Centipede gunner

Centipede gunner

Heavy combat mechanoids that glide on dozens of tiny legs. Their thick carapace and firepower makes them very effective against bunched-up static defenders. They are somewhat vulnerable to mobile hit-and-run tactics.

Base Stats

Type

Mechanoid

Market Value

1200 

Flammability

0%

Armor

Armor - Sharp

72%

Armor - Blunt

22%

Armor - Heat

200%

Pawn Stats

Move Speed

1.9 c/s

Health Scale

432% HP

Body Size

3

Mass

180 kg

Pack Capacity

105 kg

Carrying Capacity

225 kg

Filth Rate

1

Life Expectancy

2,500 years

Comfortable Temp Range

-100 °C – 250 °C (-148 °F – 482 °F)

Melee Combat

Attack

Head
17 dmg (Blunt)
25 % AP
2.6 second cooldown

Average DPS

4.05

Creation

Crafted At

Required Research

High mechtech

Resources to make

255 + 255 + 8 + 1

Technical

weaponTags

Minigun

Centipede gunners are a variant of centipede that wield a minigun.

Summary

Main article: Centipede

As mechanoids, centipedes are immune to fire, toxicity, and temperature extremes, despite having a Comfortable Temperature. They do not need to eat, rest, and have no mood. They will be stunned by EMP attacks and will "adapt" for 2,200 ticks (36.67 secs), starting from the stun, rendering them immune to further EMP strikes. Centipedes have a Psychic Sensitivity of 75%, reducing the effect of some psycasts.

Combat

Centipede gunners are always equipped with a minigun. They are also able to engage in (less effective) melee combat with colonists.

Melee Attacks	Damage Amount	Cooldown
Blunt	11.7	2.6 sec

Centipedes have a shooting accuracy of 96%, equivalent to a pawn with a Shooting skill of 8. They have a melee hit chance of 62%, equivalent to a pawn with a Melee skill of 4.

As an ally

Centipede gunners are heavy mechanoids; gunners require High Mechtech to be created. They require  255 Steel,  255 Plasteel,  8 Components,  1 High subcore and 4 bandwidth from a mechanitor. They take 1800 ticks to initally craft, and then it must gestate for 6 cycles. Mechanoids can be fully repaired at the cost of power and nothing else. A dead centipede can be resurected for 100 steel and 1 gestation cycle so long as the corpse is extant.

Mechs under player control require power: centipedes use 10% of their power per day while active. If set to dormant self-charging, they instead recharge for +1% power / day, without pollution. They recharge in a large mech recharger (constant 400W), for 50% power/day, creating 20 wastepacks whenever the recharger's waste is filled up. Mechs do not count as a pawn for determining raid points, but still contribute towards wealth.

When considering mechanoids as a whole, centipedes are tanks. Slow

Analysis

As an ally

With a mechanitor controlling them, centipede gunners are effectively an incredibly tanky pawn with a minigun. Like all mechanoids, centipedes are disposable - able to be repaired and resurrected for a rather cheap cost. A centipede placed in the front of your line can take a doomsday rocket launcher that would otherwise kill or dismember multiple colonists, and come out intact.

Centipede gunners can be used alongside regular pawns if you were already using miniguns in the first place. Miniguns are great in a dedicated kill area, mowing down masses of accuracy without worry for accuracy. In those cases, centipede gunners add more firepower at little worry.

In general, centipedes are the tanks of the mechanitor's arsenal. They are slow, but with medium armor and a massive health scale of 4.32 - much higher than 4 bandwidth of any combination of other mechs. Centipedes also have a superior physiology. Most light mechs are bipedal, with 1 torso and 2 legs. Centipedes have 6 body rings, all with a roughly equal chance of being shot. Due to its higher health scale, a single headshot won't kill a centipede like it would a lancer. The main downside of the centipede is material cost. In addition, centipedes are slow, so they aren't as great for repelling breachers and the like.

• Firepower

Firepower per bandwidth is high. However, each of the 3 centipede variants come with an unwieldy weapon. Great when firing at a crowd, but relatively worse against single targets. Even though the single-target DPS remains good - higher than lancers and tesserons - each weapon comes with a high warmup/cooldown cycle. This makes the centipede less flexible. Centipedes are also poor at DPS / material cost when bandwidth can be ignored.

Comparisons - as an ally

Compared to other centipedes

Compared to centipede blasters, centipede gunners cost 100 plasteel less and are unlocked at High mechtech rather than Ultra mechtech. The minigun has 66.6% the damage per shot, but has a firing cycle 154.7% faster, and fires 1 more shot per cycle. The heavy charge blaster has a shorter warmup than the minigun, but a much longer cooldown. In addition, the blaster is slightly more accurate and has +7% AP, but 4 tiles less range.

This results in the gunner having more sustained DPS than the blaster, while the blaster has a faster time to kill. In many killbox setups, time to kill can be very important. If all your colonists, armed with charge rifles, are killing a pawn within the charge rifle's 60 ticks (1 sec) warmup time, then the centipede should only shoot if an enemy gets lucky and survives all your colonist's attacks. In this case, centipede blasters will be the preferred option, due to the lowered warm up and higher per-shot damage. In contrast, the gunner's higher average DPS is good if it is constantly firing, such as in the aforementioned minigun kill setups.

Compared to mech commanders

Compared to mechanoid commanders, centipedes have less health (77% the health as the war queen) and very slightly less armor - −3% Sharp/Blunt armor. In turn, centipedes cost less and take up 1 less bandwidth.

The main advantage of centipedes are that they are cheaper, and that they have "regular" firearms. A diabolus' hellsphere cannon may destroy parts of your killbox. A war queen's minions can end up being shot by friendly fire. War urchins can be an effective bait for explosives and the like, but each individual urchin is frail. Centipede gunners wield a minigun, so have none of the complications of either mech commander.

Version history

• 1.4.3523 - The base centipede, which could wield a charge blaster or inferno cannon, was split into blaster, burner, and gunner.
• Biotech DLC - Introduced ability to create and control centipedes.

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Mechanoids

Mechanoids | Core

Centipede (Blaster, Burner, Gunner) • Lancer • Pikeman • Scyther • Termite

Combat

Centurion • Legionary • Militor • Scorcher • Tesseron

Command

Apocriton • Diabolus • War queen (War urchin )

Labor

Agrihand • Cleansweeper • Constructoid • Fabricor • Lifter • Paramedic • Tunneler

Cluster | Buildings

Condition causer • Count-down activator • Mech assembler • Mech capsule • Mech drop beacon • Mech high-shield • Mech low-shield • Mech node • Proximity activator • Unstable power cell

Turrets

Auto charge turret • Auto inferno turret • Auto mortar • Mini-slugger turret

Creation | Pawn

Mechanitor

Buildings

Mech gestator • Large mech gestator • Mechband antenna • Mechband dish