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No warning shots!
—A Tarchia Cannon on the offensive

The Tarchia Cannon is an artillery vehicle used by the Wings of Coronia, which holds the distinction as one of two amphibious artillery vehicles (alongside the PsiCorps Magnetron).

Official description[]

Whenever an attack from the sky is impossible or difficult to execute, the Wings of Coronia deploy their reliable Tarchia Cannons on the battlefield. These bulky artillery units can float above all types of terrain and water areas. While on its own the engine that makes them hover can't achieve high speeds, the Tarchia is another one of units, which can use the Spinblade to their advantage.

After marking its target, the Tarchia will fire its long-range plasma cannon, which will pulverize most enemy defenses and structures hidden behind them, making this particular unit an ideal siege machine. The impact of the explosion is enough to demolish enemy units as well. Be advised though, as this vehicle cannot fire on the move, and will have to recalibrate its cannon whenever it changes its position.[1]

Overview[]

Tarchia Cannon is a rare Tier 3 land vehicle used by the Wings of Coronia to serve as an alternate siege unit. Its attack mechanism is locking the target building for a period of time and then launching three plasma cannons. The main feature of Tarchia Cannon is amphibious, which is the same as PsiCorps' Magnetron. However, Tarchia Cannon is extremely slow, which makes it necessary to rely on the effect of the Spinblade to get its speed to a normal level to get to the destination. As a complement, Tarchia Cannon's armor is much heavier than its peers.

Despite its all-terrain combat capability and powerful firepower, Tarchi has a drawback that is completely different from other Coronian units: it has almost no flexibility that it is completely impossible to make any defense against the unit that attacks it, so Tarchia needs to be protected by other anti-infantry and anti-armor units. In addition, if Tarchia switches the strike target when the attack on a building is not completed, the length of time it takes to re-lock the new target won't be reduced by the time it takes to lock the previous target.

Weapon stages[]

The Tarchia uses a weapon cycle even though it only has a single offensive weapon. It always starts at the lock-on stage once it switches targets. While there are 3 stages total, only 2 of them are mentioned for simplicity.

  • Stage 1-2: Lasts until 250 frames (16.7 in-game seconds). In other words, this is the lock-on stage where an aiming reticule will be present on the Tarchia's target. For more details, Stage 1 lasts 200 until frames while Stage 2 lasts until 250 frames.
  • Stage 3: Once it has reached 400 frames (3.3 in-game seconds), the cycle will repeat back to Stage 1. At this point, the Tarchia has fired 3 times before returning to lock-on stage.

AI behavior[]

Tarchia Cannons controlled by the AI have the following attack patterns:

All difficulties[]

  • 2x targeting base defenses
    • This task force may be accompanied by 2 additional Tarchias
  • 2x targeting structures, accompanied by 6 Lancers

Medium/Hard[]

  • 2x targeting structures, accompanied by 1 Raccoon
  • 2x targeting structures, accompanied by 4 Syncronins
  • 4x targeting structures
    • If available, Chronoboost and Shadow Ring may be applied on this task force

Appearances[]

These new hover artilleries from KI should be useful for off-shore siege.
—Foehn intel during Operation: The Great Beyond
Unused Tarchia prototype cameo

In the campaign, Tarchia prototypes bear the Allied unit color scheme, are armed with a conventional cannon instead of a plasma cannon (which uses the Grand Cannon's effects but are statistically identical) and move slightly faster (3 instead of 2.5, since Spinblades have not existed yet) than Foehn Tarchias.

Origins[]

  • Tarchia Cannon prototypes appear in The Great Beyond where six of them are sent as reinforcements during the mission if the player uses the Pacific Front arsenal, although they are not yet buildable.
  • In Vanishing Point, several Tarchia prototypes are included in the player's second assault force. The player can also request a one-time reinforcement of Tarchia Cannons later.
  • Several Tarchia prototypes are available to the main defending force in The Remnant, but are not buildable.

Special Ops[]

  • In the Epsilon Special Ops mission Split Seconds, enemy Tarchia prototypes (only identified as Enemy Vehicle) appear in the ranks of the Pacific Front.

Assessment[]

Pros Cons
  • Effective against structures and static defenses.
  • Outranges most enemy defenses.
  • Deals heavy area-of-effect damage to the target location.
  • Amphibious.
  • Quite durable for an artillery unit.
  • Speed can be boosted by Spinblades.
  • Expensive.
  • Weapon has an activation delay as it needs to lock on to the target before firing.
  • Weapon is ineffective against highly mobile units.
  • Exploitable minimum range.
  • Cannot attack air units.
  • Vulnerable to anti-armor and aerial threats.
  • Slow-moving, unless boosted by a Spinblade.
  • EMP sinks them when over water.

Trivia[]

  • Tarchia is a genus of ankylosaurid dinosaurs that lived during the late Cretaceous era in what was now Mongolia. Its name means "brainy one", which refers to the large size of its brain.

See also[]

Other Foehn siege units:

External links[]

References[]

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