Mortars: Useful or not?

[Hieronymous Alloy]

Mortars are extremely useful, almost indispensable, for the psychic and poison ship encounters, because of how effective EMP mortars are and how slow moving the mechanoids are.

OTherwise they're pretty useless except against on the rare occasion you get a big group of tribals all hanging out in one place and not moving. Against any moving target they're an utter waste of time and effort.

Offensively, the enemy always attacks as soon as the mortar is built, so it's useful to pull an enemy out of it's base and make them attack your defended position but not useful as an actual weapon, just useful because it triggers the AI.

The other big issue with mortars is they don't automatically de-draft like with drafted colonists so you get a lot of mental breaks from forgetfullness.

[Spdskatr]

I only use mortars to counter the enemy's mortars. Rarely for offensive combat, I just stealth raid

Building a row of steel deadfall traps is much better for eliminating the opponent.

[Goo Poni]

As a dwarf fortress style of player, mortars aren't much of a threat, obviously. And they're not much use to me either. Enemy mortars are effective against player townships because they're outside and often so large that the siege will hit something with nearly every shot. For them to be useful to me, I have to mass them, getting half the colony (6 of the default soft cap of 12) to spend much of the day shelling to get any useful effect. The forced miss radius really butchers their effectiveness and with vanilla combat being a case of who puts out the most bullets from the furthest range, I really do seem to need a platoon of bombardiers to get anything done. As one other poster said, mortars and artillery from mods in general, even CR, are a plan Z that I just never get around to using. They just sit neglected, on the off chance I get a hundred tribals massing for an attack.

[b0rsuk]

Plain mortars are good against big raids (that wait), especially tribal raids. You need around 4 mortars for consistent results. They're decent against pirate raids, but absolutely terrible against shielded raids.

EMP mortars are good against psychic ships and shut down sieging pirates. They have huge blast radius and amazing duration of 30 seconds. They are interesting because they let you swarm mechanoids with short range, even melee weapons and animals, a stark break from usual mechanoid tactics. I have a feeling they would be good for defending against mechanoid raids, because you can safely shell your base with them as long as you don't rely on turrets.

Incendiary mortars - I haven't tried them much, but they are the trickiest, just like incendiary IED. They might need a different base design and approach, similar to psychic animal pulser. I need to experiment with them. If someone knows a good use for incendiary mortars, let me know !

Neither mortar is good against manhunters.

In my opinion the biggest issue is: mortars are way too high in the tech tree. And expensive. You need Smithing, Machining, and then mortar research! What if I buy or loot shells ? Nope, Machining is still required. What does Machining enable ? Sniper rifles.

Also, mortars would be more useful if I could just manufacture specialized shells instead of making special mortars. That might make stockpiles bigger and interface more complicated, but building 4 normal mortars + 4 EMP mortars to handle all kinds of threats semi reliably (normal pirates and shielded pirates) is absurdly expensive. Requiring separate research and construction for each type of mortar prevents people from experimenting.

[PiggyBacon]

I'll use a mortar if a huge siege comes around otherwise meh. They have their moments but otherwise are useless.

[DariusWolfe]

Also, mortars would be more useful if I could just manufacture specialized shells instead of making special mortars. That might make stockpiles bigger and interface more complicated, but building 4 normal mortars + 4 EMP mortars to handle all kinds of threats semi reliably (normal pirates and shielded pirates) is absurdly expensive. Requiring separate research and construction for each type of mortar prevents people from experimenting.

Oh yeah, I completely forgot that it's like that. Yeah, I can see absolutely NO reason why it should be implemented like that, and recalling, that's a big reason why I didn't use 'em much, because I'd have to build at least 3 to get all of the effects; With the current research tree, I don't even see myself bothering. Singular device, different rounds would make a lot more sense, and I wouldn't even care overly much if the EMP rounds still required additional research.

[b0rsuk]

I have a hunch incendiary mortars would be good to use divide&conquer against attackers. Any organic enemy hit by incendiary mortar will be split from the main attacking force, and they you can  gun them down one by one. But this is really an AI issue. Once raiders become smart enough to regroup before entering defender range, it won't work anymore.

Also, I feel bad about incendiary mortars because they make the land barren. Rimworld fauna and flora regrows very poorly. It's a bit like calling toxic fallout upon yourself.

[dv]

I like the mortars as-is, frankly. Following the age-old principles of warfare; if your weapons can't be accurate, they should at least be numerous. 6-8 mortars will definitely ruin a centipede's day... eventually. Probably before it gets to your killbox and lights all your pawns on fire.

I haven't done too many base raids, so I'm not sure what tactics I like for those.

[Lightzy]

As the game develops, I imagine mortars will be a great offensive tool. I don't think they need to be removed or changed.

The fact that people don't use them is simply because there are much better alternatives for both defense and offense (sniper/hunting rifles outrange anything and the AI can't deal with kiting when you use them, and turrets/traps are more reliable on defense than mortars, costing no ammo, which is another thing that should be considered --- adding ammo requirements to guns and turrets).

[Shurp]

Mortars are very useful for hitting a large target consisting of multiple buildings spread out over its miss radius.  They are completely useless for hitting individual targets.  Which means they're great for pirates trying to make a player's life miserable but useless for players shooting back.

Is this Working As Designed?

If not, then you might want to implement Spotters.  After firing a round, a pawn within an observation radius can report back to base how far and which way the round missed.  The next round should be targeted more accurately.  The third even closer.  And so on.

The logic shouldn't be too hard to code.  Just test to see whether a pawn is within the observation radius when the round lands, and then auto-reduce the miss radius by some fraction.  Any strike which is not observed causes the miss radius to return to default for that mortar.

[deslona]

I like the idea of mortars or some long range heavy hitting weapon that is expensive to use. However, in Rimworld I find it cumbersome, wasteful - due to inaccuracy AND time. I find a more effective strategy against siege raids and ships is to just send snipers and whittle them down. When the siegers attack pull my forces back into an ambush.

I tried attacking with mortars on a pirate base, once. While the idea sounds cool, I found it also very ineffective, again, snipers and long range weapons fire faster and are more reliable. Against tribal bases it would be more worthwhile - because there are more targets bunched closer together. And you can allocate more people to ambush when they try to stop you.

[Sola]

The resource cost and tech involvement are both too high for a weapon this unreliable.

[Catastrophy]

They are too inaccurate in most situations. Incendiary can be fun, but sometimes rain gets triggered far too early. How about some kind of zeroing in mechanic to make consecutive shots on a static target more precise? Designate prefire target zones?

[Goo Poni]

@Shurp

I think CR has a spotting system in place. I know at least that artillery that have direct sight to a target don't need to be force fired and will engage autonomously. Its implementation of ammo also unifies the mortar types. One mortar. Want to lob HE? Drop HE down the tube. Want to lob EMPs? Drop an EM shell down the tube. Want everything to burn? You know the drill.

[eadras]

stockpiles with oddly arranged roofing to keep them from deteriorating

That's what equipment racks are for

Indeed, I find it baffling that everyone does not place an equipment rack full of shells next to their mortars.  It's probably the best use for equipment racks in the game...