Tactical Superweapon Unit

A Tactical Superweapon Unit (or "über unit" in gaming parlance; the term "Super Unit" is used throughout the article for clarity's sake) is a very expensive, slow to produce, hard-to-kill unit built to solo ("fight all by itself," also used throughout) enemy armies and bases. Usually bristling with weaponry, massive, and sporting defense stats usually reserved for structures. Unlike a Hero Unit (which is usually an Ace Custom version of a standard unit anyhow), these don't have much in the way of a personality. However, they may have their own Arbitrary Headcount Limit to avoid being spammed. Even if they can (ostensibly) be built in bulk, they're often prohibitively expensive, slow to build, and fiddly to use, requiring micromanagement of their abilities to use them effectively. In any other game, they'd be boss monsters (and story mode may even treat them as such).

The purpose of such an Absolute Unit is to break stalemates. The armies of the various factions are, ideally, evenly matched, just stronger and weaker in different areas. So, when two evenly-matched players meet, there needs to be a sort of "wrecking ball" that allows the match to continue, in a similar fashion to Super Weapons. In some cases, they may require another unit of the same calibre to fight effectively.

Faction Calculus may decree that only the Powerhouse faction can deploy these, or that one faction can field squads of lesser super units to counter another factions single big'un. Ideally, a Super Unit isn't outclassed until the sequel, and lies at the pinnacle of a faction's Tech Tree.

While mostly applicable to strategic video games, the concept of a single vehicle able to steamroll whole armies is an attractive one. The trope pops up in other game genres, and even media as well; even in real life, (e.g. the Wunderwaffen projects done by Nazi Germany in World War II), but what constitutes a super unit in real life is very subjective and difficult to prove, thanks to factors such as advancing technology.

Compare Boss Battle (which the story sometimes treats these as), The Dreaded Dreadnought (a huge, overpowered battleship; especially if it's the villain's Flagship), and One-Man Army (basically, where a single person is treated this way in-story). Compare Hero Unit (a mildly overpowered, singleton named character the player is supposed to feel attached to; often in an Ace Custom or Super Prototype version of a regular unit. You can only have one because there only is one, not because it'd bankrupt the country to field two of them). See also Base on Wheels and Military Mashup Machine, which these have a tendency to be. Their tactical flexibility is often augmented by the inclusion of a Mobile Factory. They may or may not themselves be an Awesome But Impracticality-laden Super Prototype of some sort, with a lot of the cool features Dummied Out for the mass-production model.

No Real Life Examples, Please!

Examples:

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Game examples:

