Lance

The Lance is an anti-heavy artillery hovercraft from the Hovercraft Platform.

Lance (hoverarty)
Anti-Heavy Artillery Hovercraft
Stats
Cost	1100
Hit Points	1000
Mass	323
Movement Speed (elmo/s)	49
Turn Rate (deg/s)	69
Vision Radius (elmo)	660
Sonar (elmo)	660
Transportable	Heavy
Abilities
Can ignore unidentified targets
Weapons
Tachyon Accelerator Damage 3000 Reload Time (s) 23 Damage per Second 130 Range (elmo) 980 Burst Time (s) 1 Instantly hits

Description

The Lance's weapon, nicknamed 'the Blue Laser of Death', has the power and accuracy to skewer most units with a single shot. Use it against high-armor units, but keep it behind the front lines—it has light armor and is too slow to be able to run from danger.

Tactics and Strategy

Since Lances have such a low rate of fire, and very high damage per shot, it is good to set them to hold fire mode (or return fire mode) to conserve their shots for use against enemy Striders and assault units. Setting them to hold fire against unidentified radar targets should help ensure that their shots hit more often (since targeting unidentified radar targets imposes accuracy penalties in general), though when used in conjunction with attack move orders, it might also result in the Lances stopping in front of unidentified targets. It is good to spread out your Lances, as there is a tendency for Lances to sometimes hit each other when moving around and firing.

Lance does not deal all of its damage instantly (it instead does 100 damage 30 times over the course of a second). This means that it cannot pierce through a shield as easily as it might appear, though Lance remains useful to slowly drain enemy shields at a very safe range. On the plus side, this means a Lance's beam can pierce through multiple enemy units, thus reducing its overkill potential when used in a target-rich environment.