Red Alert 3: Paradox Expanded Universe
Red Alert 3: Paradox has a lot of Fan Fiction and Fan Factions, out of which the most important (and most promising as in "most-likely-to-ever-be-implemented") ones are sorted in by a group dubbed "Echoes Productions". Hilarity Ensues as the total number of factions is brought up to fourteen (in a game with originally only three), and Earth is made even more of a Crapsack World than before.
The Expanded Universe has its own Wiki here and a character sheet (under construction) here.
There is also a number of fan factions that could be included in mod (theoretically, at least). Information about these factions can be found here.
- Abnormal Ammo: Oh boy, where to START?
- The African Emirates fire mutated chickens and razor-sharp diamond dust.
- The Combine utilize artificial elements, accelerated particles and bacteria that EAT metal. Not to mention their biological weapons...
- Most Atlantean weapons shoot ICE at enemies.
- The Industrial Guild likes to fire spiked steel balls at their enemies. Also exploding ship containers.
- The Contingent have Metalstorm Rounds - bullets that "explode" into shards of depleted uranium when they hit their target, turning into a close-range shotgun blast.
- A Commander Is You: They too have a variety of faction principles.
- African Emirates: The Mario and Ranger. High ranged units with multiple uses and no conventional tiers, but all in all not very strong.
- Technocratic Combine: Ranger/Brute Force. High range and high toughness units designed to force a chokehold on the battlefield until late game, when they get base razors to finish the job.
- Atlantean Monarchy: Elitists. Many unit types but few are actually cheap. In return, has multiple super units.
- Industrial Guild: Industrial and Spammer. Units can be fielded very quickly but not endlessly and are made to win a battle in one rush.
- Southern Contingent: Classic Brute Force. Most things are powerful, but speed and durability are only secondary.
- American Unionists: A mix of Technical and Unit specialist. Their infantry might be powerful, but requires garrisons to work at the maximum effigency. They also have shades of "Industrial"-gimmick, since they can build their fragile bases fastly.
- Always Female: Commandos.
- Arch Enemy:
- The Emirates and the Syndicate.
- The Monarchy and the Guild.
- The American Unionists to the Soviet Union, and well, Communism in general
- Earth Is a Battlefield: Oh boy, is it ever...
- Punk Punk: While not as all-present as in Paradox, the Expanded Universe has a few:
African Emirates
An African diamond mining mega corp, the African Emirates have a thing for ancient Egyptian imagery and utilise a variety of high-range weaponry and sturdy technology to take parts of Africa under their control, which quickly prosper. Their biggest nemisis in terms of warfare as well as economy is the Mediterranean Syndicate, who happens to be their neighbor, globally speaking.
- African Terrorists: Subverted. The Emirates tend to quickly get rid of anyone trying to destabalize regions they have power in.
- Authority Equals Asskicking: Khalid, the Sultan for the Emirates, prefers to command armies himself as opposed to just letting people do it for him. He isn't a slouch in combat either, and that's before the fact he gets dibs on the best stuff.
- Beam Spam: The basic idea behind the Emirates's pulse laser technology. Taken to ridiculous extremes with the Scatterbeam Cannons, which are essentially Gattling Laser Shotguns. Beam Spam, indeed.
- Bulletproof Vest: A lot of Emirates personnel are equipped with diamond-weave combat vests.
- City of Gold: Diamonds are an extremely plentiful material for the Emirates. Their cities do have gold and platinum as well, though.
- Crystal Spires and Togas: Averted, due to the fact the Emirates isn't quite advanced enough to pull this off yet. Their aesthetic is still too bulky, but it's heading in this direction.
- Everything's Sparkly with Jewelry: Diamonds are not only pretty to look at, this faction generates electrical power with diamonds and lasers.
- Guns Akimbo: The Emmissary wields dual ramjet pistols.
- Humongous Mecha: The War Derricks. Especially the Anansi War Derrick.
- Lego Genetics: Emirates Mutagens end up applying under this, even though the Emirates don't have particular control over the DNA itself.
