Mecha bay

The Mecha Bay is the Empire of the Rising Sun's vehicle production facility. It is responsible for manufacturing both ground vehicles and transforming mechas.

Overview
Like other Imperial structures, it is deployed from a Nanocore, giving it the capability to be built anywhere. But, it cannot be built on water, since some of the vehicles that it manufactures cannot move on water. Each mecha bay needs to be upgraded independently in order to build more advanced units. The tier of the mecha bay is indicated by a light on the top of the building.

It is equipped with repair drones, capable of repairing friendly forces nearby.

Tactics
Due to it being deployed from a Nanocore, it can be used to stage an assault near an unsuspecting enemy base by deploying near it, where it will not be seen as it assembles a strike force. But, on normal circumstances, it must be protected at all times inside a base to provide important units.

Since literally all of the Empire's air force is transformed from its Land and Naval forces, the Mecha Bay fills the same role as the dedicated Allied and Soviet Air Fields. To a certain extent, this is a bonus, as the Mecha Bay costs as much as an Allied or Soviet War Factory, but produces aircraft without the separate $1,000 of a dedicated airfield. The tradeoff for this is that when it is destroyed, the Empire loses the capability to build both Land units and Aircraft alike. This also slows production of both units as both types of units are part of the same build queue, instead of 2 separate queues.

Also, the upgrade system for Mecha Bays, Docks, and Dojos is likewise a double edged sword. In one sense, if you know you will only be producing lower tier units, i.e. for a tengu rush near your opponent's base, you can save money by not upgrading certain factories, spending the $3,000 needed to fully upgrade them only where you will actually produce the higher tier units. However, on the other hand, it is worth noting that when any of these structures is destroyed, you will have to not only pay for a replacement to be able to produce those units again, but you will also have to re-purchase the upgrades, as they do not transfer to any rebuilt factory.

With this in mind, and considering the cost of a fully upgraded Mecha Bay would be $5,000, losing one is as costly as losing your Construction Yard, yet the Mecha Bay lacks the health or the ability to pack up and avoid an assault. Thus, as noted above, defending these is imperative and destroying them if you're playing against the Empire is as effective from an economic standpoint as destroying their MCV, but the Mecha Bay is usually an easier target.

It is also worth noting that Mecha Bays and Imperial Docks can be deployed in forward positions even if you don't have any intention to produce units from them, for the sole purpose of using them to setup a forward repair point. However, this is fairly expensive. For the same $2,000, an Allied player could purchase a Prospector, a Multigunner Turret, an Engineer, and even a Multigunner IFV to transport the Engineer, creating roughly the same forward repair point that an enemy is much less likely yo focus on hitting than a lone, defenseless Mecha Bay.

Thus, when using either the Mecha Bay or Imperial Docks just for the repair capability, the Imperial Docks is much more cost effective, and can train a small group of Yari Minisubs for defense to give it some level of survivability. This works fairly well since Yari's, while weak, fill a defensive role surprisingly well, as they are immune to magnetic satellites and airstrikes while submerged, and they can be rapidly repaired by the Imperial Dock as they defend it. The units available to defend a Mecha Bay without technology upgrades are by contrast terrible in a defensive role.

Trivia

 * The kanji on the side of the building reads "日本工業", meaning "Japan Industries".