Real-Time Strategy

Age of Mythology introduces the Titan unit in The Titans Expansion Pack. The Titan is a massive mythological monster with enormous health, damage resistance, and damage output against buildings, at the expense of slow speed and an expensive, time-consuming Summoning Ritual. When backed up by a proper army, a Titan can level virtually anything in its path. The only foolproof defense against a Titan is water, as Titans can't swim and are too big to fit in transport ships.
Battalion Wars has the Battlestation (a superheavy tank) and Aerostation (a Flying Fortress-style bomber) units, which form boss fights in certain missions. The third-to-last campaign mission has the player utilizing their own Battlestation to nearly solo an entire enemy army. If the Battlestation is lost, so goes the mission, as your support cadre cannot fight the rampaging horde of undead Super Soldiers effectively.
The Battle for Middle-earth II has the "Ring Heroes," a cross between this and a Hero Unit. They require that the player have the One Ring, about 10,000 Supplies, and a good five minutes. Evil factions get Dark Lord Sauron (a fallen angel) in all his two-ton-mace-swinging, lava-bomb-summoning glory, while Good factions get Storm Queen Galadriel (an elven queen and powerful enchantress), who can conjure tornadoes. It also allows certain Evil races to summon a demon (the Balrog, a Big Red Devil who is constantly on fire and wields a whip and a gigantic sword) or a dragon (a wyrm) through Support Powers. The Rise of the Witch-King expansion pack allows players to field a single squad of Elite Mooks.
Brütal Legend (a hybrid of Rhythm Game and Action RTS):
- The Tainted Coil has the Bleeding Death, which needs to be purchased as normal, then deployed by being fired out of a cannon towards the enemy by a "Solo" (the game world runs entirely on The Power of Rock, and a guitar solo is the equivalent of a magic spell). It has the highest health and attack speed in the game, but its status as a constantly bleeding Frankenstein's Monster means that it'll die on its own eventually.
- Ironheade has the Rock Crusher, a tank-like idol to Örmagoden (the setting's god) with several mortars and a grinder, as well as being covered in radio handsets to give all nearby units the benefits of an In-Universe Theme Music Powerup. Its "Double-Team" attack creates an inescapable ring, then drops the Flaming Sword of a Titan into it from orbit.
- The Drowning Doom's super units are split between one that relies more on the cheeseball tactic of being able to fly in a setting where everything happens at ground level to make it immune to most attacks, rather than sheer durability or an "Instant Death" Radius (a Dirigible that drops jars full of concentrated despair on people while smothering them with the weapons-grade stink of its undead pilot), and a Giant Mook called the "Treeback" (a very tough zombie ogre with a tree growing out of its back that harbours a murder of hungry crows).
Command & Conquer (including Game Mods):
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert: The Counterstrike and Aftermath expansions feature the Cyborg supersoldier Volkov. Serving as an overpowered boss-like enemy in the campaign, he has at minimum over 3-4 times the hit points^note2500 of Mammoth Tanks and Cruisers^note600 and 700 respectively (the toughest producible^note units in the Soviet and Allied arsenals, respectively) ^note, is armed with a Hand Cannon that mows down infantry with ease and can make short work of tanks and even the aforementioned Cruisers in just a handful of shots, and can blow up structures with C4 charges, making him far more of a threat than even the nukes that serve as the game's superweapon of choice. He's so overpowered, in fact, that he only makes a single appearance in Counterstrike, and all but one of his Aftermath appearances nerf him severely into just a slightly more durable version of the Allied Hero Unit Tanya.
- Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun:
  - GDI has the Mammoth mk.II, which is a Captain Ersatz of an AT-AT with a powerful railgun cannon. Nod doesn't have an equivalent vehicle but they do have the unique Cyborg Commando who can regenerate in Tiberium fields and has a powerful plasma gun.
  - In the Firestorm expansion pack, rogue AI C.A.B.A.L. has the Core Defender, a heavily armed giant robot with a laser capable of piercing the eponymous Firestorm's Deflector Shields. While powerful against armies, it can't look up, leaving it vulnerable to airstrikes. Like the aforementioned Volkov, it serves as a 'boss' in the campaign.
- Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars: Kane's Wrath is the only game with one formally defined epic unit per faction—a powerful vehicle that requires its own factory and is capped at one per player, but is armed with a devastating weapon out-of-the-box and the option to garrison a number of infantry squads in their hardpoints for various effects, as well as a unique gimmick (usually some method of generating income).
  - GDI gets the M.A.R.V. superheavy tank/miner, which sports a tri-barrelled cannon and four hardpoints. It can run over Tiberium deposits to stripmine them - and those Tiberium fields doesn't need to be yours.
  - Nod gets the Redeemer, a gigantic quad-walker with a laser cannon, a Hate Plague beacon, and two hardpoints.
  - The Scrin get the Eradicator Hexapod, a gigantic organitek Spider Tank with a plasma disc launcher similar to the ones mounted on their Destroyer airships, and three hardpoints. If a unit is killed within a certain radius of it, it automatically recycles them into resources.
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: The Uprising expansion adds three such powerful and expensive units, albeit ones that can still be mass-produced (especially by the AI):
  - The Future Tank X-1 is a combat robot for the Allies that lifted directly from The Terminator's Hunter-Killer Tanks that fires area-of-effect spheres of destruction. It can also use a Riot Beam, a pair of crossing lasers that will torch anything in front of them.
  - The Harbinger is a self-repairing gunship for the Allies (think AC-130 on steroids) that can switch between a chaingun and a collider cannon and circles around its target without needing to reload but has no Anti-Air capability. They have a bad reputation in-universe, called "vultures" by other Allied pilots for their flight patterns and sociopathic enjoyment of their jobs.
  - The Empire gets the Giga Fortress, a floating Macross Missile Massacre provider that can attack all units and transforms into a giant flying demon head with a Breath Weapon that outranges all static Anti-Air defenses but can't attack air units (ironically, the Empire is best-suited to taking them down as their fighters don't need to reload). It's the single most expensive unit in the game, costing more than an MCV and taking the same amount of time to build, which will not stop the AI from cheerfully building a dozen of them.
- Mental Omega, a Game Mod of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, features a few of these units, called Epic Units. They are specific to certain subfactions, boast massive firepower, are heavily armored, and can self-repair, requiring heavy focus-fire to destroy. They also have Contractual Boss Immunity to most effects.
  - China has the Centurion Siege Crawler, a massive walking artillery that outranges all static defenses but one. It chews apart buildings and defenses, and can attack enemy aircraft. It can carry up to three passengers who can shoot at enemies from inside.
  - Epsilon HQ has the Aerial Fortress Irkalla, a gigantic UFO. It does poorly against buildings, but takes out groups of units quickly and can target both ground and air forces. It is excellent at establishing territorial control, but moves slowly.
  - Haihead has the M.A.D.M.A.N., a bomb truck on steroids. While it cannot attack units directly, its self-destruct process hits harder than a superweapon.
