EMP Warhead

The EMP is the other thing a Nuclear Silo or an armed Barracuda Submarine can put in the shaft. It is the Nuclear Warhead's missile with a pulse where the warhead has a blast: the same launch, the same straight flight at three tiles a second, the same hit points against the same anti-air (a veteran Hawk SAM Launcher or Flak Track, or a SAM Site), and the same alarm for everyone on the map. Where it comes down it kills nothing. Instead every circuit within seven tiles is dead for twelve seconds: every vehicle and ship, every turret, radar, repair tower, factory, extractor and power plant, its own side's included. A stunned thing cannot move, shoot, build, mine or make power, a stunned radar sees no further than a turret, and the orders it is given wait for it to wake. It is still a target the whole time. Aircraft are above the pulse, as they are above the weather, and a wall of Sandbags has nothing in it to stop.

It is half the price of the nuclear warhead and half the wait, and it needs only a Radar Station, so a Barracuda can arm one before a reactor stands. The magazine holds either kind in any mix, and the launch button says which is going.

How to use

An EMP is a strike you follow up. Twelve seconds over a base is a turret line that does not shoot, a power grid that browns out and a radar that goes blind at once: the column that was waiting at the edge of the range drives in over the bags and past the guns before any of it comes back. Over an army it is the fight without their guns, and every second of it counts down on the card of anything you select. Land it where the guns are, not where the factories are, and have the army already moving when it comes down; nothing about the pulse is worth anything once it wears off. Aircraft are the answer on the other side: a wing over a stunned base is untouched, and the twelve seconds are its too. Your own units under the pulse stop as well, so the assault waits outside the ring until it lands.