Mortars - what's everyone's thoughts? Are they useful?

So far I've found that they aren't useful. The 1 hr firing delay really kills the effectiveness of it. Waiting an hour means we have to find it, pay to load it, then forego capturing the bonuses in that vicinity and purposely not capture territories near it to have something worth firing at. Preferably ones directly beside it to have a higher %.

When I've found mortars, it's b/c I've expanded in that direction. Then finding the mortar means I either have to now change my strat just to be able to pay to have a chance to damage a territory an hour into the future.

I tried out a couple just to test them out, but then I just ignored them all and continued on with the level. In general, an hour later after finding the mortars, I either already had that area captured or could have and simply left it behind just so I could mortar it. And of those ones I left behind, most of them missed = wasted time, wasted money (bonus income & mortar load cost).

The load costs are pretty high as well. Not worth the risk of missing imho.

I'm giving mortars a thumbs down for now.

Agreed. After the very first one I found (on the first hardened levels), they usually cost more to load than it's worth- I could spend the same amount and get more mercs than the armies it saves me at that point. I eventually get to more expensive mercs so it wouldn't have been a complete waste, but it definitely requires a particular combination of circumstances to be worth it. There's one 3 spaces away from a 17 billion territory in Hardened Scandanavia that paid off for me (at least for the first shot- I don't remember what the first cost but I'm pretty sure the cost to load the second is higher), but they need to either be much cheaper or get rid of the miss chance to be worthwhile.

You can also spend a bunch of AP in Phase 3 to make them better, but buying Additional Mercenaries seems like it's going to be a better deal for a long time.