Dawn of the Tiberium Age is a mod for Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun that converts the game to a Crossover between Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn and Command & Conquer: Red Alert. The mod aims to stay as close as possible to the gameplay of the original games, with balancing fixes and gameplay improvements, while using the slightly more advanced modding and gameplay capabilities of the Tiberian Sun engine. All factions from Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert are playable, so you're able to for example have matches between Nod and Soviet or mix it up however you like.
The mod can be downloaded from its Mod DB profile here
and the official forum can be found here. Since Tiberian Sun has been released as abandonware, you don't require anything but the mod itself to be able to play: the vanilla game is not needed.
This game contains examples of:
- 11th-Hour Ranger: In the Soviet campaign Creeping Destruction, the Behemoth epic unit only joins your rank and becomes useable in the final mission Retribution.
- Action Bomb: Soviet M.A.D. Tanks, Demolition Trucks and Sea Mines. Step 1: Get close to the enemy. Step 2: Detonate. Survival is optional.
- Action Girl: Tanya is still one in the game.
- Adaptation Name Change: Two of the Allied ships from Red Alert have been renamed: Gunboat to Corvette and Destroyer to Frigate.
- Adapted Out: Due to the limitations of the Tiberian Sun engine, some units from Red Alert had to be removed: the Allies lost Thieves, Radar Jammers and both types of Gap Generators, the Soviets lost Chitzkoi, the Hind and the Iron Curtain, and both factions lost the Minelayers.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: An engineer raid can easily see half your enemy's base fall to you in one fell swoop.
- Amphibious Automobile: Amphibious Transports and the campaign-exclusive GDI Hover MLRS and Nod Chemical Hovercraft can float over land and water alike.
- Angry Guard Dog: Soviet Attack Dogs are able to maul infantry to death.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Only one Commando, one Hijacker, one Cyborg Prototype, two Chrono Tanks, one Enforcer, one M.A.D. Tank, one Behemoth, one Project 941, one Illuminator, three A-10 Warthogs or runways for them, three SS-22N Nuke Launchers (unlocked by the Civil Tech Center) or three railgun Mammoth Tanks (exclusive to the Cloaked Twilight co-op) can be built at a time, despite being not one-of-a-kind in the lore.
- Arbitrary Weapon Range: Land artillery and the Behemoth have a minimum range which means that destroying them is going to be easy if you get close enough and these vehicles have nothing defending them.
- Art Evolution: In version 1.20, the Chem Warrior and Shock Trooper were given new, heavier-looking graphics to make it clear that they are uncrushable.
- Awesome Personnel Carrier: Notably the campaign-exclusive Phase Tank, which is invisible, armed with missiles effective against aircraft, and can transport five infantry units, one of which is designated to be Tanya in the mission River Raid where it's a controllable unit.
- Baseless Mission: Wouldn't be an RTS without at least a few missions where you don't have control over a base.
- In the campaigns there are: The Breakthrough (The Toxic Diversion 2), Down Under (Sarin Gas 2), Exterminate! (It Came From Red Alert! 3), plus the following ones in Creeping Destruction: Investigation (1), Pulverizing (3) and Flight Through the Wasteland (7).
- Single player standalone missions have Reunification and Stealthy Inhibition. Co-op missions have Lesson in Blood, Double Team and Disguised Manipulation (all 2-player).
- Base on Wheels: The Enforcer is a rolling fortress holding heavy MG positions and rocket troopers inside its massive armour. When deployed, its back compartment turns into a fully functional barracks.
- Beast of Battle: In the third Toxic Diversion mission, Nod might send some Visceroids (which are normally uncontrollable hostile wild 'animals') against you.
- Beef Gate: In some maps, there are big resource fields guarded by very strong hostile units (like the Visceroid swarm in the huge Tiberium field in Defunct Combat Platform, or the Visceroids and Floaters guarding the blue Tiberium field in Downtown Warfare), which means that sending your harvesters in there early before you get sufficient units is a quick way to destroy them (and your own economy with them).
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: All of the Giant Ants are as big as a light tank.
- Blob Monster: A Visceroid is essentially a single, massive cell, conducting locomotion via pseudopods.