  - Wings of Coronia has the Harbinger, which bombards an area and takes out a chunk of a base in a few hits. While its bombing run lasts a long time, it cannot be controlled by the player.
  - The campaign-exclusive Perun Flagship is a large bulking helicopter constantly boosting other Tesla weaponry near it, while its own Tesla cannon tears enemy units apart. It is used by Epsilon in the final Soviet campaign mission.
  - The Allies are the only faction that lacks an Epic Unit. In the campaign, Pacific Front has the Shin Tsurugi Decimator in only one mission, while the Paradox Engine is a central plot device in Act Two, being the only true threat for Epsilon even after being rendered nearly-inoperable.
- Epic units in Rise of the Reds (a Game Mod for Command & Conquer: Generals) require a 5-star Generals' Promotion and a high-level technology building, have a hideous price tag, and take 60 seconds after one is destroyed to even consider building another one (presumably, it takes everyone that long to change their drawers), ensuring that you're without your epic unit in the worst possible situation: the enemy is the one with enough dakka now:
  - The European Continental Alliance's Manticore superheavy tank's impressive compliment of weaponry comprise twin 150mm cannons, a brace of autocannons, and a missile pod, giving it almost "enough dakka", and this is backed up by a powerful chassis and a bevy of repair drones that keep it and its allies in tip-top shape, plus a Nano Shield that for 8 seconds makes it invulnerable to any incoming attack and gives an extreme boost to its self-repair rate, although it cannot attack while the shield is active.
  - The Russian Federation's Blackbear is a souped up version of its already potent Sentinel superheavy tank. Boasting even more HP than the Manticore (2500 vs 1800), a single 220mm main gun that deals over twice as much damage as the Manticore's dual guns combined, and a pair of AA missile pods, it can win a 1-on-1 engagement against any enemy unit that isn't another Blackbear, and that's without activating either of its defensive secondary abilities (Shtora system that makes it briefly untargetable, and Smoke Screen that forces enemies to blindly fire through it).
- The Tiberium Essence Game Mod for Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars has one epic unit for each faction once they reach the top of the tech tree:
  - GDI has the Mammoth mk. II walker, taken out of mothball and upgraded from Tiberian Sun. Four railguns, two autocannons, and a set of missile launchers, as well as a modular spinal mount.
  - The Brotherhood of Nod has the Montauk, a Drill Tank bristling with laser gun batteries. It also acts as a Base on Wheels due to the fact that it cannonically is Nod's main base of operations, and can summon several groups of units from the tunnel network.
  - The Scrin get the Conqueror walker, which is more support oriented, seeding Tiberium fields on-demand to provide power-ups to its allies, and can assimilate the weapons of each of the other faction's Giant Robot units.
Company of Heroes has several vehicles that can only be obtained through Support Powers, but the one most applicable is the Wehrmacht's Terror Doctrine-exclusive King Tiger, a huge tank with a monstrous 88mm cannon that can only be summoned once per game. The American equivalent to it is the M26 Pershing.
Dawn of War has its top tier of units locked behind the ownership of a "Relic," a special Capture Point. These include squads of heavy infantry and super-heavy tanks. In the original and in Winter Assault, you could build as many as you'd like, but from Dark Crusade onwards, they are restricted to one each.
- The Space Marines have Terminators (Highly decorated, elites-among-the-elite Space Marine heroes with extremely tough Powered Armor and double-barrelled Hand Cannons, which they can swap for miniguns or double-barrelled flamethrowers), Assault Terminators (the same tier of Bad Enough Dude, just with electrified warhammers and tower shields), and the Land Raider APC (which sports two laser cannon batteries and a pair of machine guns).
- Chaos Space Marines have the Bloodthirster, a Big Red Devil brandishing a battleaxe the size of a car. He literally wastes away from boredom if he's not fighting something.
- Orks have the Squiggoth, best describes as "an alien War Elephant armed with several normal cannons and a Lightning Gun." Its attacks are as powerful as they are inaccurate, even in melee, and can theoretically charge through infantry mobs (but usually gets stuck on said infantry).
- The Eldar get the Avatar of Khaine, the manifestation of a dead god with a Flaming Sword. He regenerates in and out of combat also lets them build more units and speeds up their construction time and makes them harder to demoralize (many of these traits being common fan complaints about the Eldar being overpowered).
- The Imperial Guard get the Baneblade Super-Heavy Tank, which sports no less than eleven seperate guns and is the size of their HQ building.
- The Necron get the Monolith, a teleporting Base on Wheels with a huge particle cannon and a Mook Maker. It has to be killed twice to be destroyed; first as a tank, then as a building. They also have the Nightbringer, the invulnerable manifestation of Death itself! In the Soulstorm expansion, they also get the Deceiver, basically "alien Satan."
- The Tau get the Greater Knarloc, a terror bird the size of a Tyrannosaurus rex. It can have more HP than a Squiggoth (due to being a Kroot and therefore sharing in their Cannibalism Superpower), but spends most of its time turning around.
- The Dark Eldar have the Dais of Destruction, a combination of party boat and giant Hover Tank which sports huge dark energy blasters, Disintegrator Rays, and some sexy ladies (not a euphemism for anything). It's piloted by Asdrubael Vect (leader of the entire Dark Eldar race, not just the faction present in the game) himself.
- The Sisters of Battle get the Living Saint, an actual angel with a flaming sword. She has Resurrective Immortality, teleporting back to the Shrine building when killed, and the ability to spray a jet of holy flames from her sword.
Dawn of War II: Retribution: The campaign lets the player face against every faction's super unit as well as their own (and claiming it in the latter case).
- The Space Marines get a Land Raider stolen from the traitors before the can desecrate it.
- The Imperial Guard get a Baneblade, also stolen from traitors. Unlike the previous game, the main gun has to be fired manually.
- The Orks get a battlewagon, a Mad Max-esque vehicle that combines the roles of tank, troop transport, and road roller. The one faced in the campaign is called Daisy.
- Chaos gets Ulkair, a Great Unclean One of Nurgle and the Big Bad of the previous game.
- The Eldar get the Avatar of Khaine by activating the one they fight after a completely avoidable misunderstanding leads to them fighting their own troops.
- The Tyranids get the Swarmlord, a melee monster that lets nearby Tyranids reinforce themselves.
In Dungeon Keeper 2, the Keeper gets the late-game power to summon the Horned Reaper, an invulnerable Lightning Bruiser that can steamroll anything in his path. His only drawback is the ruinous Mana cost to keep him on the field. If you consider the Horned Reaper actually a power, then true end-game units are the Dark Angels which are the last units you discover in the campaign. While having only above average durability, the Dark Angels have strong magic and devastating sword attacks and in numbers will easily wipe out a larger enemy force. For the 1st game, your mightiest are the Horned Reapers (they weren't unique back then) and Dragons (the Reapers provided the melee, while the dragons were your top artillery).
Dungeons 3 has the Titan units which stand outside of your population cap. For the Horde, the Ogre is their top heavyweight, the Demons have the Pit Fiend and the Undead have the Grave Golem.
