I would like to be able to aim a mortar at a certain spot, then cancel it whenever I want.
If you want to do that, build drones.
Mortars and blasters can be disabled if you either press A or click "deactivate". I had some of my own ideas about how to make these weapons better at using energy wisely in the "smart mortars" thread.
@moth
What I am saying is I want to be able to choose a location that a mortar fires at.
Why would you want a mortar firing at a spot that does not contain the thickest layer of creeper (as it is right now)? The only thing I sometimes want is the mortar to fire slower, and I achieve this by deactivating it temporarily.
When 2 pools of creeper are in range of your mortar and you want it to fire at just 1 of them (even when it only contains very shallow creeper), then just position your mortar out of range of the second pool. You might however consider to replace this mortar with a blaster, as it will be much more efficient (and will always fire at the closest creeper).
Quote from: UpperKEES on February 23, 2010, 06:59:58 AM
Why would you want a mortar firing at a spot that does not contain the thickest layer of creeper (as it is right now)?
Because the deepest layer in the time of fire is not necessary the deepest in the time of impact, for example.
True, especially when you have 2 mortars firing. Solving this manually is possible however. Just deactivate one of the two mortars for the duration of half the reload time, so the mortars won't fire simultaneously.
This is'nt needed , the mortars are nice as they are .
You have to figure where the best spot to put them ,
and if they do more dmg than some Blasters can do .
Try to change your way to finnishing an map ,
then you might see that blasters might work better than you think ,
( Mortars are very nice for maps that really need it )
Yep. As long as the creeper is only 1 (elevation!) level thick/deep, you'd better use one (or more) blaster(s).
Quote from: UpperKEES on February 23, 2010, 06:59:58 AM
Why would you want a mortar firing at a spot that does not contain the thickest layer of creeper (as it is right now)?
Because sometimes the deepest creeper is a single square one elevation lower than the others and the blast radius makes another location to shoot at destroy more creeper?
Usally the Mortars kills creepers around the point of where they hit ,
so if you are abel to move the Mortar to hit close to and lower point ,
they might work more as you'r thinking .
Remember that many of the maps are made so you cant use Mortars as well as you want them to .
it would make drones totally useless by removing the only real disadvantage mortars have compared to drones
Quote from: mthw2vc on February 25, 2010, 08:05:47 AM
Quote from: UpperKEES on February 23, 2010, 06:59:58 AM
Why would you want a mortar firing at a spot that does not contain the thickest layer of creeper (as it is right now)?
Because sometimes the deepest creeper is a single square one elevation lower than the others and the blast radius makes another location to shoot at destroy more creeper?
Damage will be done to surrounding cells anyway, even when it's not the same elevation level.
Yeah, but who ever said I wanted to neccessarily shoot at the deepest creeper? Maybe a thin platform that I could put the mortar on near it? I want to be able to fire at that. It might make blasters useless, but remember that it takes a 3.4 energy to fire :\
Quote from: UpperKEES on February 25, 2010, 03:54:24 PM
Quote from: mthw2vc on February 25, 2010, 08:05:47 AM
Quote from: UpperKEES on February 23, 2010, 06:59:58 AM
Why would you want a mortar firing at a spot that does not contain the thickest layer of creeper (as it is right now)?
Because sometimes the deepest creeper is a single square one elevation lower than the others and the blast radius makes another location to shoot at destroy more creeper?
Damage will be done to surrounding cells anyway, even when it's not the same elevation level.
That only works DOWNHILL, barring the damage-through-walls effect.
Honestly, just about all I've ever wanted in the way of extra control over mortars is the ability to make them hold their fire until the creep got to a certain thickness. When it repeatedly pummels a pool that's already been reduced to an eighth of a unit in depth, it's just a waste of energy. Turning the mortar on, waiting for it to fire once or twice, and then turning it off again gets tiresome, but that's what you have to do to win when resources are tight.
Yep, that's right. That's why I kinda like the firing speed of a mortar in certain starvation modes.