unit-poly

The Poly is a Tier 2 support drone unit designed around automated repair, rebuilding and light ranged harassment. It was introduced as the Phantom Builder Drone and later renamed and reskinned to Poly; its role is to follow player commands, assist in construction, and autonomously repair and rebuild damaged or destroyed structures. Polys appear rarely as enemies in campaign maps (first noted on Naval Fortress) but are primarily used by players to maintain bases and speed up late-game reconstruction tasks.

Polys are built by upgrading a Mono through an Additive Reconstructor and can themselves be upgraded into the Mega. Over several updates they gained a Repair Field ability, a healing missile weapon, and player-commanded actions such as repair, rebuild, assist, and mining. They have moderate speed (measured at 19.5 tiles/sec in later builds) and decent hit points for a T2 unit, but notably have no armor value.

The Poly’s armament consists of a homing healing missile: it fires at about 2 shots per second, each dealing 12 damage and applying 5.5% repair on hit, with an inaccuracy of roughly 15 degrees. Its missile can home and — in some interactions — be reflected by Phase or Shielded Walls; when reflected the healing effect can transfer to the wall, effectively healing it. Unlike Nova- or Mega-class lasers, the Poly’s projectiles are susceptible to such reflections.

In practice the Poly excels when used in groups. Individual abilities are modest, but flocks of Polys rapidly repair and rebuild large areas, shorten the effective build time for advanced blocks (Exponential Reconstructor, Spectre, Impact Reactor), and can keep walls and turrets standing under sustained fire. They are also one of the few T2 units with effective ranged output (the other commonly cited example is the Minke), so they can snipe isolated defenses like Scatters. Because they will not flee while busy repairing, they can become vulnerable to splash or piercing area attacks; using pull-back micro (retreating damaged Polys) helps preserve them in fights. Their healing and self-repairing tendency reduce reliance on Repair Points for sustained base upkeep.

Operational notes and interactions:

• Use multiple Polys to maximize repair throughput and to rebuild large swathes of structures quickly after heavy damage.
• Their missile’s healing component makes them useful for maintaining Phase or Shielded Walls via reflection mechanics, though this relies on projectile behavior and may vary by situation.
• Polys can mine sand when player-controlled if the “Double-tap/click to mine” option is enabled.
• They will flee from enemies in current behavior (introduced in later updates), but earlier incarnations did not; in some special spawn conditions (e.g., Crux team with certain AI settings off) they may behave differently and keep distance while attacking.
• Despite their utility, Polys are fragile when isolated; Scatters and other high-DPS short-range units can dispatch them easily, so protect swarms with area defenses and avoid exposing lone Polys to concentrated fire.
• Command limits and exact ranges have changed across updates (for example range was reduced from 28 to 24 blocks in one update), so precise numeric behavior can depend on the game build.