Earth 2150: Moon Project had several specific to each faction in the campaign: Eurasian Dynasty had the Escorts which were grounded UFOs that could self-repair and had devastating alien energy weapons, United Civilized States had the Grizzly III which were Mini-Mecha that had a pair of heavy weapon placements, heavily armored and had the game's highest health for a vehicle. Finally the Lunar Corporation have the Prototypes, these were fast moving, heavily armored vehicles with significant health, rapid Healing Factor and had a potent cannon which could ionize enemies. The drawback to these vehicles was that while they weren't unique, they were in limited quantities and even their own faction couldn't produce them due to Black Box technology. Additionally these units were only in the ED campaign where you could capture them, in the other campaigns these vehicles were renamed and became Hero Units. Finally all these vehicles start off unshielded so you need to find a Shield Projector or have a repairer add one.
- Earth 2160, while the factions of the Eurasian Dynasty and the United Civilized States continue to use "conventional" Weapons of Mass Destruction such as a teleported time bomb and a ballistic missile launcher, the Lunar Corporation decided to show their NASA nerdiness. Their weapon is the Ripper (or the Ultimate Ripper if you pay for the R & D), which is a heavily armed UFO flying from a tower which has an Ultimate Battle Module built on top.
Goblin Commander had Titan units appropriate for each clan. Stonekrusher had the Stone Ogre, Hellfire had the Warpig Pult, Stormcaller had the Lightning Elemental, Plaguespitter had Slime and finally thr Nighthorde had the Battle Ball.
Grey Goo (2015) calls these "Epic Units":
- The Beta have the Hand of Ruk, a Base on Wheels armed with a nuclear bomb-flinging mortar and six turrets that can be garrissoned by any of the vehicles churned out by its Mobile Factory.
- The Goo have the Purger, a massive Blob Monster made out of ravenous, angry Nano Machines that can batter appart and/or assimilate anything it gets its pseudopods on.
- The Humans have the Alpha, a Giant Robot armed with extremely powerful laser cannons.
- The Shroud have the Dirge, with three levels of Evolution Powerup, which it progresses through by eating resources and killing enemies. At first, it has a gun that causes Damage Over Time. After huffing enough Catalyst, it upgrades to an artillery gun. After it uses that to kill enough enemies, it gains a black hole cannon called the "Gravity Well."
Guilty Gear 2: Overture (the Oddball in the Series with heavy Real-Time Strategy elements) has Elite Servants. They're usually stronger than a character's normal Servants, but are much more expensive to summon, and only one of each type can be active at any given time.
Halo Wars:
- The UNSC get the Vulture, an enormous VTOL gunship which can be upgraded to launch a Macross Missile Massacre at enemy targets.
- The Covenant, meanwhile, have the freakin' Scarab, a nigh-unstoppable walking tank that can reduce almost anything to cinders with its Wave-Motion Gun.
- Notably, the former is wholly outclassed by the latter, but is much cheaper and can be deployed in numbers, as opposed to the Scarab taking up half of the player's standard troop capacity.
Halo Wars 2 introduces the Condor Gunship, a VTOL craft equipped with laser cannons and a Mini-MAC, as well as the Retriever Sentinel, a massive Forerunner construct meant for mining operations now deployed at Professor Anders' behest.
Paraworld: Each of the playable factions have the following Titans (note that while you can build more than one, they start at Tier 4 and there's an Arbitrary Headcount Limit of 3 Tier 4 units and 1 Tier 5 - a tier that can only be reached by promotion):
- Norsemen have the Triceratops Titan which was a triceratops with a thick armor-plated barding plus a trio of outer compartments that can hold infantry and which they can fire their weapons from. The Triceratops also has an armor-piercing Horn Attack.
  - Unique to the Norsemen, they alternately have the Steam Tank (which has the same Tier ranking) which was a heavily armored tank with a powerful ballista and can transport 10 infantry into battle.
  - And in Skirmish if Norsemen have Charles Babbit they can create the Exoskeleton which is a heavily armored, powerful melee Mini-Mecha.
- Dustriders have the T-Rex Titan which is a Tyrannosaurus with a bite that's one of the most damaging attacks in the game.
- Dragon Clan has the Seismosaur Titan is a dinosaur similar to a small brachiosaur and carries a pair of gunners operating machine guns.
Titan class war-robots from the emponymous Planetary Annihilation Expansion Pack are built to solo enemy armies and bases, and violently explode on death. These are not the most powerful weapons in the game. That honour goes to the Metal Planet, an Infinity +1 Sword that is a Captain Ersatz of the Death Star, which can destroy worlds, something that otherwise involves smashing them together or the Ragnaroks special attack.
Rise of Legends:
- The Vinci have the Land Leviathan, a tunnelling spider-crab tank with several machine guns and a MLAS mounted on it. It also has an Arm Cannon that launches missiles, and the grinders on its arms.
- The Alin have the Great Glass Dragon, which flies around spitting clouds of broken glass at enemies. It can also focus sunlight through its body to shoot a huge laser beam at enemies.
- The Cuotl have the City of Destruction, an Awesome Personnel Carrier with several weapons, including a city-destroying laser and a Gravity-Wave Generator to deal with hordes.
- In Skirmish mode, there's a unique neutral Master Unit called the Elder Glass Golem that can be created if its lair is captured. Additionally in Skirmish mode, the Moon God Ix can be captured as an extra Master Unit. Interestingly in Campaign mode, you can't create Master Units though one mission does have you recover a badly damaged Land Leviathan. Instead Campaign has you earning many Hero Units beyond the 3 heroes in Skirmish.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment has Titans, massive ships with firepower, fighter bays, and defenses similar to military-dedicated starbases. Each one is emblematic of the military doctrine of their faction (for example, the vengeance-obsessed TEC Rebels have a gigantic flying gun battery, while their more war-weary and isolationist TEC Loyalist cousins have a more support-oriented Damage-Sponge Boss). They require five Research items to be completed before launch, and no less than two Capital Ship Crews each. They cost as much as whole fleets of lesser craft, and you can only launch one of them at a time.
Spellforce has Titans for each faction such as the humans with their Griffin. Titans start off with extremely high health and hitting power. Additionally a unique feature is that they gain Experience Points like a Hero Unit (everything else is topped out from the start). That said they have the usual drawback of being unique and really slow, etc.
StarCraft II:
- In skirmish/multiplayer modes, the Protoss can field a single Mothership, a huge Flying Saucer with anti-air plasma missiles and a "Planet Cracker" ventral laser cannon battery that is, canonically, fully capable of wiping out all life on a planet (this is seen in the StarCraft opening cutscene), they just want to keep this one habitable.
- Starcraft II Wings Of Liberty: A couple missions in the campaign feature the Odin, the Super Prototype for the smaller (but still massive) Thor units. The mission where Raynor's Raiders steal it basically amounts to keeping it repaired while the pilot (whose radio is broken) rampages across the map.
- Starcraft II Heart Of The Swarm climaxes the prologue with a boss fight against the Archangel, a transforming heavy mech/fighter-bomber laying siege to the Umojan blacksite facility holding Kerrigan. It also features the Zerg Leviathan, a (canonically) moon-sized Zerg bio-ship available as a temporary summon. It mounts base defenses and other units as weaponry. It also features a Puzzle Boss battle against the nigh-invulnerable Gorgon-class Battlecruiser, which can only be killed by an entire horde of Scourge, a kind of Zerg kamikaze fighter-beast.
