Welder

The Welder is an armed construction tank from the Tank Foundry.

Welder (tankcon)
Armed Construction Tank, Builds at 7.5 m/s
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Stats
Cost	200
Hit Points	1800
Movement Speed (elmo/s)	63
Turn Rate (deg/s)	165
Vision Radius (elmo)	300
Transportable	Light
Abilities
Construction Build Power 7.5
Weapons
Mini Laser Damage 9 Reload Time (s) 0.20 Damage per Second 45 Range (elmo) 240 Projectile Speed (elmo/s) 880

Description

Heaviest among the constructors and armed with a small defensive tower, the Welder can defend itself against light enemy attacks. It also boasts above-average building power, but is quiet pricy.

Tactics and Strategy

While seemingly an easy unit to understand, the Welder breaks up some core unit interactions, and can be a pain to deal with.

Welders are sturdy, having health on the level of an Ogre, and while their weaponry does not seem all that harmful, their resilience and possible defence structures around make it hard to utilize raiders against them. In the early game you generally want to avoid confrontation, and divert your raiders to scouting or trying out enemies economy. Of course, if you know what you're doing, you can always swarm the Welder when it's out of position, disable it, or use other classes and options, like outranging it with skirmishers.

The Welder becomes much more of a problem in case of a certain strategy, involving their mono-spam. Having a big health pool and construction powers makes a lot of them into a tough obstacle. Remember, that any battle taken near a swarm of Welders will allow your opponent to immediately turn in all the reclaim [1] and patch their Welders up. They can also utilize defence structures, having the metal income to spare. At a certain critical mass Welders become an extremely high threat, being able to build or heal in seconds. While fighting off such a force, always remember a few things:

• Welder army requires a big energy investment, so it might be a good idea to target enemies economy.
• Tightly packed Welders are easy prey if you manage to disable them. Specifically, Outlaws and Limpets with their slow effect are most effective and easy to use.
• Don't bet on air, as Welders will be fast to put up AA-defences in the hands of an experienced player.
• Move fast. Each lost battle will give a large boost of reclaim to the enemy.