Erekir vanquish rework + misc rebalance

[EggleEgg]

Changes

Vanquish rework: Old vanq is bad, but not terrible, too simple and with it s only real gimmick (crush damage) being useless against units and near unusable agaisnt fortifications, and not only this; but its frags dont actually work properly: the main gun's bullet has pierce, and at the end of the lifetime, it will summon its frags however, if the bullet pierces 2 targets, the bullet will NOT spawn its frags, leading to minimal damage.

• Vanquish now crushes ground units within a small area in front of it (up to 780 damage/s). Armor and bigger units are less affected by it
• Main weapon changed to a railgun, changed visual effects and sfx. Main gun applies negative knockback, pulling enemies closer and synergizing with its abilities. Increased overall dps, specially against structures. Secondaries have shorter range but no longer deal mediocre damage
• New ability, Last Stand: increased stats (speed, rotation speed, weapon rotation speed) the lower it s health becomes, allows vanquish to get closer and benefit from crushing and boost strength is visually displayed with fx
• Fix: frags spawn properly after main bullet pierces
• Increased tank assembler cost and time to produce (cyan 9 -> 12, power 150 -> 180, tungsten wall 10 -> 12, production time 50s -> 70s). Now interchangeable with mech assembler

These changes have been heavely tested and discussed in #erekir-balancing and other servers (such as evict), fitting most requirements from different communities and players and specially from those who disagreed in the poll
Thanks to lixie for railvanq and Leno for railsquish

Scathe: Phase ammo is quite useful, but not for its tanking and support capabilities, but rather it s guaranteed damage and large aoe

• Reduced phase speed significantly (4f -> 2.5f). Buffed shield (11.25-> 15 tiles, 2k -> 3k hp) and increased ammo eff (3 -> 5 ammo/item) to compensate
• Reduced phase overall damage (-25%)
• Increased hitsize for most missiles (6f -> 10f)
• Removed useless -9.0 tiles range for surge. Increased lifespam on frags by 12f for consistency

Anthicus: Duct armor no longer exists for missile units, but this can lead to anthicus being extremely difficult or outright impossible to deal against. Multiple proposals revolve into decreasing its suvivability which is less armor and less health and another idea was to decrease the missile's speed so it has less chances to hit

• health: 2900 -> 2700
• missile speed: 27.75(3.7f) -> 25.12(3.35f) (roughly a 10% decrease)

Anthicus is a multipurpose unit, its missiles give it extra survivability which often block a few shots or delete certain units with a few salvos, also said salvos act as a shield given enough units, so this is often troublesome to deal against, also its siege range allow it to deny a lot of area or put constant pressure with their sheer prescence
Slower missiles should allow certain units to take down these missiles faster, effectively hindering their potential damage, also they would help on increasing the difference between anthicus and quell.
Slower movement speed would hinder the unit's retreating capabilities, forcing players to bring support, should they not have any

Quell: Tecta s size increase in v8 made it no longer able to be picked up by quell (3.75, used to be 2.87), quell s payload is already a rarely used mechanic, removing the few synergies it had isnt good

• Increased payload capacity (3x3 -> 4x4)

Vanquish

Before

2025-06-05_19-17-22.mp4

2025-06-05_19-22-35.mp4

After

2025-09-21.14-52-25.mp4

ezgif-5f1cb8975e4185.mp4

2025-09-2101-06-23-ezgif.com-gif-maker.mp4

2025-09-2101-21-51-ezgif.com-gif-maker.mp4

Against 20 armor:

Scathe

Before

After

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[notsiremk]

issue
mwm said that we haven't really determined how much better will anthicus perform in v8

My gut says Sire overnerfed Anthicus here by forgetting how Luxury Locus will tear it to shreds.

while locus is a soft counter at most, anthicus stays relevant throughout a noticeable part of a playthrough

issue
i brought the suggested numbers mainly to address the issue of anthi deathballs being superior over deathballs of the other t3 unit types, the siege range and the salvo of missiles acts as a excellent meatshield against units with poor anti crowd control, and true crowd control is only achieved at t3 and t4 stages, leading to players using more anthi to deal against anthi, or commit into tectas due to the other units being outright uncapable of enforcing any crowd control measures

reason
i know erekir units are not meant to heavily gravitate towards a specific niche, hence the why of a rounded stats approach between tiers, but anthicus is capable of winning a lot of value compared to precept (very obvious )and obviate (obviate can dive behind defenses, but anthicus can put constant pressure)

reason 2: electric boogaloo
the other reason of the nerf for anthi is because afflict was nerfed as well, so it would be an issue if mass anthi can kill v8 afflicts easily, compared to v7 in where anthis struggle against afflict and need support units (locus or precepts to draw fire)

conclusion
even though anthi in v7 was as strong as ever...
i think we should soften or remove any of the tweaks done to anthi in this PR, and we should stay vigilant on whether it spirals out of control due to afflict being nerfed, and the removal of duct armor(im very grateful for this, scathe shouldn't be stopped by a mere duct), or if it performs as usual to the point that it doesn't really need a nerf

[notsiremk]

the new stat changes look really nice imo, lets see if people eventually agree on said changes, mobility buff being implemented in such way is nice

[Anuken]

Do not change the data types written for status effects! This breaks saves!