Artillery is the King of Battle. Even a World War II-era mortar could easily achieve a firing rate of over 20 rounds per minute, effortlessly suppressing the enemy...
In RimWorld, we have the incredibly heavy, yet personally-carried minigun: Cooldown, or rather, reload time: 1.5 seconds.
Also in RimWorld, we have the mortar: Cooldown time: 30 seconds. And it requires a person to stand next to it and cheer it on before it's willing to cool down.
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It's hard to believe that the ghouls from the Anomaly DLC and the vanilla mortar exist in the same game. In short, the mortar's uselessness is arguably among the top contenders in the entire game.
Some might argue about the ten thousand tactical values of the mortar, but I doubt they can explain why a simple weapon made of steel and a barrel needs someone to watch it to cool down.
Combat Extended significantly overhauls the mortar mechanics, but obviously, not everyone plays with CE.
And so, this mod was born:
•[b]Automatic Cooldown While Unmanned (Enabled by default): [/b]
Even though steel is flammable in RimWorld, it probably shouldn't require manual heat dissipation. With this option on, your gunner can finally go for a cup of tea after firing, instead of frantically splashing water on the mortar to cool it down.
•[b]No Aim Time When Targeting the Same Tile (Enabled by default): [/b]
You're just shooting at the [b]same[/b] spot! Now, when a mortar is ordered to fire repeatedly at the same structure or tile, its second and subsequent shots will have no aiming warmup. This allows for much fiercer saturation fire. If the target is changed, or if a mobile pawn is targeted, the mortar will require a normal aiming period.
•[b]Faster Mortar Cooldown (Disabled by default): [/b]
Alright, you think there's no reason for a mortar to take a full 30 seconds to cool down, especially when a skilled crew with a WWII mortar could fire a round every 2 seconds. You can enable this option to double its cooling speed, effectively reducing a vanilla mortar's cooldown to 15 seconds.
It doesn't change the mortar's base stats—it still reads 30 seconds—but the cooldown process is accelerated.
Note: All features are [b]Global[/b]. Any turret that uses the mortar template will benefit from these three options.
Most of the time, enemy siege mortars don't target a fixed position and are never left unmanned, so you only need to consider the accelerated cooldown. For example, mechanoid auto-mortars will become significantly more threatening.
If you are using a difficult mechanoid-enhancing mod that likes to drop 50 auto-mortars on the battlefield, I urge you to think twice.
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Q&A
Q: CE?
A: YES. This mod is specifically patched for CE. If you lock onto a tile, it will function like a real-life mortar—your rate of fire will be almost entirely determined by your reloading speed, nearly doubling your firepower.
Q: Is this mod unbalanced?
A: Strictly speaking, of course it is. But it's more like giving a bionic leg to one of vanilla's cripples, allowing it to finally stand up. From my personal experience, this mod at least made me interested enough to build a proper 8+ mortar battery and spend a few dozen extra high-explosive shells each battle, instead of just building two mortars specifically for firing EMP shells at mechanoids.
Q: Does it impact performance?
A: Unless you've discovered a mortar version of the Philosopher's Stone, turned all your base's walls into mortars, and made them all enter cooldown simultaneously, the performance cost is basically zero.
Q: Can I add it to mid-game?
A: Yes.
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My Other Mods
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