RimWorld Science Alpha 17: Mortars — RimWorld Alpha 17 Mortar and Shell SCIENCE!!!

I was linked here with the promise of learning about pawn shooting accuracy either effecting mortar accuracy, or not...no? Did I just miss it somehow?

anyone have a good mod that makes mortars....useable?

Hmm. What about creating one storage zone with comb-like structure of walls and shelfs? I guess shelfs are used preferably and with production set to produce if they are less than 50 you won't risk them on the floor. Losing one shelf is worth of 1000 units of steel and it's expensive already. Basically same design applies to battery rooms.

60 shells to kill a ship... rather send the cook to punch it

It's weirdly satisfying when a mortar gets a direct hit on a target.

If there's plasteel in your stool, i don't think it's a good sign.

I got a raid , called my ally for help , won very easily :3 i have 3 allies thanks to the power of rice

I like maf

Pls save the plasteel stools

A tip for dealing with mech ships, you can completely destroy them instantly with 5(i think) mortar shells(stacks of 1) around the ship and a molotov and even damage or kill the emerging mechs, this is useful if you don't want to risk the shells missing when firing with a mortar or if you don't have one, this way the 5 shells hit and destroy the ship instantly.
And because the mechs don't fully agro unless the ship has less than 50% hp you can place 3 shells so the rest will go into your killbox and you can later go kill the ship.
You can position individual stacks with a bit of stockpile micro and storing and forbidding shells as you produce them.

installs more vanilla turrets
Devastator mortars are built
*launches 20 shells from 4 Mortars.

Sorry what were you saying about accuracy and damage?

if you use fire foam shells against raiders what will happen

I love these videos. You answer every question I have about every video topic I have.

9 centipedes disliked

I wonder how practical Firefoam poppers are when storing explosives. Maybe time for a firefoam popper rimworld science! :)

Can someone tell me how to use bionics on my pets please. I really want to see them in action.

Square numbers with bjorn
2 squared = 4
3 squared = 6
4 squared = 25

Funny to see that A17 mortars came in different variations rather than the shells. I'm glad they changed it, totally unscientific.

4? 6? 25? Mm k once is enough but good tips lol

Hm... grey area has the greatest likelihood of getting hit... huh...

"And by 25 I mean 16" ;D

Really enjoying these science videos Bjorn, having been linked to them from a comment on Quill18's video today. Look forward to checking out your gameplay videos as well. Thanks for what's a not an inconsiderable time and effort to produce.

Interestingly, a stack of mortar shells has the same explosive power regardless of how many shells are in the stack.
One shell does the exact same damage as 25 shells.

If you want to use them as a chain reaction bomb to annihilate a ship or something, place a bunch of explosive IEDs, deliver only the shells to the blueprints, cancel them, and then forbid the shells; you're left with an extremely explosive bunch of stockpiles, with minimum cost.

The same works with chemfuel (which makes firey explosions), but there's no way that I know to get a stack of 1 chemfuel intentionally, so the best you can do is stacks of 25.

Question for RimWorld science: Taming wild animals comes with the risk of them turning into manhunter and attack the taming pawn. Especially on Megasloths/Megatheriums the chance to manhunt is significantly higher than the one of taming. So I tried to incapacitate the Megasloth in order to rescue it leading to a "join the colony" as many escape pod survivors do.

How do handling skill and maybe medical influence of either taming or said practice of shoot-and-rescue?

Super interesting, thanks!

what is the best material to build homes and craft weapons?

The completely random hit chance within an area is the reason I almost never use mortars. It's much faster and reliable to send out a few guys with sniper rifles to trigger an attack and draw them to the defenses. The hit location should really be balanced around the aim point (what's the point of aiming otherwise) and maybe even be dependent on the pawns skill (shooting or maybe manipulation stat).

Are squares inside mountains also part of the random-ness, or is the mortar more accurate near an unmined/roofed mountain (does thin/thick roof matter).
So would a mountain canyon be a good/better mortar killbox?

Suggestion/Idea for future episode; Optimal storage solutions. With flammability, perishable, roof, closeness to crafting and so on.

Love the Science episodes! Some great information is shown here.

Are they evem worth it ?

Great vid, thanks for the upload.Another idea; IED science

Nice info about mortars, they seem to be one of the less-utilized tools in the game. I think it's worth mentioning that even though a mortar can target a moving pawn, it will not lead the shot. Incendiary mortars are more about disrupting enemy formations. That raider with the rocket launcher is a lot less dangerous when he's running around with his head on fire.

awesome science

Hope A18 won't change to much of the info you gathered. There's suppose to be new Mortar Shells coming I believe.

I'd like something on unconventional means of dealing with raids. For example, I like to trap allied visitors in a room with stacks of food and then deconstruct the walls when I'm being attacked so the visitors take the brunt of the battle.

MAKE SURE there is no power wires in the walls where you store your shells

Pawn with pacifist still can't man mortar though :\

Actually, I have a suggestion on Rimworld Science.

Could you explain about how animal release work? Like how much tile search radius for animal to attack the enemy. Or how far away will animal chase enemy if they're fleeing?

Good to know. Great work. :)

Nice thing about mortar is that it's accuracy is not skill dependant, you can man them pawns that suck in ranged combat, injured, etc.

Thanks for the video, Always wondered how the mortars worked