- Booby Trap: The Allies can plant land mines around their base to blow up unsuspecting attackers.
- Breath Weapon: Fire Ants and Chemical Ants spew their fire and poison from their mouths.
- Bug War: The 'It Came From Red Alert!' campaign and 'It Came For DTA!' co-op missions, which put you against the Giant Ants.
- Civil Warcraft: In The Experiment Lab co-op mission, you're free to choose your side, so this trope will be played straight if at least a player selects Nod (the same side as the enemy). The Conversion and The Rain of Death (two of the possible final missions of the Toxic Diversion campaign) are highly downplayed examples: as a recent defector from GDI, you start in possession of two GDI Medium Tanks and a Rocket Launcher, but when you join the Brotherhood (failing to do so will cause the mission to end in defeat), they provide a Nod MCV and you'll spend most of the mission controlling a Nod force.
- Color-Coded Armies: In the campaign, the default colours for each side are gold for GDI, blue for the Allies, red for Nod and the Soviets. In the Creeping Destruction campaign, where most missions are Soviets vs Nod, the Nod forces are coloured metallic instead of rednote .
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The AI builds multiple of the same unit type at once if it has multiple of the same factory types, starts with more money, has cheaper units and does not respect the build limits of heroes and epic units. Since the AI is rather stupid and weak, these cheats allow it to become a bigger threat.
- Creator Cameo: In the Deceptive Wonderland skirmish map, there's a unique tech building called Rampastring's Next-Generation Modding HQ, named after a co-creator of the mod.
- Crew of One: After hijacking any vehicle by sneaking in and killing the crew, a Hijacker will instantly be in complete control of the hijacked vehicle. In the Car Park map (where there are a substantial number of empty vehicles and two Civil Tech Centers that unlock Drivers for you), you only need one Driver to commandeer a vehicle.
- Crossover: Gameplay-wise, all factions from Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert are playablenote , so there could be GDI and Allies vs Nod and Soviet matches or any other possible combination. In terms of the included scenarios, the Creeping Destruction campaign is mostly a Soviet vs Nod story ending on Soviet vs GDI and the Desperate Grip standalone mission is Allies vs Nod (though the description implies your forces are GDI repurposing an old Allied base).
- Cyborg: Volkov, the cybernetic Hero of the Soviet Union. A Cyborg Prototype serves as Nod's Hero Unit in Enhanced mode.
- Deadly Disc: GDI Disc Launchers magnetically propel explosive discs that hit the first target they reach.
- Deadly Gas: Toxic gases are used by Nod Chemical Warriors, the campaign-exclusive Nod Chemical Hovercraft and the Experiment Lab-exclusive Chemical Mammoth Tank. In the It Came For DTA! missions, capturing an ant hive will cause the Engineer to gas it and the Giant Ants inside.
- Death from Above: All sides have access to one or two types of aircraft that can generally make the enemy's life a living hell if used properly.
- Defenseless Transports: Chinook Transports, Soviet Heavy APCs, Nod Stealth APCs and all non-Soviet amphibious transports have no weapons to defend themselves.
- Defog of War: Infiltrating an enemy radar will reveal shroud around all units and structures of the player that owns the radar you infiltrated.
- Demoted to Extra:
- The Nod Microwave Tank and Harbinger, though since replaced as buildable units by the Heavy Raider and Illuminator, can still be found in crates.
- The Soviet Ekranoplan Aircraft Carrier, which was replaced by the Lun Ekranoplan, has been turned into a secret unit that can be built by owning a GDI A-10 Runway in addition to a Soviet Submarine Pen and Tech Center.
- Zigzagged with the Allied Phase Tank, also called Phase Transport. In the original game it was a campaign-exclusive unit. In earlier versions of DTA, it used to be a regular buildable unit until replaced by the Tank Destroyer, but you still get to use it in the River Raid mission, so it could be said that it was demoted to the same role that it had in original game: a special singleplayer-only unit.
- Dressing as the Enemy: Allied Spies always appear as rifle infantry wearing enemy house colours.
- Drone Deployer: The Aircraft Carrier attacks by sending drones to bombard enemy units from afar.
