Tesla coil (Red Alert 2)



The Tesla Coil was a static defense weapon used by the Soviets in Great World War III and it's second iteration.� It used electric discharge and atmosphere ionization to shoot bolt's of lightning at enemy targets, either seriously damaging them or, in the case of infantry, reducing them to ash.�  As it's name implies, it was based off an original prototype created by famed inventor Nikola Tesla, with the GWWIII variation being an nearly perfect replication of a similar device of the same name used in World War II.

Pre-Great World War III
After the Allied victory in WWII, the world entered a long period of peace and tranquility.� Russia, as per the terms of their surrender at the hands of the western hemisphere, was forced to disarm much of it's former military power and was granted an Allied appointed leader in the form of Alexander Romanov.�  The USSR was not forced to lose all of it's weaponry however, as the Tesla coil and it's use on the Russian homefront still remained a strong fixture in the Red Army arsenal.�  Even after the Soviet Union's defeat, the coil remained a common sight around Soviet military installations.

During the years prior to GWWIII, as Premier Romanov was gearing up for his revenge on the capitalist west, the original Tesla coil's recieved several important upgrades that would keep them relavent and powerful in the modern battlefield.� One of these changes was the removal of the underground control bunker located underneath the base of the coil tower; in place of a human operator, modern Tesla coil's would make use of a computerized AI similar to those used in Soviet turrets and flak cannons.�  This was done to remove the "human weakness" of the original coils and, in the process, make them cheaper and easier to maintain.�

The second and even more important change involved the problem of the original towers power needs.� It was a well known fact that Tesla coils, when deprived of power, were rendered inert and useless; in order to combat this weakness, modern coil's had special input slots installed at the upper base of their "trunks."�  The purpose of these slots was to allow the energy imput of Tesla troopers, who would keep the coil charged even when there was no energy coming in from any other outside source.�

Aside from these two differences, the GWWIII version of the Tesla coil was essentially identical to the models used in WWII.

Great World War III
Tesla coil's were a common sight in the Soviet occupied states of the US during the inital invasion of America.� The military memory that the original coil's imprinted seemed run quite deep, as modern generals would often urge their troops to use extreme caution when engaging the coil's head on.�  The coil's were present in New York during the Soviet attempt to mind control the population via one of Yuri's psychic beacons, though the coil's met the same fate the psychic device did at that hands of an Allied strike force led by Agent Tanya.�  Tanya would go on to have a more up close and personal encounter with the coil's during her secret mission in Europe to disarm several Soviet nuclear missle camps.�  She would go on to note that her mission would have been nearly impossible without the help of Allied Spies to cut off the coil's power supplies, a statement that indicated the fear the coil's brought to the hearts of all Allied soldiers, even to� a heart as toughened as Tanya's.�

Tesla coil's were also present in Soviet Cuba, surrounding three missile silo's that threatened to destroy professor Einstein's chronosphere prototype and sabotage any chance for a quick end to the war.� The sheer destructive power of the coil's was one of the many obstacles the Allied forces had to circumvent in order to destroy the silo's and launch their chronosphere invasion of Moscow.

Great World War III (Second Iteration)
The Tesla coil would serve a valued purpose in the temporal re-start of the Third World War, albeit in a form that was much more benign to the Allies now that both the Eastern and Western hemispheres had a common enemy; that enemy being the Soviet traitor Yuri.� During the final stages of the new war, the once unthinkable sight of Allied Prism towers and Soviet Tesla coil's standing side by side became quite common, greatly symbolizing the strange alliance that had been garnered between the two former enemies.�  It should be noted though, that the means that made such a sight possible came via the extenisve reprogramming of Prism Tower and Tesla Coil targeting computers, a task that frustrated eastern and western technicians a great deal.