Vanquish

Vanquish is a late-game heavy tank-class enemy unit that appears on open maps such as Crossroads and Karst. It fires large piercing projectiles that split into multiple fragments, combines very high raw durability with heavy armor and a devastating "crush" melee effect against blocks, and is less affected by harmful terrain and liquid drag than many other units. Vanquish is resistant to environmental damage: it is immune to the Burning and Melting status effects and has an increased drown time that scales with its hit size.

Vanquish’s main armament fires slowly but hard: the primary gun fires at 0.85/sec, dealing 142.5 direct damage with a large area splash (~50 area damage around 2.5 tiles), two layers of pierce, and produces 5 frag bullets on impact (each frag deals 35 damage with ~20 area damage). Two smaller point weapons provide additional suppressive fire. The unit also deals sustained crush damage when it contacts structures: 780 damage/sec (described as 6.5 per tick) and deals 5× damage versus walls, with its crush reach extending slightly past its hitbox. Maximum effective projectile range is the sum of the primary and frags (roughly 31 tiles).

Because Vanquish combines heavy armor with massive health, many low-tier rapid-fire units are ineffective: its high armor (notably a 20 armor value on tank line examples) nearly nullifies many small projectiles, and those attackers risk being destroyed by the tank’s main gun if they close. Vanquish shares the tank line’s tradeoffs: cheap relative cost and high bulk, but limited mobility. Use the unit’s Ram stance where available if you want it to path directly through blocks to maximize its crush damage rather than pathing around terrain.

Tactics and interactions:

• Defend chokepoints: forcing Vanquish into narrow passages prevents multiple tanks from engaging at once and allows concentrated high-damage turrets to kill one quickly. Lustres and Smites are especially effective; cooling a Smite with water significantly increases its fire rate and performance against groups of Vanquish.
• Prefer high-damage, low-rate weapons: weapons and units that deal heavy per-shot damage (for example higher-tier artillery or units like Anthicus) outperform rapid low-damage swarms. Anthicus mechs can surround Vanquish to minimize damage taken while their missiles soak hits.
• Use knockback and slowing to mitigate crush: Diffuse turrets’ high knockback and water-cooled turrets can keep Vanquish far enough away to prevent it from crushing walls; three turrets with water cooling are sufficient to keep one from crushing a double-layered large wall in many situations.
• Target the backline optionally: since the Vanquish’s crush damage only affects blocks, you can sometimes ignore it and go straight for high-value backline units with your own tanks or mobile units if the tank’s path is not blocking access.
• Avoid relying on tier 1–2 rapid-fire units: these units deal little effective damage due to Vanquish’s armor and will be vulnerable to its main gun and crush.
• Secondary counters: the Afflict’s primary projectile and units built from Titanium can still deal solid damage if carbide-level weapons are unavailable. Obviate projectiles (which terminate in sparks that ignore armor) also provide an effective counter.
• Tactical note in waves: Vanquish benefits from the same wave-scaling mechanics as other wave units when applied by level design; treat overworld or wave buffs accordingly.

History and technical notes: Vanquish was added in Build 136 and subsequently buffed in later builds (main weapon firing rate and damage were increased in Build 141). Build 152 made its crush damage visible in the database, extended crush reach slightly, added the floor effect multiplier (0.5) so it is less slowed by penalizing terrain, increased drown time, and granted immunity to Burning and Melting. Crush damage is listed as 780/sec and is particularly effective against walls (×5 damage).