| Experimental Units | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Direct Fire |     | |||
| Naval |     | |||
| Air |     | |||
| Indirect Fire |    | |||
| Other |    | |||
| Mobile artillery units | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tech 1 Mobile Light Artillery |     | |||
| Tech 3 Mobile Heavy Artillery |     | |||
| Experimental | | |||
 Cybran Experimental Mobile Rapid-Fire Artillery: Scathis | |
 | |
| Build costs |  -5994000 -299700 99900 |
|---|---|
| Max health |  17500 |
| Speed | 1 (Land) |
Veterancy  |
 50 (+10/s) |
| Intel (radius) | Vision: 26 |
Weapon: Proton Artillery Artillery - Projectile |
|
| Damage per second | 1590 |
| Projectile damage | 3000 |
| Damage radius | 7 |
| Energy required | -2000 (-2000/s) |
| Reload time | 1.9 seconds |
| Range (min–max) | 100 – 4000 |
The Cybran Experimental Mobile Rapid-Fire Artillery, nicknamed the Scathis, is a Cybran unit. This is an experimental unit as well as an indirect fire unit.
The Scathis is a bizarrely designed vehicle, essentially a huge, tracked platform carrying six telescopic Proton Artillery barrels in a rotating daisy-wheel arrangement that spins them during the firing process, enabling a very high ROF.
Before patches, while the Scathis also has a decently long range, a stationary T3 heavy artillery installation still possesses nearly twice the range. However, the Scathis makes up for this in mobility, able to tactically destroy key locations. In Forged Alliance, except in the campaign, it was given the same range as the Mavor.
The Scathis isn't designed for firing accurate shots, and most of its shells miss the intended target by a large distance; this means the weapon is better suited towards suppressive fire and area denial than for targeting individual units. Additionally, the Scathis possesses very low damage (when compared to other powerful indirect fire units), making this unit highly ineffective against breaking any shielded defensive line or base. However, the Scathis does have a very high damage radius and, combined with its large firing randomness, can cause low but steady damage across a wide area. The Scathis also has an extremely high firing arc, and its shells can take quite some time to reach their target. As a result, this unit is best suited at destroying small bases or continuously bombarding large bases, a single Scathis can take out a larger un shielded base in minutes due to its rapid fire and 2 or 3 (which can be built quite quickly with a reasonable economy) can cause enough chaos in even a shielded base for its commander to not know what to do while other troops or simple sustained fire takes the base out. if the base has really extensive shielding it can severely hamper reconstruction efforts of larger bases that have been severely attacked or that have lost their shields or simply annoying a large heavy shielded base thus making it really hard if not impossible for its commander to react. Also, it should be effective in destroying large groups of weak units. The Scathis is well armored, but cannot reliably defend itself against any threat and must be defended. The Scathis is also the only mobile experimental that is not submersible, lessening its utility on large water maps. Its only rate of fire cap is the amount of energy you can produce and the rate at which it regenerates, and it is usually a heavy drain on energy to have more than 1 firing at a time.
The Scathis is named after John Comes, better known by his internet alias Scathis, content engineer for both Supreme Commander games, and the original lead designer of Gas Powered Games' Demigod.
The Scathis has a persistent graphics bug wherein after several deployments its shot animation no longer corresponds to the position of its cannons (which can turn upside down but still fire as if they were in the correct position.)
