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The Roadrunner is an attack drone used by the Wings of Coronia with a rather unorthodox way of attacking, but unlike Demolition Trucks it will survive, though temporarily disabled.

Official description[]

Watch out, this is not an ordinary ball. It's the Coronian Roadrunner - a spherical drone set to crush, kill and destroy everything in its path. Its unorthodox design makes it capable of travelling at high speeds, and additionally benefit from the Spinblades scattered on the battlefield. When a Roadrunner chases its target down, it will cause an explosion with tremendous power, heavily damaging every soldier and tank nearby. The explosion will briefly disable the Roadrunner's systems in order to recharge the weapon, making the unit immobile and completely defenseless for a few seconds.[1]

Overview[]

Aggressive and fleeting, Roadrunners are mid-game units that are strong against groups of armoured vehicles. Combined with a Spinblade, Roadrunners can close down targets quickly, causing explosions and heavily damaging enemy vehicles in the process of doing so. Roadrunners are not suicide units and do not take damage when causing the explosions. However, they will be temporarily disabled and defenseless for a short duration. In addition, Roadrunners' fast movement speed allows them to chase and crush most infantry, then run away, as long as they are not disabled.

Roadrunners are non-human drones, and therefore are great counters to mind control units and Desolators. They also can detect and chase down infiltration units.

Roadrunners however have several weaknesses. They cannot attack structures at all. Roadrunners attack at melee range and they are vulnerable to counter attacks when disabled. Poorly handled assaults will only lead to the demolition of Roadrunner squads.

AI behavior[]

Roadrunners controlled by the AI have the following attack patterns:

Medium/Hard[]

  • 1x targeting infantry
    • This task force may be accompanied by 1 additional Roadrunner
  • 2x targeting infantry, accompanied by 3 Draco Tanks
  • 2x targeting vehicles, accompanied by 1 Raccoon
  • 1x guarding Shrike Nests or Railgun Towers
  • 4x targeting anything
    • If available, Chronoboost and Shadow Ring may be applied
    • This task force may be accompanied by 1 additional Roadrunner that will target ore miners

The AI is not programmed to switch between Roadrunner modes.

It is worth noting that all task forces here will only be built when the AI owns a Cyberkernel, which is not its prerequisite building.

Assessment[]

Pros Cons
  • Effective against groups of vehicles and infantry.
  • Very fast, even faster when boosted with Spinblades.
  • Can quickly crush infantry.
  • Several Roadrunners can easily destroy unsuspecting hostile units caught within their blast radius.
  • Quite durable.
  • Can detect disguised enemies.
  • Immune to poison, radiation, hijacking and mind control.
  • Roadrunner is not destroyed in the explosion.
  • Can only attack close range.
  • Cannot affect aircraft and structures.
  • Unit is temporarily disabled after attacking, thus very vulnerable to hostile counter attacks.
  • Vulnerable to anti-armor weapons.

Trivia[]

  • Roadrunner's command sounds are from the move sounds of Scalpel in Tiberian Twilight.
  • In version 3.3.4, there is a missing '%' in the Roadrunner's scalar definition, making it deal 9500% damage against Basic/Animal armor types. This does not affect gameplay however since the Roadrunner one-shots Dogs/Spooks and Engineers regardless.

See also[]

References[]

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