Horizon Artillery Tank

FM-042c Horizon Light Artillery Vehicle
A pair of Horizon Artillery Tanks
Faction	Allied Nations
Unit Type	Light Tank
Designation	Anti Ground
Tier	2
Production Building	Armour Facility
Secondary Ability	Chronorift Shell File:AbilityAlliedHorizon.png Freezes target for a short time
Cost	$1500
Production Time	0:12
Heroic Upgrade	Spacewarp Shells • Shells follow targets
Dev. Status	In game

Country of Origin	France
Produced by	Renault Autoworks, Lille
Key Features	» Low-velocity 30mm gun  » Optical rangefinders  » Mechanical autoloader  » Pre-written range chart  » Built-in ashtray

"Bring the steel rain!"

- Horizon Operator

Tactical Analysis

• Rain of Death: Providing fire support for other Allied vehicles is the role of the Horizon, a light artillery piece armed with a rapid fire 30mm gun that can quickly wreck other artillery pieces and light vehicles too stupid to get out of the way, and fire on the move to boot. It is an excellent skirmishing vehicle, able to fire off a few shots and quickly move out of the way while reloading.

• Stop right there!: The Horizon can also use specialized Chronorift shells to temporarily desync a target, disabling it to allow friendly units to pass or escape.

• A mere fender bender: The Horizon's utility is considerably lessened when facing heavily armoured vehicles, which can easily shrug off the Horizon's bombardment, as well as faster vehicles, which can dodge the Horizon's fire. The Horizon is also vulnerable to aircraft, which can chase it down and destroy it without too much difficulty.

• Dodge this if you can!: New spacewarp shells can alter their trajectory midflight, allowing them to chase down moving targets and eliminating one of the Horizon's weaknesses, though the expense of such shells means they are issued sparingly.

Operational History

The Horizon Artillery Tank is a light ranged vehicle created to complement the Guardian and Icarus tanks in ground vehicle warfare. It is capable of carrying its own ammunition while keeping even the quick pace of the Guardian tank, has an impressive rate of fire and the range of its main cannon outdistances even some other artillery units already in use. However, both of these advantages arise from the incredibly small size and hitting power of the Horizon's shells.

The damage it does to buildings is almost negligible, and even its effectiveness against tanks is laughable; for this reason, the Horizon was not put into use immediately after development was complete. An artillery unit that doesn't hurt tanks is of no use against the mighty Soviet war machine. Needless to say, the arrival of the Empire of the Rising Sun, with their legions of versatile yet light vehicles, earned the Horizon a second chance.

If necessary, the Horizon can occasionally fire a special Chronorift Shell that, like the Chrono Rift protocol, temporarily removes the target from the battlefield so it cannot hit or be hit by anything. The blast radius of the Chronoshell is somewhat lacking, but a single well-aimed shot could stall those Apocalypse tanks enough to bring in the heavy support. The Chronorift shell is also effective against buildings, so if an Athena Cannon is not available to hit the defences, a few Horizons will buy the rest of the army a few seconds to speed through the breach.

A strange space-folding device has recently been tested in Horizons, causing shells to follow bizarre irregular paths to their target, artificially increasing the distance they fall for additional damage, and even allowing a shell to hit the target multiple times! The workings of this device is a carefully kept secret, limiting its deployment to prevent it from falling into enemy hands.

Just the Stats

Horizon Artillery Tank
Precision Artillery
Cost	1500
Build Time	0:12
Health	175
Speed	70
Armour Type	Light Armour

30mm Automatic Artillery
Dumb-Fire, Move and Fire, Knock-Back, Splash(35), Inaccurate(10), Lock-On (1.5s), Reload(8/1.5s)
Burst
Range	250/500
RPS	2
Damage	45
Suppression	50
DPS	90