The crusher crane is a multi-purpose Soviet structure in Red Alert 3. It functions as material recycler for the Soviet war machine, a stripped-down construction yard, and a vehicle repair center.
Background[]
One of the Soviet mantras is efficiency, and that word has developed into many things: among others are cheap labor, mass production, industrial plants and pure efficiency. During the early Soviet industrial development, the Soviets must deal with many defective, wrongly designed, or "undesirable" products. Simply disposing of them requires cost for the establishment of disposal grounds and landfills, and is very inefficient. Instead they begun recycling the undesirable, reprocessing them back to ore, the basic material, to create 'new' products, be it new rifles for Conscripts, shiny new rotors for a Twinblade, or tank armour to create the Apocalypse Tank. So thorough (and of course, efficient) of these thinking that the military brought them into the war, by introducing the crusher crane and, later, Grinders.
Game building[]
The Crusher Crane is a structure unique for the Soviets. The crane is basically one with crushing machinery surrounding it. The crushers grind any vehicle (non-infantry ground and naval units) and every vehicle that comes into contact, recycling them into Ore, which would be used to create another Soviet war machine. The cranes also behave similarly to a Construction Yard by adding another build queue, barring the ability to build copies of itself, and has three repair drones for friendly ground and naval vehicles, being the only Soviet source for them. Unlike a Construction Yard, the Crusher Crane is effectively immune to infiltrations from Spies and Shinobis, but can still be captured by an enemy Engineer.
In Uprising, the Crusher Crane and Super Reactor are both required to build Grinders.
Strategy[]
It should be built at the start of a level, even before a Reactor. When finished build a Reactor and a Barracks immediately, then 2 Ore Refineries simultaneously. Base defenses can also be built (be sure to build more Reactors for this). When no longer needed (when you have all structures up), it should be sold for cash. If you have lost your MCV though your Crusher Crane is still intact, you may use it to build a new MCV by building or having a War Factory or a Shipyard, then a new MCV.
Changelog[]
- Red Alert 3 patch 1.06: fixed an exploit with the Crusher crane where structures could be built for free under low power.
- Red Alert 3 patch 1.11: fixed a bug that allowed the Crusher crane to be captured by an engineer without the 3-second capture delay.
Behind the scenes[]
The Crusher Crane is similar to the GDI and Nod cranes (construction ability) and Yuri grinders (grind units for resources). However the grinder teeth can only crush vehicles, unlike Grinders which crush any ground unit. As an added bonus, the Crusher crane is structurally amphibious, enabling it to be built over the waters and to repair/grind ships.
See also[]
 Soviet Red Alert 3 Arsenal | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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