- Dual Mode Unit:
- Mobile Sensor Arrays need to deploy into an immobile mode to work.
- The Soviet Project 941 normally can move underwater, but needs to surface and deploy into a stationary mode to attack.
- Deploying a GDI Aircraft Carrier turns it from a long-ranged artillery ship into what is essentially a Runway on the water, capable of building, reloading aircraft and seeing invisible foes but not attacking or moving.
- Deploying the Allied Enforcer turns it from a moving fortress into an immobile, fully functional Barracks.
- When mobile, only one of a Cruiser's three cannon batteries is operational. Deploying into the stationary combat-ready form allows the Cruiser to bring all cannon batteries to bear.
- The Nod Laser Corvette can divert energy to its cloaking systems, turning itself invisible but reducing its attack range.
- Allied Frigates can also change into an immobile form to activate their sensor arrays.
- Earthquake Machine: When deployed, a M.A.D. Tank unleashes an earthquake capable of devastating vehicles and structures.
- Electric Jellyfish: Tiberium Floaters, which resemble jellyfish, are capable of generating a deadly electric field.
- Enemy Exchange Program: Standard for Command & Conquer games, you can use Engineers to capture enemy buildings and train their units. Nod Hijackers can do this to a lesser degree by entering and hijacking enemy vehicles.
- Enemy Mine: In the Toxic Diversion campaign, if you get betrayed by GDI, Nod will offer you an alliance against GDI, and you must accept in order to simply survive (if you do not, the final mission ends after 2 minutes in a defeat).
- The Engineer: Engineers can repair bridges, friendly buildings and capture enemy buildings.
- Escort Mission: In the 7th Creeping Destruction mission Flight Through the Wasteland, you have to escort yourself (represented by a Mobile HQ unit) through a desert controlled by Nod.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Soviet Attack Dogs can sniff out enemy spies and slaughter them without the need of player input.
- Faction Calculus:
- On land, we have: GDI (Balanced), Nod (Subversive), Allies (Cannons) and Soviets (Powerhouse). The Soviets and GDI are both powerhouse factions in their original games, but the Soviets rely more on expensive heavy vehicles than GDI does. Nod prefers to make use of stealth and speed over raw firepower or durability. The Allies are in between Nod and GDI, they start out with light units but bring more firepower to bear with their tier 3 units.
- On water, it is different: GDI (Powerhouse), Nod (Cannons), Allies (Balanced) and Soviets (Subversive). Most Soviet ships are submarines (as well as a rather squishy capital ship) capable of sneaking into position, and by the time they appear before the enemy, it is too late. Nod ships are the cheapest and fastest in the game, but this comes at the cost of low durability. Both GDI and the Allies fulfil the role of a powerhouse faction on water, although Allied ships are slightly cheaper and weaker.
- False Flag Operation: The Nod co-op mission Disguised Manipulation. You're tasked with hijacking a few GDI A-10 Warthogs and using them to bomb a nearby civilian shopping centre, causing the local population to become furious towards GDI.
- Fire-Breathing Weapon: Used by Nod Flamethrowers and Flame Tanks as well as Soviet Flamethrowers and Flame Towers.
- Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon: Most artillery don't have a turret and must turn the whole vehicle to aim at different enemies.
- Fragile Speedster: GDI Hum-Vees, Nod Buggies, Recon Bikes, Light Tanks, Stealth Tanks and Scarab Speedboats, Allied Rangers, Light Tanks and Chrono Rangers, and all aircraft. They are designed to be fast harassers not so capable of receiving damage.
- Fusion Dance: Two weak and harmless baby Visceroids can merge to form a bigger and much more dangerous adult Visceroid.
- Game Mod: Of Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, though it has since become standalone after the original game became freeware.
- Gas Mask Mooks: Chemical Warriors kind of need these to protect themselves from their own weapons.
- Gathering Steam: A Lun Ekranoplan starts off slow-moving but can accelerate to great speeds if given enough time, matching the speed of even Nod ships.
- Gatling Good: The X-O Powersuit uses a gatling gun to mop up infantry.