- Mechanical Monster: The Anansi War Derrick - it's a huge mechanical spider.
- Mega Corp
- More Dakka: Pretty much the idea with the Volley-based weapons. Somewhat overlaps with Gatling Good as well.
- Psycho Serum: When Emirates mutagens on animals fail to work properly, it acts like this. Particularly with the uberchickens for the Akachi Bomber.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Emirates increasingly becomes this as their hatred for the Syndicate goes out of control.
Technocratic Combine
Composed of an intercontinental coalition of people from all three continents of the Americas, the Technocratic Combine seeks to create a "Technological Utopia" based on the tenets of technocracy and meritocracy. They evoke the retrofuturism of the Interbellum era combined with cheesy and Zeerusty biopunk, with cyclotron guns, bionic augmentations, eugenic engineering, and highly streamlined Art Deco buildings and vehicles, as well as many darker fields deemed 'Mad Science'. They prefer to use World War 1 trench tactics and morale-crippling warfare, which stands in great contrast to their literally Golden Age appearance.
- Alluring Anglerfish: Not an actual anglerfish, but in fact a fifty-foot long viperfish. Yes, it can be commanded as a regular unit.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: They have them.
- Bio Augmentation
- Biopunk/Dieselpunk: The Combine mixes both of the two, focusing on Diesel Deco crossed with straight up Biopunk in particular.
- Combat Pragmatist: Both trench and morale warfare are heavily used.
- Evil Overlord List: They read it.
- Evilutionary Biologist: Bat bombs, pidgeon missiles, mole mines, head-sized wasps, GIANT ANTS, enraged chimpanzees...noting a pattern?
- For Science!: DUH!
- Gaia's Vengeance: They use more animals and other living organisms in their forces than any other faction.
- Go-Karting with Bowser: Night Truces
- Mad Scientist: Subverted AND Double Subverted. Their stuff's crazy enough to be Mad Science, and yet they use it to solve everything from civilian benefit to helping the enviroment to developing the newest highly-lethal weaponry.
- Mother Nature, Father Science: Averted. Animals, plants, and other living organisms figure heavily in their warfare, and many of their developments are rooted in biomimetics.
- No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Averted heavily. Their tendancy to mass produce things means they have blueprints of everything. All their weapons, armor, and vehicles actually have their blueprint codes in their official names.
- Rodents of Unusual Size: Combine Lab Rats tend to become pretty big.
- Sky Pirates
- Terror Hero: Their motivations for fighting?: Peace. Their style of fighting?: Baldfaced fear and terror tactics.
- The Roaring Twenties: Takes the trope and runs into the distant retro-future with it.
- Tripod Terror: Striders
- Utopia Justifies the Means
- The Plague / Synthetic Plague: Infection weaponry, and the Unes Fungus might count as well.
- World War 1: Their in-game playstyle.
Atlantean Monarchy
An Italian scientist from the 16th century founded an underwater city based on the myth of Atlantis. Their remnants have come back to the surface to take revenge on everyone polluting the seas. The Atlanteans utilise ice and water weapons for their middle ages scifi units, amphibious units are abundant and they are overall quite mobile.
- Airborne Aircraft Carrier: The Laevatein.
- Atlantis: They took the myth but are not "true" Atlanteans.
- Cool Airship: The Laevatein. Also an Airborne Aircraft Carrier.
- Cool Ship: Bahamut, Tiamat and Myrmidon.
- Underwater City
Industrial Guild
An aristocratic group with a love for Victorian London, the Industrial Guild like to emulate exactly that. Classic steam punk tanks and huge numbers of willing soldiers equipped with all sorts of classic weaponry fight for a classic ideal of the world. Huge factories guzzling out material and smoke alike, the Guild only look retro but are very capable of engineering new products - it's just that they prefer to use tried and tested over new.
- Authority Equals Asskicking: Reinbert.
- Battle Butler: They have quite a few of those.
- BFG: The Nemo Cannon.
- Cool Plane: The Kabulla is an interceptor BLIMP.
- Elegant Weapon for a More Civilized Age: They have quite a few of those.
