The Skorpion (長距離砲兵型, Sukorupion?) is the Long-Range Gunner Type Legion unit. The Skorpion provides artillery fire support from behind the front lines, and as such require spotters to fire accurately. Due to the fact that this unit is not designed to be positioned along the frontline, it has nearly no armor and has extremely poor mobility. The reduction of armor makes it extremely light weighed comparing to other Legions, which allows it to be launched and deployed by the electromagnetic catapult on the Zentaur.
Description[]
The Skorpion adapts a rather simple quadrupedal locomotion system, which makes the unit easier to produce and maintain, but offers exceptionally poor mobility, a flaw that is somewhat negated by the fact that the Skorpion is designed to operate far behind the frontlines and provide long range fire support, shielded from counter-batteries by the Eintagsfliege swarms' concealment and the Stachelschweine's C-RAM capabilities.
The main armament of the Skorpion is a 155 mm howitzer or a multiple launch rocket system. The 155mm howitzer is fed by a magazine inserted vertically on top of the gun, this seems to indicate that their propellent charges and shells are loaded into the breach simultaneously, allowing the Skorpion to reload faster than conventional howitzers as well as utilize a more mechanically simple autoloader. It mainly fires high explosive rounds that damages enemy units with its blast and shrapnel. The shrapnel from the shell is capable of damaging the light armored M1A4 Juggernaut within a 15 m radius. The howizter can also be loaded with incendiary shells, however, these type of shells are rarely used as during most engagements, the Skorpion's targets consist mostly of AFVs rather than personnel or fortifications. The accuracy of the 155mm howitzer is fairly poor, and Skorpion units sometimes need to fire a calibration volley much like WWII-era artillery in order to achieve accuracy on the subsequent volleys. Therefore they often rely on high volume of fire to reliably damage their targets.
The 155mm howitzer is fixed onto the Skorpion's chassis, and thus the machine needs to rotate its entire body in order to aim. The sensor capabilities of the Skorpion is stated to be very low, as they're indirect fire units positioned far away from the frontlines, good sensor capabilities would have been redundant when all they need is to receive targeting feed from Ameise units acting as spotters. However, a laser sight can be installed in order to facilitate direct fire, as seen during the siege of the Revich Observation Base.
The multiple launch rocket system has a large effective damage radius, but it has worse accuracy and less consistent rate of fire compared to the howitzer. Both armaments can be used as indirect fire support from far behind the frontline outside of the enemies' range of attack, but they can also be used as direct fire support against enemy units in situations where heavy armored units are not available. The Skorpion's effective range is roughly 40 km.[1]