Gat Mortar Guide

[BlackenedPies]

Gat

Try to make all the shots hit armor by avoiding shooting near components. Against a pyra this means aiming at the lower section. There are situations to aim for components, but if you're trying to kill then avoid hitting anything except armor. Reload as soon as you break armor. Most ships will rebuild their armor by the time you reload and it's a waste to shoot gat at broken hull. By reloading and holding fire you maximize DPS to armor

Mortar

You should often shoot before their armor breaks. Against low-armor high-hull ships like goldfish, spire, and squid you should prefire early to break armor faster and maximize hull damage (they rebuild quickly). Against squid you can start shooting when the gat starts. Another tactic is to count the number of mortars you need to kill and save that many for the armor break. Default mortar deals 126 dmg so against a pyra you can immediately shoot 7 and keep 5 in reserve for armor break. Each mortar does 27 armor dmg, so 7 shots will break 29% of a pyra's armor.

If the gat won't break armor on the current clip, shoot the mortar until gat reloads, and then reload. If armor doesn't break, reload as soon as the gat reloads because mortar has a one second longer reload (6 seconds). If the gat is nearing the end of the clip, shoot until gat reloads (unless armor breaks). If armor breaks and is rebuilt before finishing the mortar clip, reload if you don't have enough shots to kill or if it'll be 5+ seconds until the next armor break. In most cases you can hold fire instead of reloading if you have half a clip and expect a quick next break.

[Spud Nick]

What about ammo? I hear buff mortar with standard rounds does the most damage. I know that most players tend to use lesmok ammo for the accuracy. Greased and burst ammo is also common.

[BlackenedPies]

Ammo depends on you and the opponent's ships. Buffed greased is the highest dps but is dificult to shoot beyond close range. For a pyra I always bring greased because we're usually close enough and the damage is so fast when armor breaks. Buffed greased will barely one-clip a galleon. Buffed regular will one-clip a galleon with a shot to spare, but the extra damage isn't noteworthy over the extra dps of greased. Regular ammo is plenty to klll, but charged actually has higher dps, so it has a limited mid-range role

Lesmok is great if you're against fast ships like fish or on a ship like junker. When I bring junker with gat mortar right side we have lesmok for the left side mine which has been invaluable countless times on the mortar. It's easy to hit at longer range and guarantees more shots hit. It's also good on spire which lets you engage at longer range with a very potent explosive gun. For pyra you can use it against fish and maybe squid, but it's less useful for pyra brawling. For less experienced crew it's a solid choice but means less prefiring (which you might not want anyways)

I'm not a fan of burst. It gives the mortar a huge burst radius which can help damage components, but it slows down damage too much. I've brought burst mortar on double-mortar builds where the goal is to break guns/engines, but I eventually swtiched to greased because even then it's not quite worth it (one burst one greased is still a nice double mortar combo). You can prefire more because you have a bigger clip, but when you break armor they die 15% slower which is significant. It's not useless but the main goal of mortar is max damage in minimum time which burst can't do. If you already have burst there are situations where you can use it like against a junker, but ideally choose a higher damage option