Being the mortar gunner aboard a metamidion

[OnlyMan.]

Here are some pro-skills for being an amazing mortar gunner.

1. Don't fire mortar before gat, unless your captain asks you too. The best way to utilize mortar is when hull armor is down.
2.If your captain asks you to fire the mortar with gat, try to aim at guns/engine. These are brought down very quickly by the mortar.
3.The only rounds you should be taking are greased, lesmock or burst. In my opinion, greased is the best, and really the only one you should use aboard a metamidion, however, its all up to your captain. If its not one of those three though, you should really inquire about why that is.
4.Assuming your mortar is on the left, as it should be, bring chem. As a mortarist, you are also in charge of the balloon. Chem is the best way to prevent your balloon from catching on fire, as the time it takes you to empty your mortar magazine, is roughly the same time as your chem lifespan.
5.Lead your shots. Mortar rounds are heavy and slow, so they will drop. Remember to compensate.
6.DON'T WANDER AWAY FROM YOUR MORTAR. When the hull goes down on the enemy ship,you only have a short window to spam your mortars out. Dont be that guy.
7.Keep your gun reloaded at all times. Youre going to need every last one of those mortars. If you kill the enemy before the magazine is depleted, reload anyway. You'll need it.

I hope that this has helped some of you. The gat mortar combination is the backbone of the metamidion. Being a good mortar gunner, will equal mucho wins. Its also a good selling point for anyone that's trying to join a competitive clan! Happy gunning!

[Spud Nick]

For everybody that uses the gat mortar combo I have a secret to tell you. Burst ammo does more damage than greased in the mortar!

[pandatopia]

The mortar should also be used against ships you know one volley of gatling won't strip (esp if you don't have a buffed gat).

Though that is moot, as you should be using buff hammer 100% of the time as a mortar engie on a metamidion.

Also with burst rounds, you generally only need half the clip to down a ship (as long as its not a galleon), so feel free to help disable while the gat is still shooting.

[Dr Pantaleon]

For everybody that uses the gat mortar combo I have a secret to tell you. Burst ammo does more damage than greased in the mortar!

True, greased ammo reduces damage by 20% and also reduces projectile speed by 20%. On the other hand, it takes almost twice as long to empty a clip with burst rounds (8.4 seconds for Burst vs 4.6 seconds for greased)

Burst ammo damage per clip is 1764
Greased ammo damage per clip is 1411

If we include reload time and time needed to empty the clip, we get the following DPS:
Burst: 210
Greased: 316
Of course, the reload time shouldn't play a role as the enemy ship is probably going to be destroyed after one volley

Hull health of all ships for reference:
Galleon: 1400
Goldfish: 1100
Junker: 400
Mobula: 700
Pyramidion: 700
Spire: 750
Squid: 850

What plays a role however is the time it takes to rebuild the armor again, and that's where the burst rounds have a disadvantage.
These are the spanner hits it takes to rebuild the armor on the different ships according to Mattilald Anguisad's rebuilding reference:

Pyra Armor: 9 Buffed Armor: 10
Galleon Armor: 10 Buffed Armor: 12
Junker Armor: 9 Buffed Armor: 11
Squid Armor: 4 Buffed Armor: 5
Goldfish Armor: 6 Buffed Armor: 7
Mobula Armor: 8 Buffed Armor: 10
Spire Armor: 6 Buffed Armor: 7

I think one spanner hit takes one second (not sure though), that means that theoretically the armor of the Squid, Goldfish, Mobula and Spire could be rebuilt before a burst mortar clip could be fully emptied.

Still, I am not entirely sure whether greased or burst are in fact better. Greased has an upper hand in fast, close-range engagements I'd say, but it strongly reduces range and and accuracy due to the slower projectile speed.

[Mezhu]

Explosive does no damage to guns/engines, so mortar is practically useless on armored ships. Lesmok is incredibly bad on it, heavy does a better job at max range shots. Greased has many negative side-effects, burst is relatively more reliable and generally better, but by far the ideal ammo for mortar is default.

