Centipede gunner

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.

Analysis

As an ally

In general, centipedes are the tanks of the mechanitor's arsenal - slow, but incredibly bulky. This is due to 2 key factors:

High raw bulk. Centipedes have good armor, but a massive health scale of 4.32. Centipedes have much higher bulk than 4 bandwidth of any lighter mech combined.
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.

And 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 largely intact. While war queens may be better in the tank role, centipedes have "regular" armament. See the Comparisons section for more detail.

Centipede gunners are effectively an incredibly tanky pawn with a minigun. They 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 a crowd of raiders without worry for accuracy. In those cases, gunners add more firepower at little worry. The only disadvantage is that mechanoids can't wield higher quality weapons. If you find value in miniguns, you'll find value with a centipede gunner.

Firepower

In terms of raw firepower, centipede gunners are superior to lancers and tessrons per bandwidth, as well as support-class mechs like pikemen and centurions. A centipede is weaker against single targets than 4 militors, but militors have a tiny 12-tile range. And miniguns become incredibly good when firing at a crowd, as missed shots can hit other nearby enemies.

In return, the minigun is unwieldy. With a long firing cycle, it is less flexible. And because centipedes are slow, they aren't as great for repelling breachers and the like. 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. For the role of "pure" tank, the war queen has more health and health per bandwidth. This is further bolstered by its war urchins, which can act as valuable distractions. If a doomsday rocket launcher is aimed at a war urchin, then it's little lost.

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. Centipede gunners wield a minigun, so have none of the complications of either mech commander. The minigun itself can be valuable firepower, as mentioned in the Analysis section. A possible niche is to use 1 war queen as a distraction, then have a squad of centipedes for the dual purpose of damage dealers and emergency tanks.

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.

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

Centipede gunner

Contents

Summary

Combat

As an ally

Analysis

As an ally

Comparisons - as an ally

Compared to other centipedes

Compared to mech commanders

Version history

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