Battle Bunker feature - C&C: Red Alert History mod for C&C3: Tiberium Wars

Name: Battle Bunker
ERA: Yuri's revenge
Side: Soviets
Cost: $1500

With the introduction of the Sentry gun and the Flak cannon, the Battle bunker is no longer as important a structure as it once was. However there are still occasions when it will be the best choice. The purpose of this article is to provide information about the Battle bunker that might help you to make the decision on whether you use it or not.

Basic information

1. The Battle bunker has no build requirements.
2. Requires no power, and is resistant to EMP.
3. Units inside are invulnerable from garrison clearing weapons.
4. Has more health than any other static defence.
5. Holds 3 Squads of infantry.

The Battle bunker having no build requirements (1) means that you can prepare a sturdy defence right from the beginning of the game. Why might you want to do this? well it might be to counter an enemy rush, for example if your enemy rushed your harvesting set-up with Terrorist, while the Sentry gun is decent at killing them, it has poor health and is very easy to destroy. A Battle bunker with 3 Conscript squads, while expensive, will easily deal with such a rush (it is assumed that your placement of the bunker is optimal in this case).

Another counter rush example is if your opponent has rush built aerial units (especially dangerous with the Allies and the P51 + Longbow combination). Having a bunker with a triple Flak squad set-up will wreck any attempt to harass your harvesting set-up, and it means that you do not have to worry about micromanaging Half tracks.

None of the tier 1 base defences (Allied or Soviet) require any power. Also the Flame tower too has EMP resistance (2), however at the very least this means that Tanya's EMP will have no effect on the Battle bunker, and also more importantly, the Proton upgraded Harbinger gunship will also have no EMP effect (very useful!).

As expected, infantry inside the Bunker are resistant to garrison clearing weapons (3), which is yet another layer of protection.

The Battle bunker is always a tough prospect to destroy (4). Providing the units inside are facing a unit that they excel against, you will almost always do better with a bunker based defensive set-up due to the health of the actual bunker.

The fact that it holds up to 3 squads of infantry (5) suggest a potential for variety that simply is not there.
Most Soviet units lack the attack range necessary to be useful. It almost always comes down to using 3 squads of Flak troopers, because they have the most range, and while they excel against aerial targets, they are also useful against infantry, and not terrible vs light vehicles. Main battle tanks are this set ups major weakness.

A very special exception is a Heroic Tesla trooper. When a Tesla trooper reaches 'HEROIC' rank it gets extra range (which makes it useful for the Battle bunker), and even better gets a chain Tesla weapon (the initial blast can hit an additional 2 targets). This is obviously a nightmare for enemy tanks.
However there are obviously other uses for a Heroic Tesla trooper for you to consider.

Update

Since Release 7 there has been another extremely specialised bunker option, Boris. Once again you would almost certainly get more out of Boris on the field, or in a Half-track, but in situations were it is convenient to put Boris in a bunker, his tremendous damage, as well as the fact that he can attack aerial units makes him a very powerful bunker addition.

In terms of tactical use, you might consider using the bunker as a safe way to rank Boris up. For example simply gaining 1 rank will double the attack power of his air-strike!, meaning that you can destroy a stronger static target in one air-strike.

This is certainly something to be considered.

Another benefit that a bunker set up has over standard static defences is the fact that the infantry inside will rank up from the kills they are making from inside the bunker. So while the initial set up can seem pricey, once the units start to rank up, the damage potential increases greatly.

Bunker bonuses

Here is a list of bonuses that infantry inside the Battle bunker get:

1. +30% damage.
2. +100% vision (standard garrison bonus. applies to any garrisoned building).
3. +50% Rate of fire.

As you can see, facing infantry attacks from within the bunker is a completely different prospect then from outside the bunker.

Allied

If playing a team game with the Allies, the bunkers usefulness increases greatly, due to the Allied Rocket squad and Sniper.
Place these units inside the bunker (it is possible for you to load your infantry into a team mates bunker), and you will be able to thwart all but the largest of low tier attacks!