Giga-cannon

The Giga-cannon is a Nod walker in Command & Conquer: Rivals, announced on 11 August 2018 and released with the Rivals pre-alpha patch 13 August 2018.

Background
The Giga-Cannon is the largest and most terrifying result of Nod's research into directed energy weapons and AI systems. Developed as the true successor to Nod's Beam Cannon, the Giga-Cannon's refractive laser is capable of cutting through large enemy formations with ease.

Abilities

 * Beam splits to hit multiple targets after 3 seconds (12 attack rounds).
 * Can attack up to 2 tiles away.
 * Can attack up to 2 tiles away.

Game unit
Giga-cannon is a long range anti-vehicle crawler. At the start of the attack the damage is minimal, but as the beam warms up, the damage output ramps up considerably. At full power it will melt even infantry units without much effort.

After the first three seconds of attack the beam will split from the target to the adjacent friendly units. The split beam does less than half of the damage of the main beam, but it is enough to substantially weaken the advancing units.

Since the wait time until full power takes 6 whole seconds, Giga-cannon benefits a lot form the Fanaticism, which both increases the damage output right away, but also reduces the time to full power down to 3.5 seconds.

Although Giga-cannon can fire without any setup, the initial damage is too low to be a serious threat to any anti-vehicle unit. That and rather fragile build requites the Giga to be escorted by blocking units. One good candidate is Laser squad, which can deter aircraft assault and any ground anti vehicle units sent to destroy the Giga-cannon.

The main threats to the Giga-cannon are anti-vehicle aircraft, especially those with burst damage. Phantom and Stealth tank are well suited cover those threats. Giga also doesn't fare well against Tech units, notably Titan, Juggernaut, Artillery and Rockworm. Basilisk can deal with the heavier ground units.

To deal with a Giga-cannon that is at full power, the commander should move it's units out of Giga's range, give it a second to cool down and then move in to attack with full force.

Changelog

 * 2018-08-15: Introduced to the game.
 * 2018-09-05:
 * Stage 1 & 2 Damage reduced by 20%
 * Stage 1 & 2 Damage vs Infantry reduced by 50%
 * Stage 3 Damage vs Infantry reduced by 50%
 * 2018-12-06: Cost decreased to 80 (was 100)
 * 2019-04-03:
 * Health decreased to 1455 (was 1500)
 * Stage 1 damage increased to vehicles to 45 (was 40)
 * Stage 2 damage increased to vehicles to 90 (was 80)

Trivia

 * Robot that emits electromechanicalsounds. When asked to do impossible things or being attacked, emits lower pitch noises.
 * Known as the "Scoot n Shoot" by the community.