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. The range indicator of mortars is not its actual range, but the size of its blind spot.
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. However, pawns incapable of violence will refuse to man 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.
Loading different shells into it will produce different effects
Plan grid: Mortar sits between 4 tiles
Manning a mortar
Setting a forced target
Strategy
Different shells can allow the mortar to serve a variety of functions.
High-explosive shell
The high-explosive shell is the 'regular' kind of shell, that deals 50 damage in a 3.5-tile radius upon exploding.
They are effective against most enemies; siege bases, resting or charging raiders, crashed ships and their mechanoid passengers, the high-explosive shell reliably deals damage against all of them (assuming you can hit). While two mortars are enough against siege bases, around 4 - 8 will be needed for direct attacks on raiders.
Less effective against enemies equipped with shield belts, as they can block mortar hits and those of high qualities can survive a blast and regenerate faster than the mortar fires. Pairing these with other mortars firing EMP rounds can overcome this problem easily.
High-explosive shell
The high-explosive shell is the 'regular' kind of shell, that deals 50 damage in a 3.5-tile radius upon exploding.
They are effective against most enemies; siege bases, resting or charging raiders, crashed ships and their mechanoid passengers, the high-explosive shell reliably deals damage against all of them (assuming you can hit). While two mortars are enough against siege bases, around 4 - 8 will be needed for direct attacks on raiders.
Less effective against enemies equipped with shield belts, as they can block mortar hits and those of high qualities can survive a blast and regenerate faster than the mortar fires. Pairing these with other mortars firing EMP rounds can overcome this problem easily.
Incendiary shell
The incendiary shell deals 10 damage in a 2.9-tile radius (i.e. a 5x5 square) upon exploding, and setting the area on fire.
EMP shell
The EMP shell contains a specialized warhead that deals 360 EMP damage in a 8.5-tile radius upon exploding. EMP does not physically harm enemies, but stuns mechanoids and depletes shield belts.
Version history
In Beta 18 the three types of mortars (Incendiary, EMP and explosive) were replaced with a single type, which fires differnet types of shells that achieve the same effect In addition, two new shells are added, the firefoam shell and the antigrain warhead.
- 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