BMP

The BMP is the Empire’s infantry fighting vehicle: 150 minerals, 15 population, 25 seconds. The official description calls it “a heavy infantry fighting vehicle with good armor,” and the files agree on the second half more than the first. It carries 700 hit points with a further 50 in reserve, and 60 armour at the front against 30 at the sides and rear — a two-to-one directional split, confirmed by the game files of build 23882143. Its single machine gun does 50 damage to infantry, 15 to vehicles and 10 to buildings on a 0.7-second cycle, which works out at 71.4 damage per second against infantry and 21.4 against vehicles. It fires while moving, and it has a one-tile minimum range.

The BMP is the clearest example of the armour system the developer described publicly on 10 February 2026: “a differentiated armor system, represented by two conical shapes: one for the front arc and a combined one for the sides and rear.” Confirmed by that announcement. The BMP’s numbers — 60 and 30 — are exactly the two cones, and nothing else in its entry describes protection. That matters because several third-party databases list a separate side value for units like this one. There is none. The sides are the rear, and the file has one field for both.

Buy the BMP to hold ground against infantry, not to trade with tanks. Against infantry it puts out 71.4 damage per second; against a vehicle it manages 21.4, which is roughly a third, and it will lose that trade to almost anything built to fight armour. Its value is the 700 hit points at 150 minerals, and the fact that it can shoot on the move — which lets it fall back while still firing. Reverse it rather than turning it: the front carries twice the armour of the back, so a unit that spins to withdraw hands its weak face to whatever it was just fighting. This is our reading, not the developer’s advice.

Fight the BMP with anything that ignores armour value or hits the rear. Its area resistance is 0.44, on a scale the developer has never documented — we report the number rather than convert it into a percentage we cannot justify — and it is the lowest of its three resistance fields, so splash weapons look like the sensible answer. Artillery is the direct counter: a Gorb Tank shell does 330 to vehicles against the BMP’s 30 rear armour. Do not bring infantry to the problem. Fifty damage per shot at 71.4 per second is exactly what the BMP is built to farm, and it will win that exchange every time. Our reading.