- The Covert Ops DLC finishes with a battle against the Xanthos Heavy Mech, armed with railguns and flamethrowers, and the option to switch to a lazer cannon. It takes the entire Covert Operations army to take out.
Stellaris has Juggernauts, huge starships that are the spacegoing equivalent of a Base on Wheels (base-on-hyperdrives?) that sport a shipyard/repair bay and a pair of Massive gun-mountings. Not to be confused with Colossi, absolutely brobdingnagian ships with a single weapon designed to produce an Earth-Shattering Kaboom, Depopulation Bomb, or a planet-sized Containment Field
Supreme Commander has Tier 4 Experimental units. Unlike most examples, these are fully spamable, and while certainly big and tough and able to mop the floor with armies, to take on the enemy base requires either squads of the things or a supporting army of mooks. They're so X-box huge that they often get built directly on the battlefield by Tier 3 Worker Units. While each faction has three (four with the Forged Alliance expansion pack; these are listed last in their respective sub-list), some fall under the purview of a straight Superweapon, and one is a superpowered generator.
- The UEF (who have two regular superweapons):
  - the Fatman is a Land Battleship with an integrated Mobile Factory and bubble-shield generator.
  - The Atlantis "Submersible Battleship," which includes aircraft carrying capacity along with nuclear torpedoes.
- The Cybrans:
  - The Monkeylord is a huge Spider Tank carrying a sustained-fire microwave laser cannon and "Electron Bolter" autocannons.
  - The Megalith is a Giant Enemy Crab robot with an integrated Mobile Factory. It's intended as a naval unit, and has more torpedo weaponry than anything else.
  - The Soul Ripper is a massive, flying gun platform. While it has no big gimmick, it does have loads of guns and HP.
  - The Scathis is a gigantic self-propelled Gatling Good howitzer tank that launches storms of Neutron Bombs.
- The Aeon Illuminate:
  - The Galactic Colossus is a Humongous Mecha with a tractor beam hands to prevent escape from its Eye Beams.
  - The CZAR is basically a Captain Ersatz of the Alien City-Destroyer ships from Independence Day, being an Airborne Aircraft Carrier with a ventral Wave-Motion Gun.
  - The Tempest, a huge, disc-shaped submarine Mobile Factory warship armed with several torpedo launchers and the ominously-named Oblivion Cannon.
- Seraphim (the fourth faction; introduced in the expansion):
  - The Awassa is a huge flying-fortress-type bomber armed with nukes able to kill entire armies.
  - The Ythotha is a giant, walking weapons platform that's actually two super units in one: once killed, it ejects its Energy Being pilot, a massive ball lightning called an Othuy.
Supreme Commander 2 has what ammounts to the Updated Re Release of many of the previous game's super units, and more besides. They require Experimental Gantry structures to deploy from as well. The game features the option to launch them at 50% build capacity (which the game refers to as "launching half-baked") as an emergency measure, in which case, they're riddled with problems and often stall.
- UEF:
  - The King Kryptor is a giant robot with battleship turrets for Shoulder Cannons and fireball-launcher hands.
  - The Fat Man returns as a pure land battleship, without the bubble shields and factory.
  - The Terror is a King Mook version of their regular gunship.
  - The Mega Fortress is an Airborne Aircraft Carrier with its own compliment of weaponry-most of them pointed at the ground, relying on its fighter compliment to tackle other air threats.
  - The Atantis returns almost unchanged (besides swapping out AA capacity for a bigger deck gun), and is only slightly more expensive then their next most powerful battleship
- Cybran:
  - The Megalith returns with bigger guns and without its integrated factory and Drop Pod dispenser.
  - The Cybranosaurus Rex can only be called a "Dragon in Powered Armor."
  - The Soul Ripper returns unchanged.
  - The Kraken is a submarine battleship made in imitation of, what else, a giant squid, with a cannon on each tentacle.
  - The Monkey Lord also returns, but is behind a DLC paywall.
- Aeon (most units are named in the Seraphim Conlang from the first game's Expansion Pack):
  - The Galactic Colossus returns unchanged.
  - The Czar's little brother, the Darkenoid loses its aircraft capacity, but retains the underside quantum laser array.
  - The Urchinow is a superheavy tank referred to as an "Assault Block," which has three big cannons and multiple light guns.
  - The Willfindja is a huge Hover Tank with all its weaponry mounted on twenty or so Attack Drones.
  - The Sooprizer is a large gunship intended for surgical strikes to compliment the Darkenoid.
They Are Billions: The two end-game units the Titan and the Mutant.
- The Mutant has the highest health of any controllable unit, along with a high movement speed. It also inflicts Area of Effect damage to any units in melee range, making it capable of devastating hordes of Infected. However, it's not as suited for holding of the Special Infected for long periods of time.
- The Titan is the most expensive and time-consuming unit available to the player. Best described as a mobile Executor turret, the Titan has a good movement speed and inflicts Area of Effect damage at a good range. Its high health also allows it to act as a temporary wall and physically hold back the Infected if only for a few seconds. A small squad of Titans is easily able to clear an entire map of the Infected.
Total Annihilation: The infamous Krogoth is the single most expensive unit in the game, armed with three different weapons capable of taking on quick swarms, heavy units, and aircraft simultaneously. It is also incredibly durable and explodes on death, making it risky for the enemy Commander to simply D-Gun the Krogoth.
Total Annihilation: Kingdoms: Each faction has a dragon that is fast moving, hard hitting unit. But they are expensive and take a long time, and a lot of mana to build. Then there's their deity units, which are massive walking gods that can detect all enemy units in the fog of war, and can decimate anything in their path, but are even more expensive, and only the Monarch can build them.
The Hierarchy from Universe at War produces these as a matter of course. Their barracks, factory, and research "structures" are actually huge Spider Tanks that act like a Base on Wheels, and while they totally have a conventional army, a perfectly viable strategy is to load up one, two, or all of their Walkers with weapons or weapon upgrade modules, and maybe a couple Flying Saucers set to Repair mode if you don't want to sacrifice a leg socket for a Repair Bay module to keep them fighting fit. They can't be destroyed normally, instead requiring that at least two of the Cognizant Limbs in the upper section be destroyed to expose the reactor, which then must be destroyed. However, a very low-tier research ability causes the breached reactor to irradiate the surrounding area, either killing or zombifying the enemy troops while stimulating the Healing Factor of the Hierarchy's own.
Warlords Battlecry:
- Each race has a unique Titan unit at the top of their tech tree such as Lord Bane of the Undead and King Khallid of the Dwarves. A Titan can only be built once per match and has a high resource cost, but each one is incredibly powerful. All players are informed that "A Titan walks the land" whenever one is built.
- Dragons are not quite as strong as Titans, but they are another top-tier super unit available to every race and can be built in limitless numbers.
Warrior Kings from Microids had one for each faction. The Imperials got the Archangel who can create a Ground Wave with his sword, the Pagans have the demon lord Baal who has deadly Eye Beams and the Renaissance had their Rocket Towers. Uniquely among these 3 units, the Rocket Towers were controlled by the player (the other 2 were computer controlled only) and while expensive more than one Rocket Tower can be produced at a time. The only drawback is that an individual Rocket Tower isn't a durable and damaging as the Archangel or Baal.

