Anthicus

Anthicus is a heavy missile mech in Mindustry that launches swarms of short-lived missile units to siege enemy bases and overwhelm defenses. It belongs to the Merui line (units named after beetles) and is one of the few units that attack by firing separate missile units rather than conventional projectiles. Anthicus retains the ability to damage air units (a behavior noted to persist after build 142), making its missiles useful against both ground and airborne targets.

Anthicus’s weapon fires two missile-spawn shots rapidly and imposes a self-slow while firing; its shots have significant inaccuracy and are best used in volume rather than single-precision strikes. The missile units spawned have relatively low health but travel fast and deal large area damage on detonation, allowing Anthicus to punish clustered defenses and to bypass some terrain constraints by sending missiles over obstacles.

Gameplay notes and effective use:

• Use Anthicus as a siege or swarm unit: its strength lies in producing many missiles quickly to saturate defenses. Positioning so missiles approach turrets from shallow angles or multiple sides increases hit chance because the weapon’s spread is wide.
• Complement Anthicus with splash and high-rate damage sources. Turrets or units that can shred many low-health missiles—such as rapid-fire or piercing/splash damage—are strong counters. Listed effective counters include Sublimate with cyanogen, Afflict with frag splitoffs (at high efficiency), Locus, and Tecta.
• Defensive pairing: pairing Anthicus with tanky or area-support units (for example Locus arc or Vanquish as damage sponges) helps it survive while it lays down missile waves. Anthicus can also pair well with Collaris for combined positional sieges: Collaris outranges anti-missile measures while Anthicus tears down bulky defenses like Shockwave Towers.
• Against Anthicus: dispersed, wide-arc anti-missile defenses (Disperse turrets, Ducts to absorb missiles) help, but many anti-missile turrets struggle when faced with a dense swarm. Tungsten Breach placed and watered can be an emergency counter against small groups. Titan projectiles chip the mech but do not stop missile tides; conversely Disperse handles missiles but not the mech itself.
• When defending with Anthicus, missile spam counters slow-firing ships and heavy units such as Precept, Vanquish, and Conquer because those targets cannot return fire effectively. Anthicus also keeps Obviate and similar large-target specialists at bay when used in an army composition.
• Micro and positioning matter: Anthicus slows while firing, making it vulnerable to fast attackers; protect it behind tanks or use it with support that can soak Titan or other heavy shots.

Technical and weapon details reported by sources:

• English documentation lists the weapon as firing 2× at 0.46/sec, with 20° inaccuracy, and notes the weapon inflicts Slow on the user while firing. Each spawned missile unit has 55 health, a speed of 27.75 tiles/sec, a 1.5 second lifespan, and deals 140 area damage over about 3.1 tiles radius.
• A Chinese weapon table gives internal tick-based parameters: reload 130 ticks (≈2.1667 s), projectile life 40 ticks (≈0.6667 s), listed damage 0.75 (weapon bullet value), and 9 fragments; it also records muzzle offset, recoil, spread, and rotation speed values used by the weapon’s animation and behavior.

Anthicus is named after the Anthicus genus of beetles and is one of the handful of units (alongside Quell and Disrupt) that launch missile units as their attack. Use it as a center of missile-based tactics—spam, positional flanking, and pairing with survivability-support units maximize its value, while rapid-fire and area-effect counters remain the primary answers.