- Glass Cannon: Land artillery (except the Behemoth), Chrono Tanks, Tesla Tanks, Missile Cruisers and Missile Subs can wreck enemy units and buildings from afar but need to be protected due to their low hit points.
- Grenade Launcher: GDI Grenade Launchers are equipped with grenade launchers; compared to normal Grenadiers, they have a longer range, fire faster, deal more damage (other than against infantry), but are much more expensive and require higher tech. The Commando gains a grenade launcher when promoted to Elite rank, increasing his effectiveness against vehicles.
- Guns Akimbo: Tanya dual wields two pistols.
- Heal Thyself: The Cyborg Prototype and Volkov (at elite rank) can heal themselves when standing on a tiberium, ore or gem field.
- Hero Must Survive: In missions where you feature as a controllable unit (as the Commander in the first two Toxic Diversion missions, or the Mobile HQ in the 7th Creeping Destruction mission), letting yourself get killed results in an automatic Game Over.
- Hero Unit: In classic mode, GDI and Nod have the Commando, the Allies have Tanya, and the Soviets have Volkov. In Enhanced mode, Nod replaces the vanilla Commando with a Cyborg Prototype. In singleplayer missions, there are additionally the Commander (the Player Character that appears in some missions in the Toxic Diversion campaign), the Mobile HQ (which represents the Player Character of the Creeping Destruction campaign in its 7th mission), Stavros and the Queen Ant (who leads the Allied taskforce and the Giant Ants respectively in the final It Came From Red Alert! campaign).
- Hit-and-Run Tactics: Many Nod units fit this role due to exceptional speed, light armour and respectable damage.
- Hold the Line: In The East Asian Front, you're tasked with preventing Soviet forces from advancing south, past a designated friendly guard post.
- Insect Queen: The Queen Ant, which is found deep inside the main Giant Ant hill (which is unsurprisingly filled with her offspring), in a room full of larvae and guarded by Warrior Ants.
- Jack of All Stats: A Behemoth or SSM Launcher can take on just about anything (even aircraft) if handled properly.
- Jump Jet Pack: The campaign-only GDI Railgun Infantry float over the ground, apparently with a booster backpack.
- Kill It with Fire: Flamethrowers, Flame Towers and Flame Tanks use flamers; A-10 Warthogs drop firebombs; the Cyborg Prototype, Sea Shadows and Behemoths fire napalm munitions.
- Kill Sat: The GDI Ion Cannon, which is fired from a satellite in orbit.
- Large and in Charge: The Queen Ant is easily the biggest Giant Ant around.
- Lightning Gun: Soviet Tesla Coils, Shock Troopers and Tesla Tanks are capable of discharging bolts of electricity effective against all ground units.
- Limited Loadout: All aircraft except the unarmed Transports only have a limited amount of ammunition and must reload at a Helipad, Runway or deployed Aircraft Carrier once it runs out.
- Macross Missile Massacre: The Soviet Lun Ekranoplan and Project 941 attack by launching a barrage of missiles.
- Magnetic Weapons: Railguns are used by the GDI X-O Powersuit, and Railgun Infantry and the Commander in the Toxic Diversion campaign. The Mammoth Tanks in the GDI co-op mission Cloaked Twilight also have railguns in place of their normal cannons.
- Mercenary Units: Capturing a neutral Civil Tech Center in the skirmish map Tiber grants access to the special SS-22N Nuke Launcher. In Car Park, the Civil Tech Center also unlocks the Driver, which is needed to capture the numerous empty vehicles in said map.
- Mini-Mecha: The GDI X-O Powersuit is a walker twice as tall as a human.
- Mobile Factory:
- The MCV's purpose is to build other structures.
- Deploying the Aircraft Carrier turns it into a Runway, allowing it to produce and resupply aircraft.
- Molotov Truck: Demolition Trucks, which are used by the Red Alert factions, contain nukes.
- Mook Maker: The Civil Naval Yards in the skirmish map Tiber constantly spawn Civil Gunboats, hostile to all players, until destroyed. Ant nests in the It Came For DTA! missions also constantly spam all kinds of Giant Ants until captured (gassed) by an Engineer.