- Everything Is Better With Spinning: The Kabulla.
- Good Old Ways: Their core philosophy.
- Guns Are Worthless: Not always but comes up none the less.
- High-Class Glass
- Napoleonic Wars: How fighting with the Guild feels like.
- Ramming Always Works: The Kabulla occasionally rams aerial enemies out of the way.
- Ravens and Crows: litteraly with the protocols.
- Steampunk
- The Aesthetics of Technology
- We Have Reserves: Subverted. Despite the Guild's ability to gain massive numbers of units, they prefer to build up until they know they can win a battle the first time but they do not spend more material than needed.
Southern Contingent
A coalition of Australia, New Zealand and a few surrounding states, the Southern Contingent were part of the Allied Nations but refused further cooperation to ensure survival on their own. Instead they build up their own military force, using gunslinger cowboys, aircraft and gravitational manipulation with great efforts. Good on defense and offense alike, the Contingent can react fast on various dangers and prove that their region of the world is dangerous for quite a few reasons.
- Artificial Gravity: One of the Contingent's major technological advances.
- Aussies With Artillery
- Cool Starship: Somewhat subverted. Atmospheric command is, as the name implies, not in space.
- Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: In a more mundane form, Depleted Uranium.
- Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: ...If you are in the Contingent's way.
- Gravity Master: The Contingent have complete mastery over gravity.
- Gravity Sucks: Inverted, gravity pulls. That said, it can still rip a building to pieces...
- Irony: The Contingent missed out on discovering nuclear fission, but noticed Depleted Uranium's use as a weapon. Nowadays, they keep the "valuable" depleted Uranium while disposing of the "useless" enriched stuff!
- Improbable Weapon User: The Contingent use cannonballs with some of their units. This is aided by the fact that said cannon balls are made of depleted Uranium and gravity-guided, however.
- Kill Sat: Subverted. Their version of a Kill Sat is within the atmosphere.
- Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: All Contingent weapons (bar the occasional gravity weapon or grenade) are kinetic. Not only that, they hit HARD, thus playing this trope straight.
- Land Down Under
- Laser Sight: Of a sort: instead of lasers, particle beams are used, which have the benefit of hurting the thing you are aiming at.
- My Friends and Zoidberg: The Southern Contingent is comprised of Australia... and New Zealand.
- New Old West
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Since the Contingent see enriched Uranium as useless, the stuff they don't bury is sold to "American research colleges", who have a great interest in the stuff. Three guesses who they are.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: However, said research colleges find depleted Uranium useless, and so when they produce it they send it to Australia to get rid of it...
- Ramming Always Works: The Sawfish, which explodes like a shotgun when striking something.
- Roboteching: The Contingent uses gravity manipulation to fire CANNONBALLS this way.
- Selective Gravity: One of the advantages of controlling gravity. The Contingent use this to the point that their command centers, certain high-level military equipment and even a Kill Sat equivalent in the upper atmosphere.
- Shiny-Looking Spaceships: Averted, as with the Space Western style.
- Shiny New Australia: Subverted. While the Southern Contingent was formerly part of the Allies and is apparenty under Talon control, they are VERY unwilling to fall into the hands of anyone else.
- Space Western: Apart from the "space" part. They are working on it though.
- Stand Your Ground
American Unionists
An American Civil Defense Force created for the sole purpose of Americanism and the stomping out of Communist influence in the USA. After being all but diminished in the early 60s, they became revitalized after Moskovin's failed invasion of New York and the Rise of the Confederate Rebellion. The CIA (American Sub Division of the ACIN) has taken a great intrest in this group, and has been secretly integrating it more and more into their control. Only time will tell where that will lead...
- Dirty Communists: They are trying to save the world from them! Problem is that their idea of what is communist is a bit wider than many others...
- Eagleland: Flavor 1.
- Government Conspiracy: The modus operandi of American Unionists.
- More Than Mind Control: They use post-hypnotic suggestion to train their troopers.
- Stepford Suburbia: A faction of it.
- The Fifties
- The Korean War: A lot of Unionist designs come from the Korean and post WWII Allies.