Blackout

Blackout is a side mission in the Nod campaign of Tiberian Sun.Westwood Studios, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun. Nod mission 4b: "Blackout".
==CABAL briefing==
Taking out this weak position of GDI forces will allow us to reclaim our Sarajevo temple without interruption. Move in under the cover of an ion storm - while GDI's communications will be down. Take out the Radar Facility before the storm abates.
* Objective One: Locate and destroy the GDI Radar Facility before the ion storm ends.
==Synopsis==
===Background===
When Slavik usurped General Hassan and reunited the Brotherhood under his banner, Kane announced his return to his loyal followers, to their great surprise and joy.
As had been planned beforehand Hassan was publicly executed by having his throat cut and Slavik became Kane's right-hand man. Kane immediately tasked Slavik with taking back the old Temple of Nod in Sarajevo from GDI and since GDI did not yet realize Kane wished Nod to return to Sarajevo, Nod had the element of surprise.
But in order to get to the old Temple they would have to travel through the GDI military zone centred on Greece. This would not really be a problem, the zone was relatively lightly defended but the radar station in the country would alert GDI to Nod's movements and so lose them the element of surprise in their attack on Sarajevo; unless that is it was eliminated first of course.
===Events===
CABAL initially misinformed Slavik by claiming that the base within which the radar station was located was a weak GDI position. In fact it was for this early period of the Second Tiberium War a very well fortified and defended base and Nod had yet to introduce their powerful artillery into their arsenal.
The base was made of two parts, the relatively lightly defended front base and the heavily defended rear base in which the radar tower was located, which was even defended by the powerful RPG component towers.
The Nod plan was to coincide their attack with the predicted outbreak of an ion storm in the region, this would prevent the radar station from functioning well enough to warn the base and also prevent the GDI from flying in a force of reinforcements once they realised its sudden strategic importance.
Upon landing Nod forces encountered a patrol of Hover MLRS. Fortunately for Nod they were grounded by the sudden outbreak of the predicted ion storm before they could escape and alert the base and were so easily overwhelmed.
After destroying the patrol Nod established and built up a base, eventually managing to assemble sufficient reinforcements to break through the powerful defenses of the rear base and somehow eliminate the radar station from operation. Crucially they were able to do this before the ion storm had abated alerting GDI to Nod movements in the wider area and allowing them to land in reinforcements by air.
But despite their inability to land reinforcements by air there were still plenty of GDI supporters within the region to reinforce the base's manpower so that Nod's victory was likely neither achieved easily nor at a low cost in lives.
===Aftermath===
With the radar facility now down, Nod forces could move in closer to Sarajevo without being detected prematurely and would thus would have the advantage of surprise against the GDI base there.
At the same time the costs of defending the base had drained the meager GDI forces in the wider region and the destruction of the radar station had left them blind. Consequently as the first wave of Nod forces advanced towards Sarajevo, a second wave of Nod were easily able to overrun the GDI military zone centred on Greece.
In this manner Nod acquired control of Greece as well as Albania, Macedonia, and Bulgaria while contesting control of Serbia with the GDI; these were all countries which had been at the core of the Nod holdings in Europe during the First Tiberium War and had been occupied by the GDI at the war's conclusion.
==Walkthrough==
Blackout is a bit of a wake-up call after the previous missions and the first real challenge. The ion storm hits a few moments after the mission starts, beginning the 90-minute time limit. Note that even without the MRLS, GDI is very dangerous and will proactively attack the starting base, primarily using infantry, but also including amphibious APCs that will drive into the base using the back door and unload a mix of disc throwers and engineers, who will rush the construction yard, war factory, and Hand of Nod - this potentially renders the mission unwinnable if they capture the Hand and the construction yard. 
There are two bases to worry about, the outpost and the main one. The outpost sits just next door, over the bridge, and contains a war factory, barracks, a refinery, service bay, and is surrounded by walls with Vulcan cannons. It won't produce Titans, but will spam infantry like there's no tomorrow. Taking it out grants access to the service bay and a GDI construction yard, and a little secret: There are four amphibious APCs in the base. Shooting one of them will usually cause it to go to the repair bay, allowing an engineer to capture the bay and the APC. 
Where's the secret? The APC grants access to the northwestern island, normally isolated from the rest of the map. An engineer can repair the bridge from that side, while the APC will activate and turn over three old Mammoths, which can be used to lead the way into the main GDI base. 
An alternative approach is to pass through the eastern Tiberium fields, repairing the two bridges and going in the back way. That route allows the attack force to avoid the RPG tower guarding the main entrance, and will also disable the APC/engineer base that keeps spamming the main one. 
== Trivia ==
* The mission contains a scripting bug - if the player captures the radar instead of destroying it, he still wins the mission, but the next mission starts as if this mission was never completed (at north east starting point instead of south). That's because there are actually 2 triggers that finish the mission - one (Win) for destroying the radar and second (Win2) for capturing it. However, "Win2" trigger doesn't set global variable responsible for alternate start position, resulting in incorrect behaviour.
==Gallery==
File:TSN04b.jpg|Map panorama
==Videos==
==References==