortars as they are but have a pretty strong negative mood for them exploding nearby.
"-20 : Under mortar fire"
[...]
This would then give mortars a purpose, to demoralise/scare the enemy

I agree with this one. Remember the strong psychological effects people got from being under artillery fire in WW1...

I also agree on this.

Also, as difficult as it may sound, I'd like to see smaller area with blast damage that outright kills enemies and a large area where it *may* be possible to get hit by shrapnel. Modeling each piece of flying shrapnel would be hard so I guess there could be a code-based instant secondary explosion with 10-50 % chance to get hit by sharpnel, depending on the distance of the first explosion.

Rather than being a weapon that either does nothing (misses) or makes hamburger meat out of raiders (direct hit), I'd like to see it as something that wounds, demoralizes and slows down the enemy before pawns engage them - especially if it is going to stay as inaccurate as it is.

TLDR: more small wounds, less hamburger meat.

[NeverPire]

Perhaps keep the mortars as they are but have a pretty strong negative mood for them exploding nearby.
"-20 : Under mortar fire"
[...]
This would then give mortars a purpose, to demoralise/scare the enemy

I agree with this one. Remember the strong psychological effects people got from being under artillery fire in WW1...

I also agree on this.

Also, as difficult as it may sound, I'd like to see smaller area with blast damage that outright kills enemies and a large area where it *may* be possible to get hit by shrapnel. Modeling each piece of flying shrapnel would be hard so I guess there could be a code-based instant secondary explosion with 10-50 % chance to get hit by sharpnel, depending on the distance of the first explosion.

Something like that is already implemented for the doomsday rocket launcher so it's seems easy to add but I'm not sure if it is a good idea.

[Goo Poni]

-snip-

Maybe CR, Combat Realism, has what you're looking for? Most explosives have fragmentation and their effective range extends beyond that of the initial blast. It can be stuttery when fragmentation spawns though  due to how much of it there is.

[Cimm0]

CR indeed had shrapnel and it was DEADLY!

It was so effective that I could almost see PFC Hudson from Aliens touching a mortar tube in some weird, ambiguous way with a gleam in his eye, saying "Check it out! Colonist-targeted high explosive fragmentation mortar. VWAP! Fry half a tribal raid with this puppy".

While I did like it, it was also too effective for the price it had - launching a barrage from 10 mortar tubes would absolutely slaughter any kind of stationary attack force, making it quite OP.

[pdxsean]

Pretty sure the last time I used mortars they didn't require ammunition. Maybe I'm wrong, but it's been a couple of years anyway. I've found no real use for them, although back in the day they were handy for starting random fires.

I found them too inaccurate and inefficienct when I could just send a few snipers out (for seiges) or a whole army (crashed ships) and get the work done.

[Britnoth]

No changes required. Please do not listen to all the bad players that do not know how to use them. 

How about instead of insulting the rest of us, you inform us "bad players" about how to use them? And, really does a bad player use an option when they know there is a better one? An idiot does...

Try rereading my post.

Mortars come into their own the more enemies there are.

2 incendiary mortars are enough to stop any siege from setting up in my experience. They can be preloaded beforehand, so as soon as a siege starts to set up they can be fired instantly.

Just because the current vanilla game does not send you raids large enough to require you to use a feature, just not mean that no one is currently happy with the effectiveness of that feature.

An idiot plays on a low difficulty level and assumes because they never need to use X, that no other player needs to use X.

[b0rsuk]

If mortars are bad in vanilla outside of some specific corner cases like Extreme difficulty and laaarge maps and year 3+ colonies, then there's nothing left to prove. Calling people who disagree with you 'idiots' doesn't make you right.

[LordMunchkin]

Try rereading my post.

Mortars come into their own the more enemies there are.

2 incendiary mortars are enough to stop any siege from setting up in my experience. They can be preloaded beforehand, so as soon as a siege starts to set up they can be fired instantly.

Just because the current vanilla game does not send you raids large enough to require you to use a feature, just not mean that no one is currently happy with the effectiveness of that feature.

An idiot plays on a low difficulty level and assumes because they never need to use X, that no other player needs to use X.

Reread what? The grand two sentences you spat out so eloquently where you accused anyone who didn't agree with you of being bad players? Or how about your reply where you automatically assumed others are not only playing on a lower difficulty but are idiots for doing so? Please, do us all a favor and go learn some civility. Then you can come back and share your wisdom with us oh enlightened one.

P.S. This is just a game in case you didn't notice. It's not a university, job, or competition. At the end of the day, your daily fiber intake is more important. So lose the attitude. It just makes you look like a fool. 

[GarettZriwin]

If mortars are bad in vanilla outside of some specific corner cases like Extreme difficulty and laaarge maps and year 3+ colonies, then there's nothing left to prove. Calling people who disagree with you 'idiots' doesn't make you right.

Best choice is to have choice.

Yes, mortars are most likely to hit vs tribal zerg rushes, but just because they may seem bad does not mean they are bad indeed or can not be useful.

I did not play A15/16 yet but if I remember right mechanoid ship parts are not falling for at least year or so when you start now. Mortars were one of few tools saving extreme difficulty colony vs psycho ship while having great value from crops and no way of sniping/rocketing due to lack of proper traders or silver to buy that.

Outlanders/raiders are indeed less likely to be hit but they usually have better quality troops compared to meat rush from tribals soeach kill/KO is worth more.

I never play mountain killbox fortresses so waiting out barrage is not valid option, its also much more fun for me to have some challenge with my power armor commando. Besiegers and their supplies are not something i would want destroy.

Staging enemies can be routed with coordinated barrage making them free loot delivery.

[b0rsuk]

So be aware that Mortar research requires Machining research now. By the time you can build mortars, you by definition can craft sniper rifles. If you, like me, looted over 50 shells and got some from cargo pods, you still must research Machining.