[Alistair MacBain]

What pantaleon said ...
This is the reason why burst is worse in the mortar.
The only viable option for mortas is greased for me.
Lesmok cant instagib the enemy due to the decreased clipsize and burst with its decreased Rate of Fire costs you time.
Greased is the best option.
You still get your instagib on the enemy but you get it much faster. Sure if you miss some shots you wont get the instagib against goldfish or galleon but everything else is easy to kill in one go as long as your captain keeps you close an steady. And thats where the metamidion wants to be. Close enough to the enemy that the mortar can do his job as fast as possible.

[Thomas]

I'd generally recommend greased.

With a metamidion, you're going for the rapid kill, and you don't have to worry about anything but the hull itself.

Using the Wilson's Notes in game and the hull damage modifier for explosive weapons, we can see that:

	Regular	Burst	Greased
Dmg/Shot	126	126	100.8
Clip Size	12	14	14
Shots/s	1.82	1.547	2.912
Total Dmg	1512	1764	1411.2
Dmg/S	229.32	194.92	293.53

(*DPS does not include reload)

So let's say you're taking on another metamidion, both on equally skilled ships, and the only difference is mortar ammo. Both armor's go down at the same time, both mortars start firing at the same time. It's going to take you around 3.6 seconds to finish them with burst rounds, while it only takes about 2.4 to finish them with greased rounds. With regular rounds being in between the two.

When it comes down to killing someone fast, greased is the way to go. There are some exceptions, such as ships with extremely high hp like the galleon, or ships that are more difficult to hit. These generally rely on the skill of the gunners. Lesmok can certainly help with scoring hits on ships like the squid, and burst rounds will let the mortar have more room for error when trying to take down a galleon. Although I'd still recommend greased for ships like the goldfish and squid. Even though they have high hp, they rebuild that armor very quickly, and you want to have a high dps to deal as much damage as you can in that short of time.

----------

And while the mortar doesn't do significant damage against guns, it does have a good chance for causing fires. This fire damage can be significant, although it's unlikely to do any real damage against weapons or engines without using most of the clip.

[Omniraptor]

Armor buff has no effect on rebuild time.

I'd say burst is better than greased for ships with high armor, e.g. junkers and galleons, and if you're cool with prefiring. Otherwise greased. It's all subjective though, the mortar does massive damage (enough to kill most ships) with any ammo.

[Alistair MacBain]

Did i miss the bugfix for increased rebuild due to hull buff? Thaught that was still a thing ...

[Wundsalz]

"Fixed issue with buffing changing rebuild time" - 1.3.6 changelog

[-Mad Maverick-]

also burst mortar does a decent job damaging components enough to slow reload times and firing arcs

[HamsterIV]

I am distrustful of both greased and burst. To me the most important thing about shooting a mortar is maximizing the damage you deal in those few seconds while the enemy hull is down. Since greased lowers the bullet speed you waste a few precious milliseconds watching the bullet cover the distance between you gun and the enemy ship. This time is doubled if you are the type to fire a "test round" to validate your trajectory will hit the hull before dumping the clip. Burst on the other hand slows down your rate of fire tothe point that it does less DPS than vanilla over a shot period of time (like the time it takes two engineers to fix a goldfish's hull).

For my money lesmok is the way to go. It gets the mortar shell on target quickly and accurately and with a refire/dammage rate at least equivalent to Vanilla. I fully admit greased will outperform it at point blank range. However if I am at a range where I am guaranteed a hit, I swap back to vanilla rounds and get a few extra shots per clip.

[GeoRmr]

Explosive does no damage to guns/engines, so mortar is practically useless on armored ships. Lesmok is incredibly bad on it, heavy does a better job at max range shots. Greased has many negative side-effects, burst is relatively more reliable and generally better, but by far the ideal ammo for mortar is default.

Explosive damage has a chance of adding fire stacks.

[Alistair MacBain]

Lesmok isnt viable atm.
With the extreme decrease in clip size you cant kill the enemy in one clip. Lesmok is currently just not viable for the mortar.

[Sammy B. T.]

My team already had the mortar with burst because we were flying junker and the two top deck guns were mortar/Artemis. Knowing burst was a good ammo for the mortar we just never analyzed mortar ammo choices. Then suddenly everyone was bringing blenders and we realized that while burst helps with component break, against blenders you have to maximize the damage as your window is so small. We kept bringing burst as it was indispensable on the Artemis, but we just left vanilla in the mortar.

My takeaway, it's situational regarding whether you're fighting a dps build or a disable build.