Shredder turret

The Shredder turret is Nod's basic counter-infantry turret in Tiberium Wars.

Overview
Firing a volley of high-powered anti-infantry shrapnel from its barrels, GDI InOps commented that the Shredder turret acted like a large shotgun. The shrapnel is powerful enough to penetrate any body armor, making it a good choice to protect the base from all sorts of enemy infantry, even well-armored ones like Zone Troopers.

Just like Nod's laser turrets, as long as the hub remains intact, destroyed turrets will be automatically rebuilt, should they be destroyed. However, damaged turrets need to be repaired manually, by repairing the hub.

Game structure
Shredder Turrets, like many Nod defenses, are composed of four parts: a central hub and three small turrets. The hub is placed first, and then the three small turrets are planted by the commander within a small radius around the hub. Whenever one of the small turrets is knocked out, the others still fire, and if the hub isn't destroyed, destroyed turrets will respawn after ten seconds. The Shredder Turret fires large shotgun-like slugs capable of doing exactly what the name suggests: shredding infantry.

In the Kane's Wrath expansion pack, the Black Hand and Marked of Kane sub-factions can upgrade their shredder turrets with Particle Beams or Supercharged Particle Beams, greatly increasing their firepower to the point where one Shredder Turret hub can do as much or more damage than even two unupgraded ones, and additionally makes them much more noticeably powerful against heavily armored infantry. Particle Beams also make them do some effective, though not good, damage to light vehicles and allow turrets to take out Scrin forcefields very quickly. Supercharged particle beams have no real difference in effect to Charged particle beams on turrets, except they simply fire faster. The second upgrade available to all Nod factions is the addition of a fourth turret placed on the hub itself.

It should be noted that Particle Beams do not actually improve the base damage of Shredder turrets, they actually drastically improve their accuracy and fire rate. In actual application however, since normal Shredder Turrets have a shotgun-like effect this basically gives the turrets a large firepower boost, as well as reducing the difference in their effectiveness between being used at shorter and longer ranges.

Drafting
In multiplayer, it is common to see players construct a Shredder Turret in the early game and sell it immediately. This grants them an infantry unit for a lower price than if they purchased them in the Hand of Nod. The Awakened are reduced to one squad member (from three) to compensate for this.

However, Confessor Cabals are drafted in full squad size - while they cost $400 from the Hand of Nod, building a Shredder Turret for $600 and selling it for $300 makes Confessor Cabals effectiely purchasable for $300. This, combined with their anti-infantry strength, makes them the most cost-effective (anti-)scout in the game, and this anomaly is considered overpowered for the Black Hand faction. The 1.02+ unofficial patch fixed this in Release 12.

Changelog

 * Tiberium Wars patch 1.05: turret hubs now appear unstealthed when their turrets fire while under the effects of a disruption tower
 * Kane's Wrath patch 1.01:
 * Marked of Kane Shredder turret hub can now fire when upgraded with quad turrets
 * Charged Particle Beam damage bonus decreased 60%
 * Supercharged Particle Beam damage bonus decreased 70%