Scorpion Ballistic Missile Launcher

The Scorpion is the Hammer doctrine's siege piece: a launcher truck and its two ballistic missiles. It throws them eighteen tiles, past the Sovereign and everything else that fires at the ground, one pair every thirty seconds, and each lands with a big blast. It pays for the reach twice. It sees only seven tiles, so it is blind without a Radar Car, a drone or a plane over the target. And its missiles are ordnance, so point defence shoots them down one round a missile: a base with Missile Interrupters is a Scorpion's first target, not its last.

How to use

Park it far back, give it eyes (an Owl Radar Car beside the column, a drone over the enemy base) and aim it at what point defence does not cover: an outlying extractor field, a factory at the edge of the base, a gun line, a fleet in harbour. Against a base with interrupters, bring enough to empty their magazines, or go for the interrupters first with something else. It cannot fire inside six tiles, it has thin plate, and it is slow: keep it behind the army.

It is researched at the War Lab (Ballistic Missiles, Hammer doctrine) and built at the Arsenal, which needs a Radar Station.

Anecdotes

The Scorpion is drawn from the Iskander, the Russian launcher that carries two missiles on one truck and can fire the second within a minute of the first. Its missile flies a low, manoeuvring path rather than a clean arc, which is meant to make it hard to intercept. Every such system trades on the same bargain the game makes: it outranges everything, and it sees nothing by itself.