Difference between revisions of "Mortar"

Revision as of 16:46, 7 May 2021

For additional guidance, see Defense structures#Mortars.

The Mortar is a manned stationary siege defense mechanism. It launches mortar shells one at a time at any enemy that enters its 500-tile firing radius, or at a target set by the player. Once an enemy has entered within 30 tiles of the mortar, it will cease fire. The range indicator of mortars is not its actual range, but the size of its blind spot. It cannot fire if covered by a roof. It has a 4-second warmup time, a 28-second cooldown, and a 13-tile forced miss radius. Mortars explode in a 4.9-tile radius when destroyed, dealing 50 damage.

Loading different shells into it will produce different effects. These shells can be manually extracted from the mortar. Mortars can be set to accept different types of shell. Make sure the shells you need are in an "allowed" zone for your mortar-operators; a set of shelves works well to store mortar shells.

Acquisition

To construct a mortar, the Mortars research must be complete and a construction skill of 5 is required. Each mortar requires 150 steel, 6 components and 75 of any metal.

Alternatively the can be claimed and taken from Sieges.

The mortar shells required to use the mortar must also be acquired. See their respective pages for details.

Analysis

Mortars require a pawn to load and fire shells. Their skills have no effect on accuracy, however pawns incapable of violence will refuse to man them. Unlike drafted colonists, mortar personnel do not relieve their position once the battle is over and must be manually unassigned. There is no way to increase mortar accuracy.

They are too inaccurate to target moving enemies, except when targetting large, dense groups or when using anitgrains. Instead they're better suited against sieging enemies, preparing raiders, and mech clusters .

Enemy sieges typically spawn with 2 mortars, that will be constructed by the enemy, and then fired at your base. Shells fired from mortars will break through constructed roofing but not through mountains (or any tile underneath one). Following a siege, it is possible to loot mortars from siege attacks, so long as the enemy builders complete construction, by reinstalling them in your base. Pawns assigned to construction will haul them to their new location.

When they explode, they sizzle for 240 ticks (4 secs) and explode with a radius of 4.9 cells.

When hit by an EMP from an source, they are prevented from firing and the reload countdown is paused for the duration of the stun. Mortars do not 'adapt' to EMP. When the health of the Mortar is low (25% will cause it, but the exact range is currently unknown), getting hit by an EMP can cause it to explode.

Stats table

Mortar	Beauty	Work to Build	HP	Flammability	Market Value
Material	Beauty	Work to Build	HP	Flammability	Market Value
Bioferrite	-20	005,000 ticks (1.39 mins)	360	52.5%	845
Gold	0	001,800 ticks (30 secs)	108	28%	5,800
Plasteel	-20	004,400 ticks (1.22 mins)	504	0%	1,260
Silver	-14	002,000 ticks (33.33 secs)	126	28%	1,300
Steel	-20	002,000 ticks (33.33 secs)	180	28%	895
Uranium	-20	003,800 ticks (1.06 mins)	450	0%	1,105

Image Gallery

Plan grid: Mortar sits between 4 tiles
Manning a mortar
Setting a forced target

Version history

0.5.492 - Added as the Incendiary Mortar and Explosive Mortar
0.6.532 - EMP mortar added.
0.9.722 - Now requires shells to fire.
Beta 18 - the three types of mortars (Incendiary, EMP and explosive) were replaced with a single type, which fires different types of shells that achieve the same effect. In addition, two new shells are added, the firefoam shell and the antigrain warhead.
1.1.2618 - the cost was increased from 100 steel, 50 materials and 4 components.

Sprite of the EMP mortar before merge

Architect

Security: Barricade • Sandbags • Spike trap
(research): Autocannon turret • Foam turret • Mini-turret • Rocketswarm launcher • Uranium slug turret • Mortar
IEDs: IED trap • IED incendiary trap • IED EMP trap • IED firefoam trap • IED smoke trap • IED antigrain warhead trap • IED tox trap • IED deadlife trap
Related: Antigrain warhead • EMP shell • Firefoam shell • High-explosive shell • Incendiary shell • Smoke shell • Tox shell • Deadlife shell

@@ Line 48: / Line 48: @@
 Mortars require a pawn to load and fire shells. Their [[skills]] have no effect on accuracy, however pawns incapable of violence will refuse to man them. Unlike drafted colonists, mortar personnel do not relieve their position once the battle is over and must be manually unassigned. There is no way to increase mortar accuracy.
-They are too inaccurate to target moving enemies. They can be used to shell sieging enemies, preparing raiders, and mech clusters{{RoyaltyIcon}}.
+They are too inaccurate to target moving enemies, except when targetting large, dense groups or when using anitgrains. Instead they're better suited against sieging enemies, preparing raiders, and mech clusters {{RoyaltyIcon}}.
 Enemy [[Events#Sieges|sieges]] typically spawn with 2 mortars, that will be constructed by the enemy, and then fired at your base. Shells fired from mortars will break through constructed roofing but not through mountains (or any tile underneath one). Following a siege, it is possible to loot mortars from siege attacks, so long as the enemy builders complete construction, by reinstalling them in your base. Pawns assigned to construction will haul them to their new location.