Water Contaminator Side: Both Type: Vehicle Movement Type: Track Ground Weapon: Contaminator Anti-Air Weapon: None Range: 1 Damage: N/A Hit Points: 166 Sight Range: 9 Movement Speed: Very Slow Cost: 10000 Requirements: Headquarters 3 Advanced Assembly Plant Built At: Assembly Plant

The saying might be, “If you can’t beat them, join them,” but these tanks twist that motto into, “If I can’t have it, then neither can you!”

Note: The Contaminator is not available by default in custom games.

Denying Resources

The Water Contaminator permanently destroys fresh water springs. To order a Water Contaminator to do its job, use the Attack command and target the water source. (It will not target water on its own.) The Contaminator will move next the water and shoot at the spring rapidly until it is destroyed.

The Water Contaminator is definitely situational. Denying your enemy of his water sources will certainly aid you in winning by attrition; however, given its steep cost, you must already have a lot of credits in the bank in order to put a Water Contaminator into play to begin with. Also, if you have any hope at all of claiming the water for yourself, this is usually a better choice than destroying it for both of you.

A Contaminator moves slower than virtually any other unit in the game. But it can be placed into transports, so your best bet is to ferry it to its destination. One possibility is to use a Phase Transport to sneak the Contaminator straight to its target while you have other units distracting the enemy by attacking the base from another direction. This should help the Contaminator finish its work in peace. Your enemy might not even realize what is happening until it is too late.

Never put your Contaminator on HIGH Independence; this will cause it to wander off trying to find targets to attack, not realizing that its weapon is useless against structures and cannot do any actual damage.