Horizon

Horizon is a ground bomber unit that appears on Serpulo. It drops clusters of bombs on enemy ground targets and is tuned to strike structures and infrastructure rather than air units. The unit uses a twin fixed weapon that only fires while the Horizon is moving; its projectiles are short-lived, low-velocity BombBulletType rounds that deal area damage and carry the Blasted status. Horizons cannot target air and have no item-carrying capacity.

Horizons are relatively durable for their role, with higher health and built-in armor compared to earlier carpet-bomber designs. Their weapon fires as two shots at a combined rate of 2 × 2.5/sec (internal 12-tick reload, shown as 0.2/sec reload per volley) and has 15° inaccuracy, producing bombs that live for 0.5 seconds (30 ticks) and create an area effect of roughly 3.1 tiles with 27 area damage (13.5 damage against force fields). The weapon does not rotate and only triggers while the unit is moving; the unit will automatically begin targeting a ground enemy or block when detected.

Practical usage and interactions:

• Horizons excel at quickly damaging enemy base infrastructure and can reach and threaten Cores or power nodes if left unchecked. They are most effective when enemy defenses lack concentrated short-range anti-ground fire.
• They perform poorly against concentrated Scatter fire. Scatters and small fast units like Poly units counter Horizons reliably; Scatters vaporize them while Polys can attack unharmed and repair or rebuild damage inflicted by Horizons.
• Horizons cannot kamikaze with Blast Compound because they have no item capacity, preventing certain blast-bombing exploits. Their bombs are implemented as slow, short-lived bullets rather than a separate explosive entity.
• Cheap bait blocks such as Pulverizers placed within rings of Scatters are effective at luring and destroying Horizons before they can deal critical damage. Parallax turrets can also be used to pull or redirect their path if they sneak past defenses.
• Horizons remain a cost-effective source of concentrated structure damage until more advanced options are available; they are outclassed by later units such as the Zenith once higher-tier upgrades (e.g., Multiplicative Reconstructor) are researched.

Design notes and history:

• Introduced in version 6.0 based on an earlier Ghoul Bomber design, Horizons received increased health and added armor relative to their predecessor. Over multiple builds their size and range were increased, item capacity was removed (set to 0), and weapon mechanics were refined (including added damage to force fields). They lost omni-movement and now automatically target detected ground enemies/blocks.