Parallax

Parallax is a defensive turret that fires a tractor beam which deals light continuous damage and pulls air units toward the turret. It appears as a specialized anti-air support turret intended to disrupt enemy flight paths and draw flying units into the range of other defenses. Parallax complements long-range and area weapons by repositioning air targets rather than relying on raw burst damage.

Parallax outputs 18 damage per second while its tractor beam applies a pulling force to affected units. The initial design places it as a support piece: its own damage is small and unreliable as the sole anti-air solution, but the pull effect is its primary strength. Parallax cannot affect more than one air unit at a time with its beam.

Parallax was added in an early major update and has received tuning since release. In version 6.0 it was introduced; in version 7.0 its range was increased from 28.75 to 30 blocks and its pull parameters were adjusted by increasing the base force and reducing the scaled force (force 8 → 12, scaledForce 7 → 6).

• Use Parallax alongside high-damage anti-air turrets such as the Fuse or area weapons that can capitalize on clustered targets. Its pull synergizes well with long-range turrets that otherwise struggle to hit distant flyers.
• Avoid relying on many Parallaxes early in the game because each Parallax has significant power consumption and can inadvertently pull air units behind your front lines; a small number is usually sufficient for repositioning threats.
• Parallax’s modest DPS can catch stray weak flyers (for example, Flares) but it is not dependable as a sole damage source against stronger aerial units.
• When attacking a base that uses Parallax, exploit its single-target beam: groups of small flyers can overwhelm a lone Parallax (a cluster of eight Flares will destroy one Parallax), so massed light air units are an effective counter if ground options are unavailable. Pairing Parallax with other defenses makes it harder to counter with simple swarms, so bring heavier anti-air if the turret is supported by Fuse, Scatter, Horizon, or Zenith.

Parallax has a few notable technical points: its beam both damages and exerts pull, and because of the combination of DPS and armor interactions, extremely durable units (for example, an Eclipse) would require an impractically long time to be destroyed by a single Parallax alone. Parallax is also one of the two turrets that cannot be manually controlled by the player; the other uncontrollable turret is Segment.