Subscribe to download
Chronoshift APC Passengers

This simple mod allows you to safely chronoshift APCs containing infantry, or naval transports full of vehicles. This makes the Chronosphere significantly more useful, and worth building in more situations.

This mod will work in singleplayer missions, skirmish games and LAN multiplayer. It will also work fine in conjunction with mods that change the code/dll files, such as Modern Wall Building, Attack Move, Quality of Life Improvements, etc. However it will not be compatible with mods that edit units by modifying the rules.ini, such as Tesla Ships or Secret Superpower Aircraft.

********************************************

**** The Dangers of Chronoshifting ****

********************************************

Normally, chronoshifting APCs or transports will kill any passengers or cargo. This is caused by a single line in the rules.ini file, "ChronoKillCargo=yes".

Amongst the fan community the supposed justification for this is that the Chronosphere is experimental and dangerous. In one of the first tests, when Einstein made a ship disappear and then reappear, some of the crew were lost. (This was based on the urban legend of The Philadelphia Experiment, which has inspired several books and films.)

Presumably something similar is supposed to happen when APCs are chronoshifted; the process is safe for inanimate matter, but fatal for living people. But this idea ignores the fact that most vehicles have a driver or crew! When you blow up a tank a survivor emerges from the wreckage.

In real life tanks have several crew (at least a driver and a gunner), and a Cruiser obviously needs more than one sailor to pilot it and load and shoot its cannons. Chronoshifting never causes you to end up with an empty, uncontrollable ship or tank, or one that can drive but can't shoot. You can even chronoshift a Ranger, an open-topped car driven by one guy who is completely unshielded from the dangerous chrono energy.

The drivers and gunners of vehicles always survive chronoshifting, so there’s no good reason why APC passengers (or tanks in the cargo hold of a transport) should always be unlucky and suffer from a gruesome teleportation accident. So it's just a game mechanic, pure and simple.

********************************************

**** What was Westwood thinking? ****

********************************************

Presumably Westwood did this because they thought that teleporting a tank behind enemy lines would be a useful ability, but feared that teleporting an APC full of Engineers, Thieves or Tanyas would be too powerful and would unbalance the game.

(They clearly had a change of heart by later games. Tiberian Sun has Subterranean APCs that can appear in the middle of an enemy base, and in Red Alert 2 the Chronosphere can teleport 9 vehicles simultaneously, including transports full of infantry!)

Westwood’s mistaken belief that teleporting a single tank could be useful - and that teleporting a transport with passengers was too powerful - was probably caused by them still being in the mindset of original C&C (Tiberian Dawn), where tanks were slow, engineers instantly captured buildings, and bases were more compact and could only be accessed through one or two chokepoints.

By contrast, Red Alert is faster-paced and has more open bases, and engineers are not a threat. And although the Chronosphere is supposed to be the Allies' superweapon, it doesn’t synergise well with Allied units, as their strength lies in speed and numbers. Chronoshifting a single Light Tank, Medium Tank or Artillery into an enemy base isn't likely to accomplish much. The only Allied land vehicle with a decent damage output is the Chrono Tank, which ironically enough is able to chronoshift itself without a Chronosphere.

***************************************************************

**** Surely the Chronosphere isn't useless, though? ****

***************************************************************

The Allies are the faction that gets APCs, and special infantry with unique abilities such as spies, thieves, medics, mechanics, and Tanya (in singleplayer she is only available to the Allies), but in the unmodded game there's no way to use the Chronosphere in conjunction with them.

The Allies’ most powerful unit is the Cruiser, and its slow speed makes it a perfect candidate for chronoshifting. But many maps have no water, while others have only small lakes. You can surprise an enemy by shifting a Cruiser to a lake near their base, but building a $650 naval yard and a $2000 Cruiser (as well as spending $2800 on a Chronosphere and $500 to power it) is a very convoluted and expensive strategy on a landlocked map with no other naval options.

You can also chronoshift an MCV, place a barracks and churn out infantry within an enemy base. But that requires you to build a $1200 Service Depot, and a $2500 MCV. That’s a huge amount of time and money on top of the cost of the Chronosphere itself, and usually you’d be better off simply building ten Light Tanks, or seven Destroyers. Or, if you absolutely have to teleport something, it's more effective to build two or three Chrono Tanks.

Modding the game so that passengers and cargo can survive chronoshifting rectifies the Chronosphere's problems, and makes it properly synergise with the Allied arsenal and playstyle.

(By the way, if you're worried this gives an unfair advantage to the Allies, don't forget that the Soviets already have an invulnerable method of transporting infantry and vehicles: simply use the Iron Curtain on a Chinook or Transport!)