Turn-Based Strategy

Age of Wonders 3 has super units for each of the different command types. These range from massive tanks bristling with guns, to Eldritch Abominations crackling with lighting to literal Grim Reapers. Notably it also shows why these units tend to be rare in most games: Most of these super units aren't particularly hard to acquire mid-to-late game, meaning eventually every battle devolves into clashes between these units and nothing else.
Age of Wonders: Planetfall also has Tier IV units for each race and some of the Secret Technology tech trees. Some have powerful support abilities (such as the Kir'ko Harbinger), others are powerful as individual combatants (the Dvar Earth Crusher), and some do a mixture of both (such as the Assembly Reaver). The problem of spamming these units seen in Age of Wonders 3 is handled by using Cosmite as a limiting factor. Producing a Tier IV unit and outfitting it with upgrades costs an enormous amount of Cosmite and requires more in per-turn upkeep, reducing the ability to produce further elite units.
The Blood Bowl video games has the vast majority of the teams able to add a Big Guy (two for teams that are notorious for being small). Big Guys such as the Rat Ogre for Skaven are blessed with very high strength and most start with the skill Mighty Blow. This means most of them are especially effective at withstanding a block attempt and when they win the block, they're more likely to injure an opponent. However most Big Guy hirings are Awesome, but Impractical, every Big Guy unit has either stupidity or some other issue that make them unreliable in taking action. Additionally Big Guys are often very slow and too clumsy to handle a ball well.
Civilization: Beyond Earth has a super unit for each of the Affinities:
- Purity gets the massive LEV Destroyer, a floating battleship that can set up and launch siege attacks at range.
- Supremacy gets the ANGEL, a four legged walker that isn't as tough as the other super units by itself, but makes up for this by buffing nearby armies and being buffed by them in return.
- Harmony gets the Xeno Titan, effectively a Kaiju with the highest strength in the game bar none, balanced out by the fact that it's a melee unit and the rest of the Harmony army is slightly weaker than equivalent units of the other Affinities.
Civilization VI: The Giant Death Robot is a unique endgame "Super-unit" with greater melee strength than an army full of the next-most powerful unit, plus unmatched ranged strength, resistance to nuclear weapons, and the ability to upgrade it further with Future tech, such as a city-busting particle beam cannon.
Fallen Enchantress has a unique event where if you succeed, allows you to build dragons - the most powerful units in the game. Besides fantastic stats, they can move far and have a melee attack that hits in a radius plus they have a Breath Weapon so they can severely harm or kill other powerful melee units before they get in range. Additionally having a unit with large stacks doesn't help survive against a dragon, since dragons have the overpowering trait so any dragon attack hits every member in a stack. The only real counter to a dragon is another dragon.
Endless Legend: The five Guardians (each corresponding to an element of Auriga) are comparable to nuclear options—colossal one-man armies that can easily change the tide of a battle by themselves with their outstanding stats and world map abilities. In return, they cannot be attached to armies and with the amount of time and resources it takes to research and create one Guardian, you could build several city improvements and other units.
Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings has the tier 3 Espers. Very powerful, and each can easily obliterate armies of tier 1 and 2 Espers by itself. However, you can only summon one of each at a time, and you need to unlock them from various sidequests first.
Gihren's Greed: Some Mobile Suits and Mobile Armours act as Super Units, costing significantly more resources and time to build. However, reflecting the Lensman Arms Race that is a big part of the series, as time goes on even regular grunt units can become capable of matching earlier Super Units, encouraging the player to advance their technology to keep up. In addition, depending on the game, there might even be a hard cap on how many of the unit the player can produce ^note This is mostly in Shin Gihren's Greed, where only one of certain custom or Super Prototype machines like Char's Gelgoog or the RX-78-2 Gundam can be built. A few examples include:
- The RX-78-2 Gundam, the one the entire franchise is named for, is the most famous example. Compared to virtually every other unit of the One Year War era, the RX-78-2 can fight in every environment (i.e. space, land, underwater). While the RX-78-3 (aka G3 Gundam) can also do the same, the RX-78-2 has the added advantage of swapping between the energy-based beam rifle and the solid ammo-based Hyper Bazooka, giving it more flexibility when faced with enemies equipped with anti-beam defenses. It's also incredibly expensive and takes a long time to construct, generally taking multiple turns compared to the single turn needed for the humble GM. In addition, only skilled pilots can utilise it to its full potential: without a named pilot it's just a somewhat tougher MS, while at the hands of someone like Amuro Ray or Lydo Wolf it's fully capable of taking down full squads of enemy Mobile Suits single-handed.
- The Mobile Armour Byg Zam was specifically designed to repel fleets, and it does that job well thanks to its anti-beam I-field making it completely immune to beam attacks (which are the main weapons of nearly all warships). While it's possible to whittle away at its health with close quarters attacks by GMs and their beam sabers backed by barrages by Balls and their cannons, it's actually more effective to go for its Achilles' Heel: it's so energy intensive that if it's cut off from supplies it will grind to a halt, allowing the player to assault it with impunity. As long as it's well-supplied, however (e.g. it's situated on a location's main base, meaning it will always recover health and energy each turn), it becomes a lot more difficult to bring down.
- From Menace of Axis, the Quebeley. Equipped with funnels, beam weapons built into the hands, with high mobility and evasion, at the hands of a sufficiently powerful Newtype pilot like Haman Khan it's easily able to wipe out dozens of enemy MS solo and tank assaults from entire fleets thanks to its agility. In comparison, the Mass-Production Quebeleys are far cheaper, but also far less powerful.
Heroes of Might and Magic III has the Azure Dragon, a juggernaut of a creature that has 1000 health, flight, a piercing breath attack, a passive fear aura that causes all enemies to suffer bad morale, and magic resistance. It's no surprise that the manual describes them as Tier 10 creatures when the highest tier otherwise is 7. They can only be acquired from the Adventure map once per week for the high price of 30,000 Gold and 20 Mercury per dragon, and you need to fight three of them in order to claim their dwelling.
Mordheim: City of the Damned has a category called Impressive unit. Each faction has one such as the Skaven and their Rat Ogre. Tough and powerful, as well as often very big these beings will often wipe out mooks and even a Hero Unit in one combo due to their innate strength and unique lack of drawbacks in Dual Wielding or using two-handed weapons. On the other hand most are too big to fit thru doors and only the Maiden of Sigmar can do something as basic as pick items off the ground.
While Ring of Red is a mecha combat game first and a Strategy RPG second, there are a couple examples:
- The first story arc involves the Grand Theft Prototype of an Armored Fighting Walker that combines all the disparate roles of the game's various types of walker (except for artillery, due to the accuracy proplems inherent in its Unusual Weapon Mounting-someone thought it was a good idea to put its guns in its elbows, of all places). The enemy army supporting it is only there to slow your guys down so it can escape, as it's fully capable of mopping the floor with them in a standup fight.
- The final boss of the game is the Dora Gustav, an immense Spider Tank sporting both the largest cannon ever made and a magazine stocked with nuclear bombs.
SD Gundam G Generation: In general, as in the source material Mobile Armours often act as super units, though how "super" they can be sometimes depends on what special abilities they have in-game. For example, in SD Gundam G Generation F, I-fields make units completely immune to Beam 1 attacks (e.g. beam rifles, beam spray guns, beam machine guns) while halving damage from Beam 2 attacks (e.g. beam cannons, mega particle cannons), so the likes of Byg Zam, Neue Zeil and Psyco Gundam Mk-II can laugh off most beam attacks. In later games like SD Gundam G Generation Genesis, I-fields merely reduce beam attack damage and so the aforementioned trio don't feel quite as powerful.
- Even with the above caveat, some Mobile Armours are so effective that they can easily trivialise much of the game when sufficiently built up. For example, Neo Zeong from SD Gundam G Generation Genesis has tons of health, plenty of firepower, has the special ability to prevent enemy attacks beyond a certain range, and can be purged to reveal a Sinanju at full health.
- The Psycho Gundam Mk-II has the I-field to help with defense, comes with a range of weapons (from beam cannons to beam sabers) and becomes more powerful when piloted by a powerful Newtype (which increases both the range of and damage done by Psycommu weapons), making it a reliably useful though expensive unit in any game where it appears.
- The Full Power Gundam Phoenix is a deliberately overpowered Mobile Suit that has a healing factor thanks to Nanoskin, has I-fields (depending on the game), comes equipped with weapons that allow it to fight at any range (with the Feather Funnels becoming more powerful and far-reaching the higher the pilot's Awakening stat) and has both decent health and armour in addition to high evasion and movement. The Phoenix Gundam that players will normally start with can be evolved into the Full Powered version, but that is often a long, tough slog since the Phoenix can quickly be outstripped by many protagonist units. However, it's generally worth it. Trying to purchase a brand-new one is often incredibly expensive, though.
Valkyria Chronicles, a hybrid of third-person shooter and turn-based-tactics game, features a boss fight against the Marmota, an imperial Base on Wheels referred to as a "land dreadnought," with several machine gun turrets and a battery of four battleship cannons. Similar to the real-life Landkruizer Ratte, it was intended to be merged with the most powerful weapon ever made in a bid to control all of Europa: the Valkof, a huge (big enough to be Hidden in Plain Sight as a "space needle"-style building) Wave-Motion Gun left behind by the series' Abusive Precursors.
Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate has the Terminator squad. These guys aren't available until you reach a certain point in the campaign and even then only non-hero Ultramarines who earned a Crux Terminatus award can be made a Terminator. They can't run and they can't crouch plus they're bulky. They also have an additional balancing penalty in that only one Terminator can field an assault cannon and only one Terminator can use the heavy flamer. But when they're on the field, Chaos forces are doomed. Termies have triple the armor of the already tough Space Marine and are likely at least Champions in experience level. A starting Termie gets a power fist and storm bolter, this combo alone makes them superior to every marine and hero you have except possibly the Librarian and a marine with a multi-melta. A Termie with an assault cannon can wipe out the map by himself.
Warhammer 40,000: Gladius has a heavy or superheavy final unit for each faction. These include the Astra Militarum's Baneblade, the Necron's Tesseract Vault, Chaos's Defiler and etc. While each are capable of being mass-produced, they use a large amount of resources and depending on the faction is either in the final or 2nd last tier of research. Additionally some are only available from paid DLCs. For their respective faction, these are the most durable and damaging units plus they often have powerful unique abilities.

