Missile Interrupter

A one-tile launcher that never shoots at units or shells. It watches a 7-tile circle and intercepts the rockets fired by Tempest MLRS and Thunderbolt Strike Jet, plus the guided anti-tank missiles fired by the Viper Tank Destroyer. One round kills one incoming rocket or missile, and each shot leaves the magazine 0.75 seconds short. A nuclear Nuclear Warhead is not its business at all: that flies as an aircraft, and a veteran anti-air unit or a SAM Site brings it down.

How to use

Place it over what the shells land on, not toward where the enemy is. Ordnance is only engaged once it is inside the ring, so a tower beside a factory cluster protects that cluster; a tower on the perimeter watches empty ground while the barrage lands behind it.

The magazine is one Tempest salvo, 8 rockets to 8 rounds, so a barrage is absorbed whole, and it refills in six seconds, faster than a launcher reloads. So one Tempest never lands a rocket on a base this tower stands in, no matter how long it fires. Two launchers throw 16 rockets every eight seconds against a tower that replaces 1.3 rounds a second, and about a third of them get through, starting with the tower itself.

Against a Nuclear Silo it is no help at either tier. Put veteran Flak Tracks and Hawks under the approach instead, or a pair of SAM Sites: the warhead flies a straight line from the silo, and only those along it can shoot one down.

It cannot defend itself. Anything that walks up kills it for free, so keep it behind the gun line, and remember that 8 power on a tower that has nothing to shoot is 8 power the rest of the base does not get.