Mortar

Mortar

A manned mortar that launches all kinds of shells. While it can inflict devastating damage, the mortar's inherent inaccuracy makes it more useful for attacking large fortifications than groups of enemies in the field.

Base Stats

Type

Building – Security

Mass

30 kg

Beauty

-20

HP

180

Flammability

70%

Path Cost

50 (21%)

Building

Size

2 × 2

Minifiable

True

Placeable

True

Passability

pass through only

Cover Effectiveness

40%

Terrain Affordance

Heavy

Ranged Combat

"Single-shot" is not in the list (Melee, Single-Shot, Single Thrown, Single-Use, Burst) of allowed values for the "Mode" property.

Mode

Single-shot

Warm-Up

240 ticks (4 secs)

Cooldown

1,680 ticks (28 secs)

Range

500 tile(s)

Minimum Range

29.9 tiles

Velocity

41 (m/s)

Burst Count

1 (per burst)

Miss Radius

9 tile(s)

Creation

Required Research

Mortars

Skill Required

Construction 5

Work To Make

2,000 ticks (33.33 secs)

Stuff Tags

Metallic

Resources to make

75 + 150 + 6

Deconstruct yield

37 - 38 + 75 + 3

Destroy yield

18 - 19 + 37 - 38 + 1 - 2

Technical

thingCategories

BuildingsSecurity

For additional guidance, see Defense structures#Mortars.

See also: Weapon Guide#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 firing. 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 9-tile forced miss radius. (The forced miss radius is 13 if the Classic mortars storyteller option is enabled.) 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 shells. 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. As of 1.3 mortars require one reinforced barrel to craft if classic mortars is not enabled.

Alternatively, they 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.

Summary

Mortars require a pawn to load and fire shells. Pawns incapable of violence will refuse to man them. Unlike drafted colonists, mortar personnel do not return to their normal schedule when undrafted and must be manually relieved from the mortar job.

Mortars have a forced miss radius of 9 tiles, i.e., the shell will land somewhere within 9 tiles of the designated tile. This radius is then multiplied the pawn's Mortar Miss Radius Multiplier, which in turn depends on the Shooting skill, and the Manipulation and Sight capacities. For more detail, see the Mortar Miss Radius Multiplier page. This base miss radius is increased to 13 if the Classic Mortars storyteller option is enabled. It is currently unclear if the pawn's radius multiplier applies when Classic Mortars is enabled.^{[Fact Check]}

Firing a shell has a 4 second warmup, and a 28 second cooldown. Note that the cooldown does not tick down while no pawn is manning the turret, even if they are in the process of retrieving another shell.

Every 20 shots, a reinforced barrel is required. This requirement does not exist, and reinforced barrels are removed from the game entirely, if the Classic mortars storyteller option is enabled.

If it is damaged below one third of its hitpoints, or 60 HP, it has a chance^{[What chance?]} to explode. The mortar will spark and emit a hissing sound shortly before exploding 240 ticks (4 secs) later. The explosion deals 50 Bomb damage in a 4.9 tile radius centered around the tile covered by the mortar closest to the interaction spot - that is, the explosion is not centered on the true center of the 2x2 mortar.

Analysis

Mortars are too inaccurate to target moving enemies, except when targetting large, dense groups or when using antigrain shells. Instead, they're better suited against sieging enemies, preparing raiders, and mech clusters . Note that Mech high-shields will block mortar shots and, if present, can render mortars ineffective against clusters, however the use of EMP shells will temporarily disable the shield. The shield will not be down long enough for a the EMP-firing mortar to load a shell and fire again, but a single EMP-firing mortar and several HE-firing mortars can work in tandem to attack the shielded clusters during the vulnerability by firing the EMP slightly in advance of the HE rounds.

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 any source, they are prevented from firing and the reload countdown is paused for the duration of the stun. Mortars do not 'adapt' to EMP. If an EMP attack does more EMP damage to a mortar than its remaining HP, the mortar will explode. For most sources of EMP damage, this is below 50 HP.

Stats table

Mortar	Beauty	Work to Build	HP	Flamma­bility	Market Value
Material
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.
• 1.3.3066 - Mortars now require uncraftable reinforced barrels to build and rearm after every 20 shots. Forced miss radius lowered from 13 to 10. All craftable mortar shells have had their crafting recipes lowered by 10 steel. All 1.3 changes are reversible in the "Classic Mortars" storyteller option.
• 1.3.3067 - Mortars don't drop their barrels when deconstruct if under 50% "fuel" i.e. after 10 shots have been fired with that barrel.

• 

  Sprite of the EMP mortar before merge

• 

  Sprite of the Incendiary mortar before merge

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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