Firefly

The X-89 Firefly is a rocket-powered suicide drone aircraft employed by the Eastasians. Called in by a Command Ability, the Firefly will fly towards its target area at great speed, nosediving into it and detonating a large liquid explosive warhead of hitherto unknown composition, devastating manmade and natural terrain features in a wide radius through the blast wave.

The Firefly was initially designed as a 'true' kamikaze plane, driven by jet turbines. However, spurred by worries about the accuracy of a such an aircraft, dangers posed by anti-aircraft fire to such a high-value target, and the lack of worries about return and safe landing, it was soon fitted with a rocket engine, turning it into a flying bomb or cruise missile. The resulting aircraft is extremely fast but is entirely unarmored, so as to not compromise its main advantage of speed in the light of the large warhead it also has to carry.

Especially causing the warhead to properly detonate proved to be difficult and the engineering to that end provided useful information on the behaviour of missiles.

The Firefly has no sensory equipment, not even simple cameras, which means it does not have a sight range. Once its target coordinates have been put in, it will race blindly towards them and does not require additional navigational aids, relying solely on its altitude and speed and the fact that it was never meant to survive.

Stats

 * Type: Aircraft
 * Class: Kamikaze
 * Lv:
 * HP:
 * SIZ: 1
 * WGT: .5
 * SGT: 0

Equipment

 * Rocket engine
 * Unknown liquid explosive warhead
 * Paper-thin hull

Autocannon
The Firefly is fitted with a nose-mounted autocannon, just like its less „dedicated“ sibling, the X-90 Dragonfly. Although the additional damage from the autocannon shells is negligible, the Firefly will fire at its target or target area with abandon as it descends into its final dive.

Kamikaze
Extremely high AoE damage. Generally most efficient against buildings, though it will kill almost any infantry unit in its blast radius anyway due to their low HP. The effect is much less noticeable versus tanks.

Effect

 * DMG: 600
 * Type: Kamikaze
 * AoE: 4.5-cell radial
 * Fade: 20%

Strategy
The Firefly is extremely fast and is, with a few arguable exceptions, but none so pronounced, the only Eastasian unit capable of a definite counter to enemy defenses. Nothing says „breakthrough“ quite like a 5x5 cell instant obliteration of walls, defensive emplacements, gates, towers and fortifications, in complete defiance of any potential anti-air defense that may have been included in the unfortunate victims. Fact is, the Firefly is much too fast to counter with ground-based anti-aircraft and by the time fighters have scrambled to intrusion, the Firefly has already reached its destination. A very powerful weapon with few drawbacks which can be used to support (or enable) breakthroughs or remove individual buildings.