Atomic Kingdom of China

**Dev. Status** | Conceptualized

*"The beans were filtered to make juice.*

*The beanstalks were burnt under the cauldron,*

*And the beans in the cauldron wailed*

*We were originally grown from the same root;*

*How come we torment each other with such haste?"*

- *"The Quatrain of Seven Steps"* by Cao Zhi
The **Atomic Kingdom of China**, **China,** or the **Kingdom**, is a new faction exclusive to Red Alert 3 Paradox, designed by Open sketchbook and Kerensky287.

Utilizing the Jade to create powerful energy-based weaponry and forcefields. The Atomic Kingdom has mastered the art of defensive warfare featuring multiple, strong, base defenses. Creating towering walls and turrets to defend themselves and making vast mazes filled with kill zones to trap and divide their foes, before vaporizing them with their disintegration rays. Supported by waves of attack-oriented but extremely cost-inefficient units using the powerful shock and awe effect of their short ranged ray weapons to counter any push their defenses can’t stop. With the factions main weaknesses being short-ranged weaponry and great need for power. But their MCV can fly, so there.

## Background

### The Civil War

*"And you tell me,*

*Over and over and over again, my friend,*

*Ah, you don't believe,*

*We're on the eve of destruction."*

- *"Eve of Destruction"* by P.F. Sloan, a protest song written at the start of WW3
At the start of the Third World War, another war had been raging in full force for nearly 60 years. China was in the grip of civil war, torn between the forces of the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China. As the Peacekeepers marshalled their forces in Europe to make a stand and the Soviet poured tanks into Poland, China's veteran armies clashed on bloodsoaked fields. It was a conflict unparalleled in brutality, bloodshed, and scope, and one largely ignored by the rest of the world.

Driven to desperation, the Chinese had exhausted every possible method to defeat their enemy, throwing millions of lives away in battles, committing countless atrocities in the hopes that it would bring them a bit closer to final victory. No person, however sick, young, or old, was exempt from from the war effort. Both ore and oil was torn from the land to feed the war machine. Science advanced rapidly, but only where it could be applied to war, and too often it took vile and nauseating directions. The arrival of a meteor in Central China had brought with it a boon; Jade, a strange green crystal with mysterious and marvellous properties, which catalysed the development of a hundred bizarre and impossible technologies. Even this could not break the stalemate, as both sides quickly acquired samples of the self replicating crystal. The Chinese Civil War had gone on so long no one expected it to end.

But then, 1968 came. A discovery was made, one with the power to bring the war to a screaming halt. A scientist on one side uncovered the secret of atomic fission, and a spy on the other side stole it. Or perhaps both sides made the same discovery at the same time. Within months of the discovery atomic bombs were being made in the hundreds. and no one can forget what happened next.

### The Atomic Horror

No one knew who stuck the first blow, but Beijing and Nanjing were annihilated within a day of each other. More rational governments might have realised they were teetering on the brink of annihilation, but the two Chinas had been at each other's throats for too long to accept any outcome but the complete destruction of the other side. Too much blood had been spent for any other outcome to be palatable. For the next two weeks both sides flew hundreds of flights, saturating the country with atomic fire. What began as an attempt to force an end to the war became revenge strikes, and finally degenerated into desperate attempts to obliterate the other. The rolling blasts could be seen from orbit. When the bombs finally stopped falling, the Civil War was over, both sides shattered.

### Kingdom from the Ashes

*"The red and blue skies shall fall! Long reign the jade skies!"*

- The Viceroys call to arms
From the ashes of the war, a strange movement began. The Nationalist Chinese had associated themselves with blue, the Communist Chinese with red. This new faction associated itself with the green of the Jade, the key to unlocking atomic fission, the substance that had ended their civilisation. Even as bandits and warlords continued to fight over the scarred land, the green Chinese preached a new message, a call to all Chinese to unite under a single banner to rebuild China, free from the grips of tyrants who used them as pawns. Salvaging technologies left over from the war, they created an army of clones to subjugate those who refused to bow to their rule, armed with devastating weapons. The remnants of the Nationalists and the Communists tried to crush this new upstart, but they were spent by decades of fighting and barely clung on to power.

Under the Atomic Kingdom, China would stop looking inward and look outward. Those who had perpetuated the war to its fiery conclusion would be brought to justice; the Allies, the Soviets, the Japanese. They would be made to account for their crime and they would be punished for it. And the Atomic Kingdom would be the one to judge them.

