Fuse

Fuse is a large, close-range turret that fires three short-range piercing blasts in a burst. It functions as a shrapnel/laser-style defensive turret that excels at chopping through grouped ground targets by firing multiple piercing beams in a shotgun-like spread. Fuse appears in the same tech progression as other midgame turrets and is notable for being the only turret that directly accepts titanium as ammo alongside thorium.

Fuse fires three blasts per shot that pierce unlimited targets in a straight line. Each burst consumes a fraction of an ammo unit according to the ammo multiplier, giving it strong ammo efficiency: titanium has a 4× ammo multiplier and thorium a 5× multiplier. Titanium rounds deal 66 damage and grant a +30% fire rate bonus (resulting in a higher shots-per-second), while thorium rounds deal 105 damage with no fire-rate bonus. The turret’s effective shots-per-second is reported at 5.14 (note that the game counts each beam in the burst separately), and because each burst consumes less than one full ammo item the rounds-per-second can be lower than the beams-per-second when considering ammo consumption.

Fuse is highly responsive to boosters and coolant. It receives large fire-rate boosts from boosters such as cryofluid (which is convenient because cryofluid is commonly produced using titanium ammo), dramatically increasing DPS when combined with high-rate ammunition. Blast color changes depending on ammo: titanium produces blue bursts, thorium produces pink bursts. Because the blasts are treated as laser projectiles, they are blocked by Plastanium walls.

Practical usage and interactions:

• Position Fuse where enemy units will be funneled or clustered so its piercing bursts travel through multiple targets. The spread produces a shotgun effect that becomes more effective at shorter ranges.
• Use titanium ammo when you want a cheap, easy-to-produce option and to enable powerful booster combos (cryofluid production commonly uses titanium). Titanium yields high sustained DPS when boosted due to its fire-rate bonus.
• Use thorium ammo for raw single-shot damage and higher unboosted DPS, at the cost of greater production complexity (requires Laser Drill / Disassembler).
• Fuse struggles with range and cannot reliably hit most air units on its own; pairing with an air-control turret such as Parallax mitigates that weakness by pulling flyers into Fuse’s effective range.
• Walls matter: Fuse has above-average health for a turret, but its short range makes the thickness of defensive walls important. Some spider-like enemies that ignore walls (e.g., Spiroct) bypass those defenses.
• Be aware that Plastanium walls will block Fuse’s beams since they are considered laser-type projectiles.
• Ammo economy: because of ammo multipliers, each item feeds multiple bursts; titanium and thorium multipliers make Fuse ammo-efficient compared to single-shot turrets.

Balance and history notes: Fuse replaced graphite ammo with thorium in an earlier update and later gained titanium ammo. Its description and fire-rate have been adjusted through multiple updates; its booster consumption and potency were tuned in later versions.