Revision 1

The Pulse Skimmer is the cheapest unit The Marran field, a Tier 1 hovertank that arrives two to a squad for a single price. The Marran are a mercenary group rather than a playable faction, which means you never start a match as them: you contract them partway through a game and fold their units into whichever main faction you are already commanding. A Pulse Skimmer therefore turns up alongside Protectorate or Grell or Legion units, not instead of them.

What it contributes is speed and a shield pool. Move speed 750 is the fastest thing in the Marran roster, and 200 shields sitting on top of only 100 health means most of the Skimmer's effective durability regenerates between fights rather than needing repair. Eight damage a shot on a 0.6 second cycle is small, but the 50 percent bonus against Medium armour is what the unit is actually for.

Figures below describe the September 2026 Early Access build carrying the identifier ZS.c36778, and they move with a patch cadence that has been close to weekly since launch. Roughly half the versus roster had a stat touched in the fortnight before that build was captured, so read every number here as dated rather than permanent.

Stat Block

Weapons

Abilities

The entity data lists no activated ability, no siege mode and no passive for the Pulse Skimmer. It is a plain attacker whose only special property is the shield recharge rate described in its own unit text.

Upgrades

Nothing upgrades the Pulse Skimmer directly. What changes it is the Marran talent line, offered at faction levels 2, 4 and 6 to any commander who has contracted the group.

Conversion Costs

Three factions can act on a unit that already exists instead of building a new one, and each pays out of the same top bar power pool. Infuse is the Grell mechanic, permanently raising a friendly unit's health, damage and regeneration for the rest of its life at a bonus of 45 percent since the balance pass of August 11, 2026. Reanimate is the Legion of Truth version, which speeds the unit up by 30 percent while it lives and stands it back up when it dies. Replicate is the Xol version, which copies an eligible allied unit outright.

The Pulse Skimmer is eligible for all three, and in this build the three prices are identical at 5.625 power each. See Resources and Economy for how the top bar pool fills.

Role

The Skimmer is a harassment unit. Speed 750 lets it reach an undefended expansion before a defending army can rotate, and since August 11, 2026 every harvester and extractor in the game carries Medium armour, so the 50 percent bonus applies to exactly the targets a raider wants to hit. Eight damage becomes twelve against them, on a 0.6 second cycle, from two skimmers per purchase.

It also shoots air, which matters more than the damage number suggests. A Marran contract bought for its ground presence quietly comes with an anti air option attached, because the Skimmer and the Marran Sharpshooter both hit both domains.

The weakness is reach. Range 6 is short, so the Skimmer has to be inside an enemy army to contribute to a set piece fight, and 100 health under the shields means it folds once the shields are gone. It is a unit to send at things that cannot shoot back, not one to park in a line.

Faction Context

Everything Marran comes out of one structure, the Bulwark, which is unusual among mercenary buildings in that it moves while producing. The group's design across all five units is defensive and shield heavy, and the Skimmer is the outlier: it is the only Marran unit whose shield pool is larger than its health, and the only one built to leave the line rather than hold it.

Tier and Armour Interactions

The Skimmer carries Medium armour itself, so anything with a Medium bonus hits it harder, and the entity data publishes no flat armour value for it. Since flat armour subtracts damage per hit with a floor of one, a unit with no published armour value takes fast weak attacks at full price. With 300 combined health and shields, that is the Skimmer's real fragility rather than the raw health number.

Its own bonus is the replacement for an older one. Before August 11, 2026 the Pulse Blaster carried +100 percent against a separate harvester armour type. That armour type was deleted outright, harvesters and extractors moved onto Medium, and the bonus was rewritten as +50 percent against Medium. The Skimmer was one of six units converted that way in a single update. Units covers the six armour types in the current build.

Counters

Strong Against

Weak To

Balance History

• July 25, 2026: move speed reduced from 800 to 750.

• August 11, 2026: the damage bonus changed from +100 percent against the harvester armour type to +50 percent against Medium armour, in the same update that deleted the harvester armour type entirely.

Notes

• The roster record for this unit is COMPLETE on every field the source publishes. Two fields are absent from the entity data and are therefore absent here rather than guessed: the flat armour value and the status resist value.

• Mercenary units carry no build time, and that is a property of the game rather than a gap in the record: they are hired rather than constructed, so the entity data publishes a price and a squad size but no production timer.

• The August 11, 2026 conversion to +50 percent against Medium was verified against the ZS.c36778 build rather than taken from the patch note alone. The build agrees: the Pulse Blaster carries a single bonus entry, a 1.5 multiplier keyed to Medium armour, and no harvester entry survives anywhere in the record.

• The The Marran page still lists the pre August 11 Bulwark price and an older Bulwark Amplification description. The figures on this page are the ones in the current build.

• Per unit numbers are drawn from a community maintained entity catalogue that the studio links from each of its own faction pages. It is the only place a full stat block is published, so read the figures as careful community documentation of one build rather than as an official specification. Dated balance notes come straight from the studio patch posts and are stated as such.