When Mao Zedong was captured and brought before the Atomic Kingdom's court, he asked who was the Emperor of this new Kingdom they had created. Before his execution, they answered his question. They explained that they were not a state like he understood them, just the renewed spirits of the great civilisation he had damned. As he was escorted to the disintegration chamber, he learned the true nature of the Atomic Kingdom of China.

*"Like the yellow turbans of our ancestors. We will rebuild China, and reclaim our heritage."*

## Gameplay Mechanics

### Build Mechanic

 File:ChineseBuildSystem.png
Their MCV, the Orbital Command Vehicles, permanently transforms into the Ground Base, their Construction Yard equivalent that is actually two structures built into one. The Planetary Assembly (which deal with the structure side of the tech tree) and the Space Elevator (which deal with the unit side of the tech tree). Both strutures are essentially two halves of the same building, making the Command Bridge rather large (about twice the size of other factions conyards) which can be targeted by air and ground units that has two seperate HP bars, if either the Planetary Assemblies or Space Elevators is knocked down but the other is still alive then the destroyed half will eventually rebuild, but if both strcture falls the Command Bridge is destroyed. OCVs can only be called in via a protocol unlocked by reaching tier II.

Space Elevator makes units in little bundles. Only one production queue is accessible at a time, secondary cycles through them. Non-aircraft units arrive in amphibious boxes allowing you to build sea vehicles at a land-based Elevator and vice versa.

Planetary Assembly are responsible for building the structures. Some structures are just for base management (Superweapons, power plants, tech building) and some deal with your defensive game. The structures designed for defense each have a production queue with room for a single turret at a time - if you want to make defenses at any reasonable rate, you can make extras, but it'll get expensive quickly.

### Tier Mechanic

The Atomic Kingdom tiers up by increasing their "Escalation Level" (which replaces the infamy meter used by most factions), which increases by killing enemies/losing units, which is sluggish but universal (so once one Planetary Assembly reaches tier 2 all new and existing Planetary Assembly are tier 2). Thus the Kingdom commander is encouraged to be aggressive and take the fight to their enemy even with their strong defenses lest their enemies out tiers them.

### Resource Mechanic

The Atomic Kingdom of China can only have one Planetary Assemblies per Ground Base, since both are interconnected. This is compensated by the Planetary Assembly secondary ability to build Extractor within mining areas, the range of which is unlimited. Once the Extractor is built it will send a small, but constant, trickle of income but they’re frail, so particulary far away extractors are vulnerable to getting destroyed.

The Atomic Kingdom also gains income by destroying the enemies unit, with 25% of the units cost being given to the Atomic Kingdom which can be further upgraded.

### Experience

The Kingdom units, consisting of clones who are unable to learn and humans who’ve reached their peak physique, are unable to gain veterancy and heroic upgrades. Instead it’s their defense that ranks up and gain heroic upgrades, with each failed attack empowering their defenses. Though their units are immune to morale damage and effects, either due to mental conditioning while being cloned or from their training, and can keep fighting no matter what.

### Officer Mechanic

Due to the massive clone horde that is the Kingdom army, it is really hard for a commander to coordinate their forces with a mixture of having to command large numbers and the lag of a large communication network, requiring the use of high-ranking officers to help relay the general's order efficiently when out of Atomic Kingdom territory.

Almost every Kingdom unit, barring a few exceptions like their scouts, elites, and Commandoes, moves incredibly slow and deal lower damage when outside of the Atomic Kingdom build radius unless they're near an officers unit, who looks almost exactly like a standard unit to fool the enemy and will redirect any fatal damage taken to a nearby clone, will grant buffs and morale resistance to nearby forces. But be careful with said officers as in the event they die communications between you and your forces on the map will suddenly cut off, leading to them being stunned for a few seconds unable to receive orders.

### Ranks

Unlike other factions, and a compensation for their unit's lack of veterency. Most of the Kingdom units come in variants, mostly in three types. But what all three have in common is that their morale are different to other factions.

**Standard**: The basic variety of units. Standard units are the largest and cheapest units in almost every package. All of them has been trained to throw themselves into battle and complete their objective with no regard to to their self, all of them have a passive ability that activate when injured and/or near death, or when they die, ranging from buffing the survivors to getting revived for a few more seconds of battle. And due to mental conditioning they are immune to morale damage and effects, but are severly debuffed if an officer is not nearby.

