Nuclear missile (Generals 1)

The nuclear missile is China's superweapon in Command & Conquer: Generals, and its expansion, Zero Hour. It also serves as a tech building for various nuclear-related upgrades to other units. 
==Background==
The Chinese special weapon, the Nuclear Missile can nearly destroy an enemy base with a single blow. While the Nuclear Missile takes time to set up and arm, its missile can destroy multiple structures and irradiate the vicinity of its detonation. It requires plenty of power to build and arm. The Uranium Shell and Nuclear Tank upgrades are developed here.Command & Conquer: Generals manual. Los Angeles, California: Electronic Arts Pacific, 2002.
==History==
China first deployed tactical nuclear missiles during Operation: Nuclear Winter, where the PLA had entrusted a general of great tactical brilliance to drive the GLA out of Asia. It has also been sighted in Baikonur alongside the Particle Cannon, but neither superweapon was able to repel the GLA onslaught.
When the GLA conquered the US European Central Command in Stuttgart, Germany using captured Chinese hardware, China retaliates with a Nuclear Missile before sending in a cleanup force. They later apologised to the European leaders and restrained their use of tactical nukes until the final battle near Hamburg, where the GLA made their last stand using captured American technology.
==Game structure==
===Abilities===
===Add-ons===
===Upgrades===
The following upgrades are available from the Nuclear Missile:
===Counters===
The silo is very expensive and used up a large amount of power, and it also reveals itself to all opponents, like most superweapons. This makes it attractive targets for enemy forces, who would at all costs want to stop the weapon from being launched. Although great against vehicles and lightly defended buildings the nuclear missile is considered less effective than the Particle Cannon and SCUD Storm, mostly due to the GLA's use of holes beneath their buildings through which personnel can be deployed to rebuild them (although the radiation would kill one or two workers off before they started, and the Nuclear Missile itself can potentially allow an attacking force to destroy such holes).
Also notable is that the nuclear missile is the slowest firing superweapon in the game and as so would lose in a battle against the other weapons as well as be cautiously used in case of a opposing superweapons.
==Changelog==
* Generals sneak peek patch 1.02: fixed a related exploit when the nuclear missile silo was powered down
==Trivia==
* In the initial beta developments, a Neutron Missile variant of the superweapon missile was planned (possibly in General Tsing Shi Tao's arsenal), however, it didn't reach implementation into the final release of the game due to time constraints.
* If a silo's construction is completed under low power, the countdown timer for that silo starts at 6:35 rather than the regular 6:00 (this only applies to the silo once - after first launch, the countdown timer resets to 6:00).
* All nuclear silos built during the Generals Challenge against Tao have their countdown timers starting at 12:00 instead of the usual 6:00.
* Strictly speaking, being above-ground, the building is not a true silo. Instead, it has a close resemblance to the early SM-65 "Atlas-D" above-ground launchers. Named "coffins", these concrete above-ground structures were designed to store the intercontinental ballistic missile horizontally and raise it vertically for fueling just before launch. This system were used to store "Atlas-D" and "Atlas-E" missiles, but with the advent of modification "Atlas-F" (which where underground silo-based), has been declared obsolete.
==See also==
* Particle cannon, USA counterpart
* SCUD Storm, GLA counterpart
==References==
Category:Generals 1 superweapons