Service depot (Red Alert 2)

The service depot was a support structure used by the Allied and Soviet armies during the first and second iterations of the Third World War, with the purpose of repairing vehicles and certain aircraft.

Background
The purpose-built facility repaired friendly ground vehicles at a cost (proportional to the vehicle's damage) and remove terror drones. A service depot was also required to construct an MCV.

In a similar fashion, naval units could be repaired at the naval shipyard, although the amphibious transport could be repaired at the service depot as well. In both cases, repairs would stop if the commander runs out of resources.

The service depot was considerably more important to the Soviets than the Allies. In the absence of a Tech Outpost or Tech Machine Shop, it was the only way Soviet battlefield commanders could repair vehicles (unless the vehicles were self-repairing, such as elite units and Apocalypse tanks). The Allies could use an IFV with an engineer inside it to repair their ground units and remove terror drones at no extra cost to the commander.

By the third iteration of the war, Allied War Factories came equipped with repair drones, negating the need for service depots, while Soviets used the crusher crane.

Bugs

 * In Red Alert 2, there was a glitch where any vehicle (except for the Amphibious Transport) that stopped on the Service Depot but wasn't given the order to enter the depot for repairs was instantly destroyed. This was not present in Yuri's Revenge.
 * In Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge version 1.000, the Allied service depot was able to sell vehicles which were being repaired, but the Soviet one was not. Yuri's Revenge patch 1.001 disabled this ability. The ability was most likely a coding oversight, as the Allied service depot mostly inherited the code of the service depot from Tiberian Sun, and having a non-Yuri faction refunding units clashed with the idea of the grinder.

Changelog

 * Red Alert 2 patch 1.004: service depots can now assign rally points.
 * Yuri's Revenge patch 1.001:
 * Allied service depots can no longer sell vehicles
 * if a unit under repair at a service depot is chronoshifted to a new location, the vehicle will no longer be repaired remotely.

Cameos
Pre-release cameos, in order: alpha, beta.

In order: English, French, German, Korean, Chinese. Top row is Allied, bottom row is Soviet.

Trivia

 * An Allied service depot is seen in the main Soviet base in the mission Free Gateway. If the player destroys it, they will simply build another Allied service depot.