block-lancer

Overview

The Lancer is a medium anti-ground laser turret that charges and fires powerful beams of energy at ground targets. It cannot hit air units and therefore specializes in dealing with clumped or slow-moving ground swarms. The weapon fires high-damage, high-pierce shots: each beam deals 140 damage, has 4× pierce (laser-type), and suffers a -75% building damage penalty (effective building damage 35). The turret also has a pronounced vulnerability: it takes ×4 additional damage from armor (highest armour weakness among turrets), making it less effective against heavily armoured T4+ units.

Lancer has a long effective range (around 20–21 blocks after recent changes) and a noticeable charge-up period before firing. Its firing uses power continuously while active, so its apparent "ammo" is power-per-second rather than per-shot; boosting the turret does not change power consumption per shot, because consumption is time-based. Historically, the turret has received several balance changes (range and fire rate adjustments, pierce cap reduction to 4 targets, added titanium in build cost, and the x4 armour weakness).

Practical usage and strategy:

The Lancer excels when enemies are forced to cluster and move predictably. Creating choke points or a 1-block funnel in walls will align enemies and maximize pierce damage. When facing open maps or fast, small units, it may miss more often—Arc or Hail can be preferable in those cases.
Because it consumes a large amount of power while firing (notable increases in power use in past updates), pair Lancers with Batteries or Large Batteries to store power for burst firing. Battery Diodes help prevent a salvo of Lancers from draining your grid during assaults. A single fully charged small battery (with no other loads) can supply about nine shots to an uncooled Lancer; water-cooling and cryofluid cooling increase that endurance (approximately 12 and 16 shots respectively in community tests).
Lancer's high per-shot damage makes it one of the strongest non-thorium turrets by single-shot damage, but its ×4 armour weakness means it struggles against high-armour targets—against heavily armoured T4+ units it's common to prefer thorium-based turrets like Salvo, which has armor-piercing properties.
The Lancer cannot hit air units. Use fast flying units (e.g., a single Flare) to bypass and destroy Lancer positions. Nova-class ground units with high speed can sometimes weave through the Lancer's charge window, though they risk being killed by a single unlucky hit.
Defensive layout matters: place Scatter or other complementary turrets nearby to cover the Lancer's inability to hit air and to handle fast units that reduce beam accuracy. Protect power generation and adjacent batteries; if the Lancer is depowered (and has no batteries nearby), it will stop firing instantly, making it vulnerable.
In some maps or setups, naval units like Minke can outrange and snipe Lancers if the turret is close to water. Long-range fortress options with Multiplicative Reconstructor have also been cited as ways to destroy Lancers from a safe distance.