Flare

The Flare is a cheap, extremely fast flying interceptor unit used primarily for harassment, reconnaissance, light raiding and wireless item transport. It is produced by unit factories and excels at hit-and-run actions: disrupting enemy production, sniping exposed power generators, and delivering volatile payloads to enemy cores or fortified structures. Its combination of very low cost, high speed and modest item capacity makes it ideal for space-constrained strategies or quick surgical strikes rather than prolonged frontline combat.

Mechanically the Flare is very fragile with 70 health, a compact footprint (approximately 1.12×1.12 blocks) and a small item capacity (10 items in modern builds). Its movement speed was standardized to tiles/second in later updates (around 20.25 tiles/s in earlier balance notes). The Flare’s primary armament is a dual-barrel basic bullet weapon that fires bursts: it shoots as two barrels with a 3-shot burst, roughly 2.25 attacks/sec and each bullet deals 9 damage with an effective range of about 9.5 tiles. Later AI changes gave the Flare a circling attack behavior: when it detects a target it will circle and attack, maintaining distance similarly to some other agile flyers.

Use the Flare for harassment and asymmetric effects rather than straight duels. Effective applications documented in play guides and patch notes include:

• Kamikaze-style raids: load Flares en masse with explosive or incendiary items such as Blast Compound, Pyratite, or Spore Pods using a Micro Processor and send them into enemy cores or oil-rich areas; their wreckage and payload detonation cause secondary damage and fires that the bullets alone cannot achieve. This tactic is best against medium-threat bases; highly fortified cores with long-range, high-damage AA can destroy explosive wrecks mid-air.
• Disrupting supply and production: their flying nature allows them to bypass ground congestion and deliver items to blocks that are otherwise hard to service (e.g., Overdrive Dome). A Micro Processor script can bind a Flare, check its inventory, ferry items between a core/container and a target block, and thus implement wireless transport where space is the premium. Throughput falls with distance, so use this when conserving space outweighs raw throughput needs.
• Anti-unit harassment and interceptor roles: the Flare is effective against certain Tier 2 or non‑AA units (e.g., Horizon, Mace, Atrax) using swarms to pick them off once those units are separated from AA support.
• Defensive baiting: Flares commonly target power generators and tend to harass energy infrastructure; placing a powered Combustion Generator in a funnel can attract them into turret fire (note: the generator must be powered to be preferred as a target in recent versions).

Counters and limitations are strong and well-documented:

• A single Scatter turret or a player-controlled ship can reliably shoot down individual Flares. Massive swarms are handled by Metaglass-based turrets due to small area damage and fragmentation.
• The Parallax’s tractor beam can be used to remove lone Flares but at significant power cost.
• Flares have the lowest raw health of all planetary units, making them easy prey to focused AA.

Development and trivia points of interest: Flares were added around Version 6.0 with subsequent changes to speed, item capacity and AI. They were once the only non-missile unit producible by other units. There is a Steam achievement "Vengeance" tied to a Flare destroying an enemy Scatter. In short, the Flare trades survivability for speed and utility; it shines when used en masse for harassment, explosive deliveries, or small‑scale transport rather than as a duel-capable combat unit.