Nuclear Warhead
A warhead in flight: no gun, no orders, a straight line to the point it was sent to. Anything that shoots at aircraft can shoot it down before it lands.
Stats
- Tier
- Tier 3
- Cost
- 0 metal
- Build time
- 0 s
- Hit points
- 500
- Armor
- Aircraft
- Speed
- 3 tiles/s
- Unit cap
- 0
- Vision
- 0 tiles
- Weapons
- Unarmed
The warhead is not something you build at a factory or give orders to. A Nuclear Silo or an armed Barracuda Submarine fabricates one, you pick the point, and from the moment it leaves the launcher it is an aircraft: 3 tiles a second in a straight line to that point, no turning, no dodging, and it detonates on arrival whatever is standing there — its own side included, in a six-tile blast.
Its hit points are the only defence against it. Flak, SAMs and fighters all acquire it, and take it ahead of anything else in the sky. One AA Turret under the path only scratches it; a row of four along the line, or a pair of SAM Sites, brings it down short of the target, and a shot-down warhead leaves nothing behind but the burst. Point defence — the Missile Interrupter at either tier — never fires at it.
How to use
Read the map before you launch. The flight is a straight line from the launcher, so a silo deep in your base sends the warhead over everything between it and the target; a submarine sends it from a stretch of water nobody fortified. Aim short of the anti-air rather than through it: the blast reaches six tiles, and a warhead that comes down at the edge of a base does more than one shot down over its middle. If you are on the receiving end, every gun that can reach the sky between the enemy's silo and your base is a vote against the strike, and the alarm gives you the whole flight to move the army out from under it.