Makeshift Cannon

Overview

 * The Makeshift Cannon is a conscript-manned tower, that fires rockets at enemies, exploding upon impact.
 * The rockets of the tower have a ~5 chance to critically hit, stunning an enemy for 1 second.
 * The tower itself has a ~10% chance to deactivate for ~1.82 seconds (i.e. skipping three tower shots).
 * Unlocked at rank 21 for players, that have the Ruins of Brightholme DLC.

Notes & tactics

 * Its rockets can miss if the target moves too quickly, changes direction suddenly (e.g. turning, jumping), or dies. This is due to a delay between firing and impact. Because of this, the Range Spire would not only increase its range but also might decrease slightly its accuracy, which is generally not a big deal, especially since this tower benefits greatly from the spire for a bigger reach and therefore more stuns.
 * The "critically hitting" rockets do not deal extra damage, their bonus action is limited to the stunning effect.
 * Both the tower's deactivation and the rocket's empowered critical-stuns are based on a chance. This makes a single Make shift Cannon's performance unpredictable. However, multiple Makeshift Cannons in close proximity have a steadier damage output and stun rate due to the law of large numbers. This doesn't necessarily mean they are more effective than normally, aside from their combined damage, it simply means that they become more predictable and more reliable in general.
 * The explosion size of the rockets increase as the tower is upgraded: 0.17 grid squares at level 1, 0.5 squares at level 2, and 1 whole square at level 3.
 * The possibility of stunning targets makes the Makeshift Cannon not only a damage tower, but also a control tower. This means it can synergize with other damage towers within range, providing additional time to damage enemies for as long as they remain stunned. So placing them together along with other damage towers is ideal, rather than placing them alone.
 * In the terms of enemies, the ones that are best to use these towers against are the single ones with high health, like bosses or mutated ones. Fiskeplaske is the funniest sample where these towers shine arguably the most, although he is invulnerable to their damage. A Super Heavy might be unable to produce any attack for extremely long if he is under fire of multiple Makeshift cannons and it is similar for the Armoured heavies. Ground lumes are trickier than the flying ones, since if the Makeshift cannons are too many, they might easily lead to sight obstructions, which to block their projectiles or those from other projectile-using towers, or to render the player unable to buff them all with a single Range spire. The average & smaller lumes can often feel better with other damage towers or measures, especially if they are too fast.
 * Theoretically a Makeshift Cannon will hold an enemy stunned 6,875% of the time it fires (=11:160 ratio).
 * This would technically mean that even if 14 Makeshift Cannons are buffed by a Range spire and hit a lume all the time, it would still be able to slightly move, although they might disable all of its attacks.
 * This tower shows the only scenario in Sanctum 2, in which a conscript would not enrage any lumes, even bosses.
 * Overcharging a Makeshift cannon gives 110 damage per 100 resources. This is 76,86% of the damage, gained by building level 3 Makeshift cannons.
 * All in all, Makeshift cannons are usually better off being some more in numbers or combined with other damage towers than overcharging a single one. The reason lies mainly in the fact that their best use is as support-oriented towers, that to help with holding the lumes, presumably some key ones of them, which can be achieved by setting their targeting to "Most health" or else, depending on the scenario. Their damage and improvement when upgrading are good, since the levelling up grants them better range and explosion radius, but if there is just one Makeshift cannon or very few, the stun rate would be lower as well. When it comes to damage, they tend to be behind some other damage towers like the ACP, Drone, Anti-air & Gatling so the Makeshift Canonns' best use is for the stunning effect. Balancing between upgrading, numbers and range boost appears one of the best ways to utilize these towers.
 * Like all projectile-using towers, the Makeshift cannons suffer from random sight obstructions and it is good to place them carefully. Also they might produce an obstruction for the projectiles of other towers, e.g. the Focus, so balancing their numbers should be taken into account as well. On the other side, some projectile-towers like Violators, Anti-air & Orbital strike relays wouldn't have much (or any) trouble with these towers around. If a Makeshift Cannon loses sight of its target, it wouldn't fire or would hit the blocking obstacle instead.
 * Projectile-towers are the Scatter lasers & the ones with targeting system.
 * Amp spire correlations
 * A level 1 Amp adds same amount of damage as overcharging a Makeshift cannon to more than 1016 damage and makes for a bigger damage gain if being put before the overcharge.
 * A level 2 Amp adds the same amount of dmg as overcharging a Makeshift cannon to more than 1272 damage and adding such Amp before further overcharging makes for a bigger damage gain.
 * A lvl 3 Amp adds the same amount of dmg as overcharging a Makeshift cannon to above 1719 damage and adding such Amp before further overcharging makes for a bigger damage gain.
 * Overcharging the Amp adds the same dmg as overcharging a Makeshift cannon to above 5500 dmg and from then on, max damage gain can be reached by putting equal amounts of resources between them.
 * These correlations are valid for the damage, reached only via overcharging, without Tinkerer, Engineer, Core-tower synergy or already existing Amp spire. If any of these is in action, it is needed to calculate the damage, gained by pure overcharging (or to remove the buffs) to see the real efficiency stats. These 4 mentioned buffs stack additively with each other.
 * Makeshift cannons find use in all modes, although they most often find good use just as non-mandatory support-oriented towers. in Survival to hold lumes as much as possible - however, they shine in this the most when it comes to single durable lumes such as bosses, since if there are multiple equal lumes, this could linger the relative effectivity and importance of the tower.
 * The attack speed of the tower in-game is converted into shots per second this way: One in-game speed unit is 1/60 shots per second and therefore come the calculation - Makeshift cannons have 99/60 = 1,65 shots per second (= 99 hits per minute = 1 shot per 0,61 sec), which is almost half the fire rate of the level 3 Scatter lasers.