Stinger

The Stinger is a high-energy laser tower.

Stinger (turretheavylaser)
High-Energy Laser Tower
Stats
Cost	450
Hit Points	2250
Vision Radius (elmo)	730
Weapons
High-Energy Laserbeam Damage 850 Reload Time (s) 4.5 Damage per Second 189 Range (elmo) 620 Burst Time (s) 0.80 Instantly hits

Description

The Stinger is a medium laser turret. Its three rotating laser guns can kill almost any small unit, but its low rate of fire makes it vulnerable to swarms when unassisted.

Tactics and Strategy

Stinger is the turret you build when you want to lock down an area as belonging to you. It has enough range to comfortably zone out most skirmishers, and enough firepower to fry most assault units. While a strong push can overwhelm it, the enemy will need to invest a lot more metal into it than you did into the turret, and the turret is likely to pay for itself in the losses it will cause your opponent.

However, Stinger is vulnerable to artillery. For this reason, building many stingers in close proximity is not advisable, as you're just creating a nest of units that will be easily defeated by even a small artillery group. 2 stingers placed a good distance apart, but still within supporting distance of each other, is a good formation to use if you feel a single one may be overrun. If the enemy is making very heavy use of artillery, you may want to build Gauss turrets instead: no use building a Stinger that will just get blown up by artillery immediately.

Stinger is also vulnerable to groups of light raiders. That isn't a problem as long as your mobile army is nearby, but if you expect a Stinger to be able to hold an area on its own for a while, complement it with 2 lotuses or a Stardust.

As they significantly outrange most other defenses by a good margin, stingers can also be used to push your territory by building them at the edge of the range of enemy turrets. In order for this to work, the enemy must have no mobile units around that could quickly interfere with your plans. Ideally you should use a lot of build power and set the Stinger to high priority build, so that it is finished before the enemy can react. Using this strategy many times in a row is not advised, since you will end up leaving a trail of stingers where a lot of your metal has been invested. If the enemy builds a few artillery units, they can easily start toppling that Stinger trail one by one.

Putting a Stinger in a high location can multiply their usefulness: if they're hard to reach or shot, they become much more dominating over an area. The extra height can also give them an easier time getting LoS to enemies on hilly terrain. However, they have spherical range so a Stinger positioned very high up can have its effective range at ground level reduced.

Using Stinger for defense of your main base and other backline locations is not advisable: apart from not being that effective against raiding forces, its too expensive to spread around like that. When you build a stinger, you want it to start inconveniencing the enemy immediately. Always build them at the frontline, where they will limit your opponent's mobility and attack options.