Iris
The Iris is an area cloaker/jammer walker from the Cloakbot Factory.
| Iris (cloakjammer) | |||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Area Cloaker/Jammer Walker | |||||||||||||||||||||
  | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Stats | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Cost | 600 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Hit Points | 600 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Movement Speed (elmo/s) | 57 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Turn Rate (deg/s) | 415 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Energy (E/s) | -1.5 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Vision Radius (elmo) | 400 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Transportable | Medium | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Abilities | |||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||
| Weapons | |||||||||||||||||||||
| None | |||||||||||||||||||||
Description
The Iris has a jamming device to conceal your units' radar returns. It also has a small area cloaker to hide friendly nearby units from enemy sight. It hides units in a smaller range and uses more energy than its stationary cousin, the Cornea, and is able to transform into a Cornea at no additional cost.
Tactics and Strategy
Having no weapons of its own, the Iris acts as a force multiplier for your other units, cloaking them from enemy view. This makes the Iris especially helpful at dealing with enemy skirmishers (such as Ronins or Fencers), artillery (such as Firewalkers or Merlins), anti-heavy sniper units (such as Phantoms or Lances), and even static defenses (such as Pickets, Stingers, or even Cerberus) which normally won't fire at cloaked targets until they're revealed. As a result, the Iris effectively prevents longer-ranged enemy units from skirmishing any of your slower, shorter-ranged assaults (such as Knights), riots (such as Reavers), and even striders (such as Dantes or even Detriments), allowing them to sneakily close the distance towards the enemy's units before coming under fire, so long as your units remain under the Iris's cloaking field, and so long as they don't shoot or take damage.
Note that the Iris itself is very fragile, and if it is killed, you may find your units in dangerous positions outside the safety of your lines.
In addition to its traditional role, the Iris can also be used to deliver bombs (such as Imps and Snitches) to the heart of enemy unit clusters. When used correctly, this can be a very efficient counter to shield balls.
Remember that the Iris (along with the Aspis) is amphibious, so it can be used to cloak friendly ships, amphbots, hovercraft, Reefs, Shoguns, and even Detriments. Also remember that the Athena can build Irises (along with Aspis), so there's always an opportunity to build them without needing a Cloakbot Factory, even if the battle takes place at sea (though you may need to terraform some dry land in order to build Athenas at sea if your Strider Hub is built far from dry land).
