Mortar
Mortar
"Mortar launcher. Lobs bombs over walls. Very inaccurate but long-ranged."
Base Stats
Building
- Size
- 2
- Cover Effectiveness
- 40%
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
- Damage
- 50 dmg
- Warm-Up
- 500 ticks (8.33 secs)
- Cooldown
- 1,680 ticks (28 secs)
- Range
- 500 tile(s)
- Minimum Range
- 30 tiles
- Accuracy
- 79% - 42% - 18% - 6%
- Velocity
- 41 (m/s)
- Burst Count
- 1 (per burst)
- Miss Radius
- 16 tile(s)
- Blast Radius
- 3.5
- DPS
- 1.38
The Mortar is a manned stationary siege defense mechanism which launches 1-round artillery mortar shell at any enemy that enters its 500-tile firing radius but it will not fire once the enemies have reached within 30 tiles, or can be manually set a forced target. In Beta 18 the three types of mortars (Incendiary, EMP and explosive) were replaced with a single, loading a different shell into it will produce the same effect as the mortars from previous alphas produced. In addition a new type of shell, the anti grain warhead was added, which is a high tech extremely powerful shell that is only purchasable from traders. It has a 5.8-second warmup time, a 28-second cooldown, and an 11-tile forced miss radius. Mortars explode in a 4.9-tile radius when destroyed and deal 50 damage.
Mortars require a pawn each to load and fire shells. Their skills have no effect on accuracy and either melee or ranged can operate them. Unlike drafted colonists, mortar personal do not relieve their position once the battle is over and must be manually unassigned, or they will become exhausted, starve, and potentially suffer a mental break. There is no way to increase mortar accuracy.
Plan grid: Mortar sits between 4 tiles
Manning a mortar
Setting a forced target
Strategy
Mortars are effective against siege bases, raiders preparing or walking towards your base, or crashed ships and their mechanoid passengers. While 2 mortars are enough for siege bases, at least 4 will be needed for direct attacks on raiders.
Mortars are ineffective against enemies equipped with shield belts, as they are resistant to mortar hits and those of high qualities can regenerate faster than the mortar fires. Pairing these with other mortars firing EMP rounds [ can overcome this problem easily.
- 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