Non-game examples:

Anime & Manga

Gundam: Thanks to being such a long-running franchise, there are a lot of these, far too many to list here. A few generalisations are possible:
- Gundams nearly always fall under these, thanks to often being Super Prototype machines. The original RX-78-2 Gundam, for example, was a game-changer in-universe. Its Luna Titanium armour (later renamed Gundarium in its honour) made it impervious to the 120mm ammo used by the mainline battle Mobile Suit the Zaku II, it could function easily in space, on Earth or underwater (and even had systems that allowed it to survive atmospheric reentry), and had thrusters powerful enough it could fly up and attack aircraft in melee. Its beam rifle gave it the equivalent power of a battleship, and the beam saber could cut through just about any armour. It also came with a learning computer that stored the pilot's combat data, allowing the Gundam to adapt itself to the pilot's style. In addition, it could also purge the upper and lower torso thanks to the Core Block system, allowing the pilot and precious combat data to escape. Naturally, all of these features made mass-producing the Gundam unfeasible, and so nearly all of them were cut when developing the much more economical GM (most notably, they only used regular titanium for armour, with only their shields made of Luna Titanium).
  - That said, not every Gundam is one of these even in-universe. There were several Gundams-in-name-only machines that were deliberately designed to resemble the RX-78-2 to take advantage of its fearsome reputation (e.g. Aqua Gundam was merely a slightly more powerful Aqua GM with a Gundam-style head, the Ground Combat Gundams were likewise slightly improved Ground Combat GMs with Gundam-style heads). Even protagonist machines like the Zeta Gundam aren't necessarily Super Units: while powerful and advanced, the Zeta's contemporary machines were fully capable of keeping up with it (compared to how the original Gundam was a quantum leap in MS development). In fact, in Zeta Gundam it was actually a plot point that the Gundam Mark-II was only a slight improvement over the original Gundam, despite a 7 year difference in-universe.
- Gundam Wing: The five titular Gundams (Wing Gundam, Gundam Deathscythe, Shenlong Gundam, Gundam Sandrock and Gundam Heavyarms) are all but unbeatable in the early half of the series thanks to their armour making them practically indestructible to most forms of ammo. In addition, their equipment (e.g. Wing's Buster Rifle, Deathscythe's stealth systems, Heavyarms' armament) meant they could overwhelm their enemies with almost contemptuous ease. They were deliberately overpowered, their designers believing that one super unit would be more effective than a squad of less powerful ones. That's why each of the five Gundams could operate pretty much independently, though as the series went on and technology advanced they lost their tech advantage. The undisputed Super Units of the series are the Wing Gundam Zero and the Gundam Epyon, both fully capable of destroying entire space colonies solo.
- Mobile Armours are designed to be force multipliers, and generally a Super Prototype will be deployed in a series. Sometimes, they'll also get mass-produced. In the original Gundam, several M As were faced by the Gundam (e.g. the Zakurello, the Brau Bro), but the Ur-Example is probably the Byg Zam. Thanks to its i-field, it was completely immune to beam weaponry (such as the ones equipped on warships), and its multiple beam cannons (along with the main mega particle cannons) meant that it could fly into a fleet, unleash its firepower, and then move on after leaving said fleet nothing but wreckage. Dozle Zabi hoped to mass-produce it, boasting that such a feat would guarantee Zeon's victory, but it had several flaws that caused Zeon to drop the idea (chief among them was the fact that the i-field generators and all the other specialised equipment generated so much heat the Byg Zam could only fight for about 20 minutes before having to retreat to cool down).
- Occasionally, giant Mobile Suits that can transform into Mobile Armours appear. The first of these was the Psyco Gundam ^note, which could transform from a Mobile Fortress mode that allowed it to fly into a 40 meter tall Mobile Suit armed with beam cannons built into its fingers, chest and head. Likewise, the Destroy Gundam was a 38 meter tall Mobile Suit that could convert into a Mobile Armour mode that granted it the ability to hover at low altitude (thus improving mobility). Its sole purpose is to destroy, with enough firepower to level a city like Berlin in a matter of minutes. These types of machines are explicitly Super Units even in-universe: their primary function is to overwhelm their enemies with superior firepower, but the cost involved in building them means that if they're damaged to the point repairs aren't possible (or worse, if they're outright destroyed), then it's often a huge setback to the faction fielding them. ^note
Code Geass has Knightmare Frames of all sorts, with the first Britannian Knightmares being this in-and-of themselves, capable of running roughshod over the Japanese army's tanks like a team of linebackers bowling into a Little League team. As Knightmare Frames became more commonplace on the battlefield, other units would stand out for their ability to make quick work of rank-and-file Sutherlands, Glasgows, and Burais. The two most notable such units are Britannia's Lancelot (later upgraded to the Lancelot Albion) and the Black Knights' Guren MK-II (later upgraded to the Guren SEITEN). The Lancelot is a heavily experimental high-performance unit outfitted with cutting-edge equipment that made it a one-man army, while the Guren MK-II is an exceptionally agile Knightmare that can run circles around other units before using its Radiant Wave Surger to One-Hit Kill its target.
Heavy Object is set In a World… where power creep has replaced conventional armies with Technodrome-esque land battleships, the titular Objects. Warfare in the setting revolves around the idea that only an Object can stop another Object (they can even shrug off direct hits with nuclear weapons), and lesser military units are simply swept away beneath their power, as Objects routinely dump enough energy per-shot that a miss can cause earthquakes. The protagonists are the "Dragon Slayers," a group of soldiers who accidentally proved that Objects can be infiltrated and brought down from the inside while on a self-imposed mission to rescue their pilot.
Parodied with the Great Golem from Slayers Next, which was a Magitek Humongous Mecha armed with a powerful laser beam cannon. The royal family of the nation who discovered it (in one of their castle turrets) certainly thought it was one of these, but due to centuries of neglect, its first test-firing tore it to peices.
86 EIGHTY-SIX introduces the Legion's new unit "Morpho" in Volume 3, a high-speed giant train-based weapon armed with a devastating 800mm railgun that has a range of over 400 kilometers that would allow it to bombard a nation's capital and rapidly move away to avoid retaliatory strikes. Much of Volume 3 revolves around a multinational operation involving three armies to box in the Morpho and launch a special strike team to destroy the machine. Future volumes reveal that this was far from a unique weapon: in Volume 4, a second Morpho under construction is found half-complete after a Legion Weisel mobile factory is seized, and in Volume 8 another Morpho is placed in an oceanic offshore platform to bombard an island nation to oblivion. It gets even worse in Volume 11 which reveals the Legion have another 6 Morphos under construction.

