Zenith

Zenith is a flying combat unit that launches volleys of homing missiles at enemy targets. It functions as a heavy missile array with high mobility and large item capacity, making it effective for both direct combat and support roles such as delivering explosive payloads. Zenith is commonly used to snipe defenses at mid-tier threats and to overwhelm anti-air when fielded close to the unit cap.

Zenith fires pairs of missile salvos with a firing rhythm of two weapons each shooting at about 1.5 shots per second. Each missile deals 14 direct damage and creates 15 area damage on impact with an approximate splash radius of 3.1 tiles. Missiles have 5° inaccuracy but possess homing behavior that seeks nearby targets. The unit’s missiles can fragment or benefit from different ammo types (for example, metaglass rounds increase splash effects), and coolant like Shallow Water or Pooled Cryofluid can improve frag performance on swarms.

Zenith’s strengths include long-range missile firepower, good speed, and a high item-carry capacity that enables tactics like Blast Compound bombing when combined with Micro Processor automation for equipping units. Its missiles make it effective at dismantling ground defenses below Extreme threat levels and at suppressing enemy anti-air networks when deployed in numbers. Compared to similar long-range missile flyers, the Horizon deals higher single-target damage in some situations because Zenith’s homing missiles can occasionally pick suboptimal targets.

Effective strategies and counters:

• Use metaglass ammo or explosive ammo types to increase effective splash against clustered targets; apply Shallow Water or Pooled Cryofluid coolant to boost fragment hit rate against swarms.
• Zeniths are vulnerable to dedicated anti-air swarms such as Scatters; groups of Scatters are the unit type best positioned to handle Zeniths with little difficulty.
• Higher-tier turret units like Cyclone or large melee swarms like Swarmer (when Plastanium is available) outperform Zeniths in direct engagements; combinations such as Fuse plus Parallax shred Zeniths rapidly.
• Zeniths excel at base-penetration when used to snipe isolated defenses or when used as bomb carriers to deliver Blast Compound into a core.

Notable historical changes include a rename from Revenant to Zenith and several balance adjustments: health was reduced from 1000 to 700, weapon area damage slightly reduced, and range modified across versions (notably a decrease and later a small increase during the 7.0 series). A previous version change translated raw speed units into an explicit tiles/second value. The unit’s description was refined over time to state it “Fires salvos of missiles at enemy targets.” In other media, Zenith appears as a playable character in Animdustry.