**Officer**: A lynchpin in ensuring the effectiveness of their forces, formed from the survivors of the Kingdom who are sterile and/or too mutated to repopulate China (of which are 96% percent of the Kingdoms survivors), and thus only less expandable than a clone, known as the "Eunuchs". Officers are completely unarmed, at best they’ll have support weapons, but are responsible for ensuring that their forces fight at full efficiency, often one to two of them accompany every unit package. They are the most heavily armoured units, since they are still people unlike the clones, and would steal the shielding off nearby clone units when low to ensure their survival but are often weaker, or even unarmed, as a result. Due to their role, in the event their shield breaks they go into stealth and gain a speed boost.

**Elite**: Healthy, and most of all fertile, survivors of the Kingdom trained to a higher standard on par with special forces, or are already gifted (such as Mingxia), who are to maintain the sleeper ships and defend their people in the exodus. Elite units are often on par with heroic units of other factions, even having additional effects simulating Heroic upgrades, completely amphibious (even the navy), and are often capable of handling armies by themselves. But they are extremely expensive and only a few packages summon these units, often in small numbers, making them fairly overpriced. Elite units gains a "momentum", a temporary and small but stacking state boost whenever a unit, friend or foe, dies, making them a terror as both their enemy and clone escorts fall. And when near death their planar shield activate "Guardian Shell" where they recover a quarter of their health and shielding and are temporarily invulnerable, either letting them finish their foe or retreat to fight another day.

### Power Mechanic

In order to expand its territory the Kingdom needs to build Transmission Towers which must be connected to at least one Ground Base and can only be built within the Kingdoms build radius. Once built these Transmission Towers will project a build radius which Kingdom structures can be built upon. But these towers are extremely frail once its shielding is down and can be targeted by both air and ground attacks. And if a connecting tower is destroyed, any building and defenses, except deployable turrets, not connected to the Ground Base will shut down, doesn't matter if the commander has surplus power. So protect those towers like your life depends on it. Because it does.

Vehicles and aircraft also require power in order to function. These vehicle/aircraft consume units of power when built, and are shut down if you enter a low power state. The exception are elite ranks, who instead suffers stat debuffs and lose their shielding.

## The Forbidden Kingdom

*”Back in 1968, I was with my son Jack on a parent-student career day in his school when the teacher showed his class a special video. It was an educational video, “Hide and Cover” or something like that, and it told him and his classmates about what to do if a Kirov should drop a vacuum imploder bomb on the town. It was all very upbeat, about how you should get to your nearest shelter and duck under your desk and everything to stay safe...and in my heart, I knew what the video was: an attempt to sooth the nerves of our children, to keep them from realising that if an imploder bomb did go off so near... There would be no survivors. Now, the papers and television show us all conferences where the politicians talk about the situation in China and diplomacy with the Royalists and not talking about what exactly happened there...and I can't help but wonder if they're trying to reassure us for the same reasons they made that video."*

- *Randolph Eggert, accountant and father of two*
### Special Buildings

 File:IconChina.png | Space Elevator | The other half of the Ground Base that builds all Kingdom units that aren't deployed by protocols or aircraft. Units are purchased in packs of more than one, occasionally with a mix of unit types (such as 5 Watchmen and 1 Noble Officer). The Space Elevator can only have 1 production queue at a time and uses its secondary ability to cycle through the unit types it is able to produce. Attackable as both a land and air unit because it is literally an elevator into space - your Migs can just fire at the main shaft if they so desire.

### Light Turrets

All of them can be upgraded three times with its ability.

## Protocols

### Anti-Matter Generator

 File:IconChina.png | File:IconChina.png | File:IconChina.png | Overcharge
 File:IconChina.png | Shields Recharged

### Engagement Authority

 File:IconChina.png | Smart Bomb
 File:IconChina.png | The Hand of the Zodiac

## Behind the Scenes

The Kingdoms latest revamp was intended to make them play more like the Tower Defence games you often see online. The wide variety of walls allows you to pipeline enemy units where you want, the turret variety allows you to use plenty of cheap turrets or a handful of expensive ones, and the superweapons give you something to *"hold out"* for, making it easier to just outlast your opponent.

Aesthetic-wise, their new revamp is based on the “yellow peril” tropes, such as Flash Gordon Ming, Fu Manchu, and the Mandarin from Iron Man, mixed together with house Harkonnen and the Sardaukar from Dune, with a tiny pinch of Nod from command and conquer (though only a little as the Cult of the Black Hand and the Scavenger Temple are the true Nods). It also has some aesthetic of Star Trek from its previous iteration, which is now considered an artifact.