- Mook Medic: The sole purpose of Allied Medics is to heal infantry, while Allied Mechanics and Nod Mobile Repair Vehicles repair vehicles. In Enhanced mode, all factions have access to mobile repair ships.
- Multiple Endings: The Toxic Diversion campaign has 4 different end missions (each of which corresponds to one ending) depending on what you did or did not do in the first 3 missions (namely destroying the Bio Research Lab in mission 1, choosing to save the civilians or the GDI outpost in mission 2, and fighting the civilians or not in mission 3note ).
- Multiple Life Bars: When a Cyborg Prototype's health bar is depleted, he's given a second chance, losing his legs but healing a small amount of HP. While the Cyborg Prototype can self heal, lost legs can never be restored.
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Nintendo Hard: You have been warned. This mod is difficult to the point that most players who played the tutorial have actually died in it; and that's before getting into the harder missions like the later part of the Creeping Destruction campaign. - No Experience Points for Medic: Units only gain experience by killing enemies, so unarmed support units can never be promoted.
- Non-Combat EXP: An infantry unit that enters a Civil Tech Center (in the skirmish map Tiber) will automatically get promoted to elite.
- Not Playing Fair With Resources: The cost of all AI-controlled units is reduced to around 60%.
- One-Hit Kill:
- Any infantry mauled by an Attack Dog or crushed by a vehicle is instantly killed.
- Anything caught in the path of a train locomotive will immediately become roadkill.
- Commandos and Tanya can instantly blow up buildings with a C4 charge if they can get close to plant it.
- The Tank Destroyer is capable of destroying most vehicles in a single shot while staying out of their firing range, except the most heavily-armoured ones.
- One-Hit Polykill:
- The X-O Powersuit's railgun (which is also used by the Railgun Infantry and Commander in the Toxic Diversion campaign) deals damage to everything between it and its primary target.
- The Illuminator fires a giant ball of plasma that flies past enemies and deals damage until it reaches its target.
- One-Man Army: Volkov and the Cyborg Prototype (and to a lesser extent, Tanya and the GDI Commando) can wreak a lot of havoc when well-used and easily make up for their cost in kills.
- Original Generation: In Enhanced mode, all factions receive a few new units, including a navy for GDI and Nod (so they could fight the Allies and Soviets on equal footing in naval maps) and two new versions of Giant Ants.
- Playing with Fire: Fire Ants can set enemies on fire similar to flamethrowers, due to poorly understood chemical reactions within the ant.
- Poisoned Weapons: Nod Chemical Warriors are armed with poison sprayers. Nod Chemical Hovercraft and Soviet Chemical Mammoth Tanks fire shells filled with poison gas. Nod will also frequently throw chemical missiles at you in the Toxic Diversion campaign as well.
- Poisonous Person: Visceroids and Chemical Ants can expel a highly concentrated stream of poisonous gas at enemies.
- Powerful, but Inaccurate: Compared to the GDI Ion Cannon, Nod's and the Soviets' nukes affect a bigger radius, but have a delay between launch and impact that make it harder to target moving units with them.
- Protection Mission:
- In the final part of the first Toxic Diversion mission, Nod will launch an all out assault on your base which you must survive. In one of the possible final missions of the same campaign, you'll have to aid your Nod allies in protecting the Temple of Nod for 3 hours from GDI.
- Desperate Grip, where you have to protect your base for an hour and a half.
- The co-op mission Freezingly Desperate Grip tasks a team of three players with protecting the Chronosphere for 71 minutes.
- The 6th Creeping Destruction mission A Truly Desperate Grip involves protecting the Forward Command Center for 70 minutes.
- Chrono Hazard, whose second part involves defending the Chronosphere while trying to defeat the enemy.
- It Came For DTA! II, where three players must defend a city against an endless swarm of Giant Ants.
- Ray Gun: Nod is still a big fan of laser weapons. In addition, the Flak Hovercraft used by them in the Toxic Diversion campaign fire some kind of continuous blue beam.
- Recursive Ammo: The Sea Shadow fires a napalm missile straight up into the air which then splits and changes direction to hit the target.
