Walk towards the light...(zap)...I love it when they do that.
The Apollo is the annexed counterpart to the Thor siege-walker.
One of the most highly guarded secrets found was the existence of the Dominion's Odin Project. With corporate spies connected to practically all the major Terran governments and military facilities, acquiring data on the giant mech was easy for expert hackers. Although incomplete, many R&D divisions went to work reverse engineering the blueprints for their own purposes. After multiple secret simulations and field tests, nearly every major faction that uses Terran robotic support had their own version of the Thor series heavy assault mech.
Dubbed the Apollo from Terran Mythology, these mechs appear less armored and more smoother than their counterparts. This is due to the presence of plasma shielding rather than tons of heavy armor plating for greater speed and maneuverability. Energy channelers based off Soul Hunter lighting guns replace the particle accelerators on each arm for greater power and efficiency. Each arm fires bolts of highly charged plasma with twice the force of an Archon. Small ground and air enemy units are slaughtered by the dozen when facing an Apollo-class mech.
Perhaps the most dangerous part of the Thor's armament are the 250 mm Cannons. When deployed, Thors can lay waste to enemy bases within seconds. To counter this, Apollo's use modified Photon cannons to channel huge amounts of cosmic energy and create a miniature star above them for a set amount of time . The star's stability is further enforced by psionic manipulators in the unit's arms until it achieves a sphere-like shape. This artificial star has twice destructive potential as the most recent versions of the Yamato Gun, but with a longer charge time. Another flaw in this attack is that it takes all power from shields and weaponry to keep the artificial star stable. Within this time limit, enemy units can try to destroy the unit while the mech is charging the attack. To compensate for these problems, the artificial star's gravitational pull attracts all types of ranged attacks into itself. Only heavy melee and kamikaze attackers have a chance to damage an Apollo, while its vulnerable. Even If enemies succeed in destroying the mech, the collected energy will destabilize and explode leaving nothing but a large crater in the area it was gathered. The following explosions also create an EMP shockwave capable of disabling plasma shields of an entire Protoss base. This makes it easier to lay siege to enemies dependent on energy shielding.
Special abilities:
- Prominence - unit loses all shield energy and creates a mini-sun above it with 600 (+200 vs buildings) explosive damage to both ground and air targets. Once Prominence explodes, an EMP shockwave drains all Energy and Plasma Shields in area to zero
Notes[]
Inspirations:
- Megaman: Pharaoh Shot
- Dragon ball Z: Spirit Bomb
- Naruto: Rasengan