Mortar
Mortar
"Mortar launcher. Lobs bombs over walls. Very inaccurate but long-ranged."
Base Stats
Building
- Size
- 2
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
- 2,040 ticks (34 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
- 1.18
The mortar is a stationary defense mechanism which, when manned, launches mortar shells at any enemy pawns which enter its firing range. It will target any raiders, mechanoids, and psychotic animals which enter within a 500-tile radius around the mortar. It will not fire at enemies within 30 tiles.
The mortar is a 1-round artillery weapon. It has a 5-second warmup time and 35 second cooldown time. When a mortar is severely damaged, it will explode. Upon impact, it will cause an explosion with a 3.5-tile radius and deal 50 damage.
There is no way to increase mortar accuracy. Reliable shelling is very expensive and usually requires multiple manned mortars. Do not forget to unassign pawns from mortars, or they will become exhausted, starve, and potentially suffer a mental break.
Mortars may also be built in incendiary mortar and EMP mortar varieties. All mortar varieties must be placed in an unroofed area to fire.
In Alpha 17, mortars have been reworked to be more useful than they currently are. Source: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=29468.msg313708;topicseen#msg313708
Strategy
Mortars can be used to attack siege bases, or shell raiders while they are preparing or walking towards your base. While 2 mortars are enough for siege bases, at least 4 will be needed for direct attacks on raiders.
Mortars are not effective against enemies equipped with personal shields, as they usually regenerate faster than the mortars can keep up. Pairing them with EMP mortars 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