EMC

The EMC is a vehicle introduced in Earth Defense Force 5, created specifically for combating Erginus. The ability to call in an EMC as a support vehicle drop is exclusive to the Ranger, though any class can drive an EMC after it has been summoned.

Description
The EMC is a tracked tank chassis mounting an enlarged turret: to this is mounted a long arm ending in an emitter shaped like a satellite dish. The EMC can elevate and rotate its cannon to take aim at targets. The cannon, described as an "Atomic Ray Cannon," fires a light blue electrical beam similar in appearance to that fired by the Wing Diver's electroshock weapons.

Missions
The EMC is stated to be a rare and expensive new vehicle designed to take on powerful alien creatures, specifically Erginus: NPC dialog states that each EMC cost 100 million dollars to build. They are first encountered in the campaign in Mission 37 (36 in online mode due to the omission of the tutorial), where a force of ten are deployed to take down an Erginus which the EDF believed had been crippled by bombing raids. In the event, the creature had simply fallen asleep: while it put up a strong fight, the powerful EDF weapon proved quite effective against the creature and it was ultimately defeated. However, the EMCs proved ineffectual when a new creature, Archelus, entered the area, and the EDF was forced to withdraw.

In Mission 100 a further four EMCs are present as part of an EDF force tasked with stopping an army of monsters including several Erginus and Archelus.

Gameplay
The ability to summon an EMC is exclusive to the Ranger class, and as with his other vehicle requests, takes up his Equipment slot if used. The EMC's Reload Credit requirement is by far the highest of any vehicle in the game (starting at a ridiculous 108,000 without upgrades), to the point many early missions will end before the player ever has a chance to summon it. To slightly mitigate this, the EMC's reload credits start out 80% full at the start of a mission as opposed to 50% full for normal vehicles.

The EMC is a very large single-seat vehicle with only a single weapon, the Atomic Ray Cannon. It is slow-moving but surprisingly responsive, and like the Epsilon Armored Railgun, the slow turret speed is quite easily compensated for by performing coarse aiming corrections by rotating the hull, then using the turret for fine aim. It is fairly well-protected, though only about half as tough as a B651 Titan of similar level.

The EMC's Atomic Ray Cannon functions rather like the Wing Diver's Lightning Bow, save that it does not have a variable charge, does not suffer a degradation in accuracy towards the end of the burst, and does not pierce through enemies. It takes a short time for the emitter to "warm up" before the EMC starts firing, during which time the emitter will start to glow. It has an impressive-looking 7,000 ammunition, but the Atomic Ray Cannon fires in a 1,000-shot burst and so this only translates to 7 shots. One shot lasts around 16.6 seconds, during which time the player can move the turret to sweep the beam. Unlike similar weapons in previous games, getting out of the vehicle mid-burst will not cause the EMC to cease firing. The range is significant and the damage is high for the vehicle's level.

While the EMC is quite tall, it is not particularly hard to get on top of the vehicle: the best path to take is to jump onto the front mudguard of one of the rear track units (which requires a small step up: a kerb is sufficient), up to the platform at the back of the vehicle, then onto the small projection at the rear of the turret. From here it is easy to jump up to the turret roof. Like the EDF 5 Epsilon, the EMC's gun has a collision box and it is quite possible to walk right along it and even stand on top of the emitter.

Variants
All EMCs have a crew capacity of 1 and cost a minimum of 39,695 reload credits to deploy. They have a +600% bonus to the driver's item collection radius.

Trivia

 * The EMC is an obvious homage to the Maser Cannon first introduced in the 1966 Toho film The War of the Gargantuas, which subsequently became a recurring anti-kaiju weapon in the company's Godzilla films.
 * Because there is a safety rail on the EMC's rear platform, a character can ride the vehicle in this position without falling off. A character may fall through the railing of another player's EMC in online play due to connectivity issues, however.