- Remixed Level:
- The GDI mission Under Siege II, as its name would indicate, is a remake of the Nod mission Under Siege from Tiberian Dawn.
- The It Came From Red Alert! campaign is remade from the Giant Ant campaign of the same name in Red Alert: Counterstrike.
- The GDI campaign in Tiberian Dawn is remade as a series of two-player co-op missions (since the developers find it pointless to just remake them as solo missions when the original game's remastered version already exists).
- See the Invisible: Deployed Mobile Sensor Arrays, Laser Corvettes, Frigates and Aircraft Carriers are capable of detecting enemy invisible and subterranean units in a radius around them. Missile Cruisers and Submarines can deploy to create a brief burst of EMP, but it lasts for such an insignificant amount of time that its only purpose is to reveal enemy invisible ships.
- Separate, but Identical: The three types of basic infantry (Minigunner/Rifle Infantry, Rocket Soldier, Engineer), harvesters and amphibious transports used by all four factions differ from each other only by the cameo, taken from the game where their faction came from, the name (in case of TD Minigunners and RA Rifle Infantry, TD Tiberium Harvesters and RA Ore Trucks, and TD Hovercraft and RA Transports) and the voiceover; otherwise the versions used by different sides are all functionally identical. While the advanced infantry and vehicles usually avert this trope, there are still some notable examples: Allied and Nod Light Tanks, Soviet and Nod Flamethrowers and Chemical Warriors (the latter of which is only used in the campaign), GDI and Soviet Mammoth Tanks, GDI and Allied Medium Tanks (where both units look the same but are slightly different gameplay-wise), all Repair Ships (which all look differently but are identical gameplay-wise), GDI and Soviet Grenadiers, Allied and Nod Artillery and Phase Tanks, GDI and Allied APCs, and all factions' Mobile Sensor Arrays and Chinook Transports (where there's no cosmetic nor functional difference at all).
- Shock and Awe: Floaters, Tesla Ants and the Queen Ant can generate an electric current to discharge at enemies.
- Shout-Out:
- The cameo and design of the Soviet Repair Ship are based on the Caspian Sea Monster and the Lun-class ekranoplan respectively.
- The Sea Shadow is based on an American experimental stealth ship of the same name.
- Siege Engines: GDI Rocket Launchers, Hover MLRS, Missile Cruisers and Aircraft Carriers, Nod Artillery, Beam Cannons, SSM Launchers and Sea Shadows, Allied Artillery and Cruisers, Soviet V2 Rockets, Missile Subs, Lun Ekranoplans and the Project 941 outrange most base defences and are good against buildings.
- Silent Protagonist: The Commander unit representing yourself in the Toxic Diversion campaign, which appears in the first two missions, is not voiced.
- Sniper Rifle: The Commando uses one to kill enemy infantry from afar.
- Spawn Broodling: A soldier that falls victim to an adult Visceroid will become a baby Visceroid.
- Starting Units: All players start with an MCV, but building another one will take some time; except in Survivor mode, where the MCV is replaced by a Mobile HQ that can never be replaced, and whose loss equals being eliminated from the game.
- Stealth-Based Mission:
- The first part of River Raid involves sneaking an invisible Phase Tank carrying Tanya and four Rocket Soldiers past Soviet forces to destroy their power plants.
- In the second Sarin Gas mission Down Under, set in a sarin gas facility, you'll need to use spies to sneak past enemy soldiers, staying away from dogs, so they can clear the way for your other infantry (usually by remotely deactivating enemy Flame Towers or activating friendly Tesla Coils) towards their destination.
- Stealthy Colossus: The Soviet Project 941, a capital submarine, is submerged when not firing.
- Stealthy Mook: Nod Stealth Tanks, Stealth APCs and Phase Tanks (which can only be seen by stealth detectors if not directly next to another enemy unit), Allied Spies (who disguise as Rifle Infantry with enemy house colours and can only be automatically detected by dogs) and all Soviet submarines (obviously).
- Stone Wall: Harvesters are unarmed but capable of taking a beating before going down.
