Salamander Thermobaric Mortar

The Salamander is the siege piece for the turtle Tier 3 builds: Bastion Cannons behind Missile Interrupters, where a Tempest's rockets are shot out of the sky. Its round is a shell, so point defence never touches it, and its blast has a 2.25-tile radius and hits everything inside at full value; every emplacement in a turret cluster takes the whole thing. The catch is in the weapon: the blast does not know whose side it is on. The Mammoths escorting it burn if they stand in the footprint.

How to use

Bring it up behind a tank line and shell the cluster, never the line. Its reach is 6.5 tiles: past a Cannon Turret's 6 and an MG Turret's 5, level with a Gatling's 6.5, but under a Bastion's 7.5, the headquarters gun's 7 and a Viper's 7. Basic turrets can be shelled from outside their reach; against upgraded guns, the tanks in front cover the approach. A Salamander that arrives alone loses to a single Bastion. Keep your own armour outside the 2.25-tile blast radius around the target: hold the escort clear, or send the Salamander in on its own once the guns are busy. It cannot hit itself: the minimum range is set so that a round never lands inside its own blast.

Against armies it is a different weapon. Light and medium vehicles in a clump die by the handful, heavy armour shrugs it off, and anything with reach (a Viper, a Thunder) kills it from outside its range. Never send it first.

Anecdotes

The Soviet TOS-1 fires thermobaric rockets from a T-72 hull, and its range is so short, a few kilometres, that the crew's only protection from the guns it is shelling is the tank under them. The troops called it Buratino, the Russian Pinocchio, for the long nose of launch tubes.