Shockenaugh

Shockenaugh is a Black Penguin Oil commander. She mainly focuses on light heavy weapons (Firebeams and 20mm Cannons).

## Abilities - Passive

Shields absorb energy from laser weapons.

The maximum group size is increased to 4.

Barrels can be built to control disconnected structures and gaining additional storage.

Buzzsaws can be grouped

Batteries cost 30% less metal

Shotguns have an automatic AntiAir option

## Abilities - Active

Enemy turbines and smoke stacks are disabled.

The 20mm Cannon fires a Cannon projectile.

The Firebeam fires a Plasma Laser beam.

## Damage received or dealt required to charge the active ability

### Overview

Shockenaugh's passive abilities focus on granting miscellaneous advantages, like extra group size and barrels, her active focuses on turning light heavy weapons into actual heavy weapons and doing economic damage to their energy. She has the lowest active duration on the game, paired with Armourdillo, at 10 seconds.

Her Energy Shields are changed so that instead of reflecting a beam weapon that strikes it, they will absorb it, depositing the amount of energy equal to weapon's firing cost to Shockenaugh's own energy reserves.

Shockenaugh can group weapons into 4 units (with the exception of a Sniper and an AP Sniper, which as with all commanders except Eagle Eye, cannot be grouped).

Uniquely for Shockenaugh, Buzzsaws can be grouped, stacking with the aforementioned ability into a maximum group size of 4.

Batteries have a reduced metal cost by 30% - down from 150 to 105 - making it easier to utilize a strategy of using the active ability with Firebeams.

Shotguns can be toggled with the right-click context menu to automatically shoot down incoming destructible projectiles, like a Machine Gun or a Flak would.

The active ability will sabotage the opposing team's Wind Turbines, Super Turbines, Smokestacks and Super Smokestacks, as if struck by an EMP, temporarily depriving the opponent of energy production.

The active ability most notably affects the Firebeam and the 20mm Cannon, converting the former to temporarily fire a Plasma Laser shot, while the latter fires a Cannon shell. When this effect is utilized, firing cost of the weapons changes to that of the shot they're converted into - i.e. Firebeam will consume 5000 energy, while the 20mm Cannon will spend 75 metal and 3000 energy to fire.

#### Explosive Barrel

One of the passive abilities grants Shockenaugh access to building a unique device - Explosive Barrel. This device allows maintaining control over a structure disconnected from the Reactor. In essence, it acts like an extra remote reactor, minus the resource income and storage of an actual Reactor, providing a similar function to the mini-reactor placed by Harpoon's control ammo. This allows building resilient remote expansions, which in the absence of barrels would require a structural bridge, vulnerable to Buzzsaw attacks.

Explosive Barrel also provides 100 metal and 3000 energy cap.

Note however that having a piece of structure controlled by an Explosive Barrel will **NOT** prevent defeat if all Reactors on the team are destroyed. If however other players still have at least one Reactor intact, a player who built an Explosive Barrel somewhere can actually keep playing as long as it's not destroyed, with a handicap of not having any resource generation or storage that the Reactor normally provides. Having no Metal Stores and no other Explosive Barrels left renders the player practically unable to continue playing, as the Explosive Barrel only provides a 100 metal and 3000 storage capacity - not enough to build any more Metal Stores or Batteries. A situation where a player has an Explosive Barrel but no Reactor is referred to as "Barrel Zombie".

As can be expected, Explosive Barrels are highly vulnerable to damage, having only 15HP, the lowest of any object in the game, and will explode on being destroyed, damaging everything in the blast radius. Uniquely, should the barrel be damaged without being destroyed, it cannot be repaired - only sold and rebuilt.

### Playstyle

Shockenaugh mainly focuses on using 20mm Cannons or Firebeams as their more expensive counterpart, they build faster, cost less to build, and - in case 20mm Cannons - have a smaller size and do less splash damage on being destroyed.

The aforementioned lighter heavy weapons are cheaper and take less time to build, meaning that they can be deployed sooner in order to later utilize the active ability to deliver the same scale of damage as the more expensive heavy options. Increased group size can make 20mm Cannons work well when paired with a Magnabeam, as the 4 units of 20mm Cannon group-fired together can cause devastating damage when focused on a single point. This is also comes into play when using T3s and Accelerators one can alternate between Cannon and 20mm projectiles.

Typically Firebeams are a preferred option, with their Plasma Laser beam on active, as they're significantly cheaper and faster to deploy, and also reload 10 seconds faster than the Plasma Laser, A group of Firebeams can be also used effectively in order to destroy the opponent's heavier weapons still in construction, taking advantage of the beam's piercing property.

The increased group size also useful for Concentrators, as they are strong enough to one-shot Howitzers behind 1-grid square doors - a weapon with exceptionally high amount of hitpoints - for only 8,000 energy. The active barrage delivers vastly more deadly amount of damage, but costs 20,000 energy. As with Concentrators in general, these effects typically only come into play on immensely oversized maps, such as the High Seas Leviathan, or the popular modded maps, such as Battleships.

Her Turbine/Smokestack sabotage actively hampers energy-hungry strategies, such as heavy use of Plasma Lasers.

Her Barrels act like Cores or Control Ammo, and so allow continuing to play Core gets destroyed, as long as some leftover Metal Stores and Batteries survive the attack, since they don't provide enough resource capacity to rebuild more storage, making the player unable to do anything besides building bracing. As mentioned before, explosive barrels cannot be used to prevent defeat if all reactors on the team are destroyed..

Her laser-absorbing Energy Shields are sometimes more inconvenient than useful, since they don't reflect (eliminating the potential for the opponent dealing friendly fire to their own team), but they give all the energy of the beam that hits them. This means that Plasma Laser strikes Shockenaugh's Energy Shield, it will grant her 5000 energy, so it can be beneficial if the Shockenaugh player takes advantage of the Firebeam active ability. Since the beam is not reflected by the shield, it makes its position less obvious, which can occasionally fool the opponent into thinking that it's not present, if hidden from plain sight by the Background Bracing.

### Counters

Shockenaugh mainly focuses on Firebeams and 20mm Cannons, and both are countered by Sandbags and Energy Shields. The active ability shot may power through sandbags with ease, but only the Cannon round can destroy a shield, and her playstyle is very likely to trigger such a response. Worse yet, such a counter can make charging the ability to begin with a more difficult task. This is even more problematic if tier 1 technology is sold for the purpose of speeding up the rush towards heavy weapons, although this is alleviated by inherent low build cost of the Firebeams and 20mm Cannons, reducing the need for such a move.