UEF T2 Heavy Tank

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Tech 2 Heavy Tank
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UEF T2 Heavy Tank:  Pillar
Heavy tank. Equipped with reinforced armor and dual cannons.[ e ]
Build costs	-990  -198 880
Max health	1200
Speed	3.3 (Land)
Veterancy	6  (+2/s)
Intel (radius)	Vision: 20
Weapon: Gauss Cannon Direct Fire - Projectile
Damage per second	53
Projectile damage	35
Salvo size	2 Projectiles
Reload time	1.3 seconds
Range	23

The UEF T2 Heavy Tank, nicknamed the Pillar, is the UEF's primary Tech 2 land unit. Sporting a dual-barreled Gauss Cannon, it is a typical direct fire unit. The Pillar is a very sturdy tank with a decent damage radius. It is usually considered the UEF's workhorse unit.

Unit details

The Pillar is a heavy and robust unit, perfect for defense or assault. Its shells travel in an arc that allows it to fire over concrete or minor elevation changes. Because of low mobility, you should always move Pillars in close formation to concentrate their firepower. A mixed group of Pillars and Parashields is an especially dangerous formation. The Pillars are strong enough to act as mobile point defense units, while their low speed and close formation allows the Parashields to perfectly defend them, in one solid wall formation, much like a point defense creep. Any unit coming in range will not only immediately take fire from all pillars in the formation simultaneously, it will also have to break through several close formation shields to inflict any damage at all.

Pillar vs Mongoose

The Mongoose was introduced with the release of Forged Alliance as an alternative to the Pillar. The two UEF units are equally-priced tech 2 direct fire land units, but have a different armament configuration compared to each other. The Mongoose is most suited to long range mobile warfare with burst damage. It boasts more firepower but a slower rate of fire, and has a longer range than the Pillar. By contrast it has less health, as the Pillar has 33% more hit points at 1200, compared to the Mongoose's 900. Therefore, the two units are suited to different situations.

As many battles in competitive Supreme Commander tend to focus around Assassination and map control, mobility and range is highly useful. The Pillar is not as suited to mobile warfare due to its lack of range and mobility, and therefore its usage dropped after the Mongoose's introduction. In other words, when mobile combat is the focus and a full head-on confrontation is rare, the the Pillar's advantage of health is not as useful and its fast rate of fire can even be detrimental. Because of this, the tank is more often used in a defensive role positioned at bases or nearby mass deposits, when facing T1 units or direct confrontation is inevitable, albeit with micromanagement control over time spent in range of enemy Mongeese and long range units.

In short, the Pillar is hard-hitting and tough but short ranged; the Mongoose is lightly armored but has excellent range. The two units can also complement each other nicely. The Mongoose softens up targets at range leaving the Pillar to finish off units. However, this meta is constantly subject to change with patches. In 3603 the Mongoose has only 650 HP whereas the Pillar has 1500 HP so it is a much more balanced choice. This is also true in Steam version 1.6.6. The Mongoose is also slightly faster relative to the Pillar in the standard patched version; this is not the case in the FAF patch.

Vanilla SupCom description

"The heaviest tank in the UEF arsenal, the Pillar features Dual Gauss Cannons which fire High Explosive ordinance. With it's heavy armor, the Pillar has become a staple of UEF armies."

Factional differences

The Cybrans' Rhino has a higher DPS. However, it has an extremely low firing arc, and only 750 hit points, which is slightly less than two-thirds as many as the Pillar.

The Seraphim and Aeon's Tech 2 heavy land units, the Obsidian and the Ilshavoh are higher category units. They cost almost twice as much as the Pillar, but are also twice as effective (double Hp, double DPS), making them similar units, cost wise, but almost four times as efficient in equally numbered fights (e.g. in a 1v1 fight, an Illshavoh will kill a Pillar and have 3/4 of its health remaining) meaning that a number of smaller groups of Pillars will lose to their higher-powered brethren, even if their total mass value is the same, due to them being less concentrated.

While this is true for all fights in Supreme Commander, you must pay special attention when using the Pillar, due to the similarities of physical size between the different units.

Gallery

Two Pillars in combat. The high firing arc can be observed on the back Pillar firing its dual barreled Gauss Cannons. The front Pillar has taken heavy fire from some Mantises.

The UEF Pillar