- Strategic Asset Capture Mechanic: Tech buildings (structures that cannot be built but are instead pre-placed on the map and can be captured by Engineers, and provide no build radius around themselves), which are supported by the Tiberian Sun engine but not used by the game itself, are now fully functional. In skirmish mode, the most common ones are the Oil Refinery (which provides a steady stream of income) and the Hospital (which infantry can enter to heal themselves to full); map-specific ones include the Civil Tech Center (which unlocks a special unit depending on the map), the Experiment Lab (which unlocks a special faction-specific unit), the Missile Silo (which provides access to nukes) and Rampastring's Next-Generation Modding HQ (which grants 13000 points of power and is guarded by four Obelisks of Darkness, very strong defensive structures that outrange artillery units and spawn an Aircraft Carrier when destroyed).
- Super-Toughness: Both cybernetic heroes are capable of taking far more punishment than normal human infantry can.
- Swirly Energy Thingy: Since the Chronosphere logic from Red Alert is not supported by the Tiberian Sun engine, the Chronosphere has been repurposed into an offensive superweapon that creates a chrono vortex to deal gradual damage in a huge area.
- Tactical Superweapon Unit: Epic units are very powerful, cost-effective and often provide unique utilities available nowhere else, but are also extremely expensive, limited at 1 per player (with two exceptions), and only available at the end of the tech tree:
- GDI has the X-O Powersuit (a powerful walker that can mop up most things on land). The A-10 Warthog (heavy bombers that can easily burn down grouped units and most buildings, cannot be built at Helipads and require their own dedicated Runways) is a downplayed example, being capped at 3 instead of 1.
- Nod has the Cyborg Prototype (a super soldier effective against most ground units who can heal himself) and the Illuminator (a surprisingly fast heavy tank armed with the only plasma weaponry in the game).
- The Allies have the Enforcer (a mobile bunker carrying soldiers wielding machine guns and rocket launchers that can deploy into a fully-functional Barracks) and another downplayed example in the Chrono Tank (a teleporting tank that can easily flank vehicles and bases, and is limited to 2 per player).
- The Soviets have Volkov (a cyborg super soldier), the MAD Tank (a vehicle that can generate earthquakes in a large area) and the Behemoth (a superheavy vehicle that can launch barrages of napalm shells). In naval maps, they also have the Project 941, a heavy submarine which can launch volleys of missiles to bombard buildings from very far away.
- Teleport Spam: The Allied Chrono Ranger, only available after capturing the Experiment Lab, is capable of teleporting around the map without any cooldown. Unlike the standard Chrono Tank, it can teleport instantly.
- Throw Down the Bomblet: No points for guessing the weapon used by GDI and Soviet Grenadiers.
- Universal Driver's License: Hijackers know how to drive and command most vehicles all by themselves.
- Unusable Enemy Equipment: Nod Flak Hovercraft only appear as enemies in some missions and are only controllable by the player if you get lucky from a goodie crate.
- The Usual Adversaries: No one else likes Nod, and all other factions get at least 2 missions where Nod is the enemy, including a whole campaign for the Soviets (who actually fight Nod more than they do their traditional nemesis, the Allies). In contrast, GDI only fights the Soviets in one mission (Retribution) and the Allies in none of them.
- Veteran Unit: Combat units can gain experience by killing enemies and get promoted once the total cost of their kills reach three (for Veteran ranks) and six (for Elite rank) times their own.
- Worker Unit: MCVs deploy into Construction Yards which serve to build other structures; Tiberium Harvesters and Ore Trucks harvest tiberium and ore and deliver them to Refineries for procession into money.
- You Nuke 'Em: The Soviets and Nod have access to nukes if superweapons are turned on, and in the Heart Attack skirmish map GDI and the Allies can use nukes as well from a neutral capturable Missile Silo. Soviet Demolition Trucks contain nukes, and the SS-22N Launcher unlocked by the Civilian Tech Centers fire mini-nukes.
- You Require More Vespene Gas: Credits (needed to build all units and buildings) would be gold. Power is, well, power: it is produced by power plants and required by many buildings; having power demand exceed power supply would result in production speed being slowed down, most base defences malfunctioning and superweapon cooldowns being put on hold.
