Badger

The Badger is an artillery minelayer rover from the Rover Assembly.

Badger (veharty)
Artillery Minelayer Rover
Stats
Cost	270
Hit Points	450
Mass	152
Movement Speed (elmo/s)	55
Turn Rate (deg/s)	105
Vision Radius (elmo)	660
Transportable	Light
Weapons
Light Mine Artillery Damage 20 Reload Time (s) 5.6 Damage per Second 4 Shield Damage 190 Range (elmo) 750 Area of Effect (elmo) 48 Projectile Speed (elmo/s) 500 Spawns Unit Claw Spawn Life (s) 60 High trajectory

Description

The Badger lays mines—which are fairly effective, but have a limited lifespan—from a distance (rather haphazardly). The Badger outranges most defenses comfortably, but is lightly armored and cannot flee easily, so keep it screened with friendly units, possibly assisted by its own mines.

Tactics and Strategy

The Badger is generally too weak and inaccurate to effectively counter more robust enemy defenses like Stardust or Stingers (which would be better countered with Impalers). However, the Badger is useful in an area denial role (similar to the Firewalker), where its mines, while not particularly damaging to enemy assault units, can stop enemy raiders, skirmishers, and even cloaked units (like Scythes, Widows, and Ultimatums) dead in their tracks.

The bulk of the damage of Badger is done by the mines it spawns, not its projectile. The Badger projectile does only 20 damage (with a respectable AoE), and spawns a mine that will explode into 5 bomblets inflicting 34 damage each to a single target, for 190 damage total per shot (and very little AoE). The full 190 damage will also be done if the projectile hits a shield directly.

The Badger's mines stay active for one minute, so a single Badger that force-fires on the ground can prepare a minefield consisting of 11 mines in a minute and can maintain it indefinitely as long as it keeps firing.

To quickly order multiple Badgers to create a minefield that stretches from place to place, hold down the Alt key and drag a line from one spot to the other while giving the Badgers a force-fire order.