Comic Books

The World-Devastators from the Dark Empire series combines a Planet Destroyer with an automated, self-modifying Mobile Factory to create the mechanical equivalent of Shub-Niggurath. A World-Devastator would locate a planet and begin to stripmine it for resources to churn out hordes of droid TIE fighters, eventually producing another World-Devastator. They're deployed in fleets, not for protection, but because just one can't eat a planet fast enough for the resurrected Emperor Palpatine's liking. They can withstand an entire enemy fleet hammering on them all day, and are finally destroyed by R2-D2 hacking them and telling them to eat each other. They are swiftly made obsolete by the activation of the Galaxy Gun.

Films — Live-Action

The climax of Casshern has the villain Burai unleash a giant robot armed with an absolutely X-Box huge MLAS Arm Cannon to solo the Eurasian Federation army attacking his castle. Once its battle-clock has wound down enough, it detonates the nuclear bomb inside of it, wiping them out and destroying the fortress.
Star Wars:
- The Death Star from Star Wars: A New Hope is a moon-sized, nearly indestructable starship so big it can only be called a "space station," built to solo an enemy fleet and zap their homeworld with a planet-busting Wave-Motion Gun. The Empire was planning to hinge its utter domination of the Galaxy on the threat of using it on rebellious planets. It has the critical weakness of an exhaust pipe that leads directly to the main power plant (which was, according to Rogue One, done deliberately because its designer was horrified at his work being used for evil, and accordung to Death Star, done by accident because it was built from cockeyed plans by angry slaves), allowing a single Space Fighter to blow it up with the kind of ordinance intended for use on other starfighters-if they can get close enough, dodge all its defense turrets and fighter squads, locate and fly down the right trench, and shoot a teeny-tiny target, all while trying not to get blown into space junk. The one in Return of the Jedi is bigger, badder, and can use its planet-busting main gun to snipe enemy ships right through their Deflector Shields several times in a row.
- The First Order's Dreadnought-class Star Destroyers from the sequel trilogy (specifically The Last Jedi) are built to be mass produced Death Stars; one for each planet in the New Republic. Poe Dameron explicitly calls them out as "Fleet-Killers." The entirety of the New Republic fleet spends 99% of TLJ running the heck away from just one of them.

Literature

The Bolo series features self-aware tanks fully capable of defending entire planets from enemy invasion fleets by themselves. However, they're a bit too effective, as several enemy fleets decide to just nuke them from orbit rather than try to fight them.
Parodied along with Planet Spaceship in ARRR Roberts' Star Warped (a parody of Star Wars), which has the Imperial Empire of the Imperium build a fleet of "Super Mega Big-Bucket Star Cruisers" which are "the size of a small city and bristling with weapons;" the star-nation eschewing smaller ships entirely. Consequently, they're so big they take a whole week to turn around, and can therefore be outmanouvered by smaller craft. The Imp-Emp-Imp (yes, really) decide to change tack entirely, employing Zerg Rushes of starfighters, which have their own problems. This is to reflect the SW's Empire's love of big showpeices like the Super Star Destroyers from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and reliance on fighter swarms to protect them from more reasonably-sized vessels. Their Expy of the Death Star (the Death Spa) is a joke as well, but a more straight example. Instead of a Planet Destroyer, it fires a Mind Control ray that forces the population to excersize-but most citizens are so unhealthy it acts as a Depopulation Bomb.
The Jedi Academy Trilogy climaxes with a battle between a half-completed third Death Star (actually a test bed for a prototype version of the original Death Star's superlaser) and the Sun-Crusher, a starfighter with Armor of Invincibility and star-popping plasma torpedoes, and both of them fall into a black hole while ineffectually shooting at each other with neither superweapon able to harm the other.

Toys

Transformers: Since Transformers is primarily about war ("Autobots wage their battles to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons", after all), this sometimes comes up throughout the franchise. This is normally undercut by the fact nearly all named Transformers are unique characters (thus voiding the "these don't have much in the way of a personality" angle mentioned in the description for this trope), there are still some examples:
- As a group, the combiners are meant to be this, being gestalt beings created from several regular Transformers. Being Merchandise-Driven, sometimes this results in Badass Decay: the first ever combiner Devastator was initially portrayed in The Transformers as being The Juggernaut, and even treated as a terrible threat in Transformers: The Movie (despite the fact that in season 2 of the cartoon several characters were introduced who could match him, including other combiners). By the time of the third season, he was once defeated by Perceptor, the Autobot chief scientist, with a single shot. ^note
- The Guardian Robots (aka GADEP) are mass-produced versions of the Autobot Guardian Omega Supreme. In some media (e.g. The Transformers, Transformers: Energon), Omega is treated as simply being a member of the Guardians, The Last of His Kind, or even their leader. In others like The Transformers (Marvel), Omega is built on Earth completely independent of the Guardians. In any universe where they appear, the Guardians are treated as the biggest military threat faced by the Decepticons at the beginning of the war (due to their sheer size and power), and it's their defeat that causes the Autobots to realise that they'll have to take up arms themselves.
- Transformers: Super-God Masterforce introduced the Godmasters, who were (prior to the introduction of the Thirteen Original Primes) the most powerful Transformers in existence barring Uni cron. Among other things, their command of Chokon Power ^note granted them the ability to use Elemental Powers (Ginrai had a fondness for fire and lightning, while Overlord had a preference for wind) as well as the ability to regenerate from almost any injury near-instantly. The presence of even one of the Godmasters would've swung the Great Offscreen War between the main Autobot and Decepticon forces in space in their factions' favour, but luckily at the end of the series when the Godmasters and their comrades left Earth their power had been greatly reduced thanks to events of the finale. In fact, God Ginrai, the mightiest of the Godmasters, was killed off in the sequel series with comparative ease by Deathsaurus.

Webcomics

Invoked in Girl Genius. Many "Sparks" certainly think their first invention is this, and try to solo the local warlord's private army with their all-conquering-whateveritis. They are usually swiftly and violently disabused of these notions, either because they didn't build something on par with a superweapon, or because they ticked off the fully-intelligent... thing... they just forced into tormented existence in a bout of reality-warping craziness. About one in a thousand or so actually succeed in their goal, and a good many more catch the attention of The Baron, who wants to see what fun little toys they can make under controlled conditions-at least, until they annoy him and get sent to work on one of his more dangerous projects or find themselves Strapped to an Operating Table.

Web Original

An April Fools joke made by Blizzard during the development of StarCraft II stated that Terran players would have the ability to merge their base structures into the TerraTron, a giant robot armed with a laser drill-firing Arm Cannon, and a lightsaber buzzsaw. The model was actually made, and forms the final boss of the "The Lost Viking" minigame of Wings of Liberty.

Tactical Superweapon Unit

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Examples:

Game examples:

Non-game examples:

Alternative Title(s): Super Unit

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Tactical Superweapon Unit

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Alternative Title(s): Super Unit

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