Zone trooper drop pod

Zone trooper drop pod was a GDI support power in Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars and its expansion, Kane's Wrath.
== Background ==
The ever-changing nature of Red Zones often necessitated the deployment of Zone Troopers, though due to its unlivable conditions they are often unable to remain in the field for extended periods of time. As a result, the drop pod system was added to GDI's orbital assets during the Third Tiberium War to facilitate the rapid deployment of these elite troopers. While this system was originally developed with the assumption that the Brotherhood of Nod was nothing more than shattered remnants and their leader ashes, it proved to be equally useful in the ensuing conflict, which revealed that Nod was just as active and malicious as it had been during the Second Tiberium War.
By the time of the Fourth Tiberium War, the Red Zones and the Tiberium that sustained their hostile environment were receding. As such, these launch systems were turned to for a different use: protecting the Tiberium Control Network's (TCN) nodes. With Nod Separatists darting out of nowhere, severely interrupting construction, and disappearing as quickly as they had appeared, GDI needed a means of rapidly deploying Crawlers (the successor to the MCV) to battlefields, and used what appeared to be a modified and enlarged version of the rapid deployment pods used by the Zone Troopers of the previous war.
==Game Effect==
The power costs 4500 credits when activated and could be directed to land anywhere on the battlefield where there is vision. 
Once a target is marked, a drop pod will descend upon the designated location and, after a short delay, three veteran Zone Trooper squads will be released and available to command. Note that, during the short delay, the pod's destruction means death for the troopers within it, and as such it is highly inadvisable to deploy these where heavy anti-surface weaponry is present. The pod itself will self-destruct regardless when the troopers exit.
Compared to other reinforcement-type powers, the Zone Trooper Drop Pods required a comparatively smaller clear location to land, which proved to be useful when landing on tighter spaces. Since they dropped down from orbit, there was also very little chance that they could be intercepted prior to the pod's arrival. When used in conjunction with GDI's Radar Scan ability, these pods could be deployed virtually anywhere on the map.
As ZOCOM deploys their own specialized variant of Zone Troopers, dubbed Zone Raiders, their drop pods correspondingly drop Raiders instead.
==Changelog==
* Tiberium Wars patch 1.05: cost increased by 50% to $4500
==See also==
* Zone raider drop pod, ZOCOM counterpart
Category:Tiberium Wars GDI support powers