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The rules for AoS say:

"Some attacks in‘flict mortal wounds. Do not
make hit, wound or save rolls for a mortal
wound – just allocate the wounds to models
from the target unit as described above. "

I take this to mean that if your shooting or melee attacks inflict mortal wounds, then you don't roll anything, you just point at the enemy's unit and he removes models. Is this true? I assume most rules will say "if a roll to wound is 6, it becomes a mortal wound, etc.", but otherwise, shooting attacks that cause mortal wounds don't roll to hit?

Yes. So, as an example the Hurricanum does a Storm of Shemtek attack - you choose a target unit in range, roll on a table to determine how many mortal wounds you do and that is how many wounds you inflict.

This can happen both ways for both melee and ranged - for example Stormcast retributors will have Lightning Hammers that cause mortal wounds on a to hit of 6+, as well as Starsoul Maces that simply do D3 mortal wounds to a unit in range.

Some things to bear in mind though: some units get saves vs Mortal Wounds (Chaos Warrior units often have this), there are many 'ignore' rolls that protect against mortal wounds, and in many instances mortal wound attacks have low potential wounds. E.g a Hurricanum will kick out (at full wounds) an average of about 8 mortal wounds from shooting, with an absolute max of 18 mortal wounds. A similar points value of Handgunners will average about 13 rend -1 wounds with an absolute max of 30 wounds. Depending on who you are attacking will define the relative value of these attacks. Shooting up a 2+ re-rollable save monster? Mortal wounds time. Shooting up 6+ save ghouls? Handgunners all the way.

Gotcha, thanks. I assume, more often than not, there is a hit roll that a mortal wound follows rather than something having mortal wounds right out of the gate on their profile.

Basically magic and flame attacks do mortal wounds straight up (so, arcane bolt does D3 mortal wounds, warpfire thrower does D3 or D6 mortal wounds). Outside of those many mortal wounds are from a to *** roll.

In many ways mortal wounds (or more damage or whatever) that come off rolls can be more potent than straight mortal wounds. This is because you can overlap various buffs to really pump out damage. For example, Bloodletters natively have 1 attack that on a 6+ does a mortal wound. With enough stacked buffs however they can have 3 attacks, doing mortal wounds on 4+, rerolling 1s.

For an example of how good mortal wounds from attacks can be in game, look up the list that won the Alliance tournament on Sunday. Basically Spider Riders and various overlapping buffs to smash out mortal wounds in close combat.

 puma713 wrote:
Gotcha, thanks. I assume, more often than not, there is a hit roll that a mortal wound follows rather than something having mortal wounds right out of the gate on their profile.

Yes, you're right, most sources of mortal wounds require rolls. These can be casting rolls, to hit rolls, to wound rolls, or other rolls such as the Banshee who rolls two dice and compares the score to the targets bravery.

The best way to think about it is a normal sequence is
1 Roll to Hit/Cast/ability test
2 Roll to Wound
3 Roll to Save
4 Add damage to damage pool
If mortal wounds are created at any point, they skip the rest of the sequence and go straight to (4) - in effect a Mortal Wound passes any rolls it would be required to make. But keep track of MWs separately if the target unit has any post-save defences.