Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars/Scrin buildings

Red text means it is available in Kane's Wrath only. Green text means that the upgrade is available only in Tiberium Wars (the upgrade was moved).

Drone Platform
The drone platform is essential to base construction. Players always start with a construction yard, which can be reverted into its aerial form. Often nicknamed "Conyard" (despite it being called a Drone Platform), the Drone Platform is what produces buildings. From Portals to Warp Spheres, defences to superweapons - everything is built here.

Because all buildings are built here, losing a drone platform will often result in your losing the game. However, since cranes can also construct buildings, a crane can produce a Gravity Stabilizer, which can in turn produce another Drone Platform. Both the Foundry and the Drone Platform must be eliminated to truly remove the enemy's ability to deploy buildings.

Power Plant
The Power Plant is the only building aside from the construction yard that produces power, so players will definitely want as many power plants as possible. Several bad things happen when the base is low on power: the minimap shuts down, units and buildings are produced slower, and the turrets do not fire.

Destroying or disabling (via EMP) power plants is a great precursor to an attack, as your forces will be able to penetrate enemy defences while they sit idle and useless.

Power plants can be upgraded with a Liquid Tiberium Core once a Tech Centre (or, in Kane's Wrath, a Command Post) is constructed, boosting their power output.

Outpost
The outpost is a deployed Emissary. Unlike conyards, these buildings cannot revert into Surveyors, so they must be deployed wisely.

Outposts have no defence or armour on their own, and as such must be defended. The later patches remove the build radius around several buildings, including Barracks and Power Plants. This makes rebuilding said buildings difficult without an outpost nearby.

Hand of Nod
The barracks trains all your infantry. Ranging from simple Militant squads to the considerably stealthier Shadow Teams, the Hand of Nod is practically the only way to obtain infantry as Nod, with few exceptions.

Hands of Nod are cheap and quick to build, but the infantry they train are a little slow, so building a Hand of Nod near the front lines will allow you to get infantry into the fight much easier.

War Factory
War Factories are a necessity for Nod to build and maintain their swift tanks. All vehicles, with the sole exception of the Emissary, are produced here. War factories can also repair vehicles, so sending your damaged vehicles to a war factory will not only keep your fighting force at their best, but it also allows units to reach veterancy quicker.

Crane
A new feature to the Command and Conquer franchise are cranes. These cranes act like a construction yard, and allow you to produce two buildings at once. While in earlier patches they can produce defences as well, later patches removed this feature; they can build, at most, Tiberium Silos.

While building a crane is often the first thing a player builds, it is often better to build at least one refinery before building a crane, as cranes take more money than a refinery can provide (a 2:1 ratio). If one wants to build more defences, it is often better to build MCVs.

Refinery
Refineries extract the useful materials from raw Tiberium and provide you with money. An essential component to any base, multiple refineries are a must to avoid running out of money. Each field can sustain approximately two refineries. Refineries also store money, so the rapid construction of refineries will prevent money from being lost.

Refineries are quite heavily armoured and can take quite a beating, but the fact they store Tiberium can be used against them - the Catalyst Missile and the Tiberium Vibration Scan can destroy or reveal, respectively, open refineries.

Tiberium Silo
Tiberium silos store Tiberium. They have an indicator gauge on them that allows you to see how full each silo is. Unfortunately, silos are ultimately a waste of money and build time; as Battlecast Primetime battle commentators Greg Black and Jason Bender have noted, "Protip: If you build units, you won't need the silos". It is therefore best to avoid the construction of silos and simply build more units that can attack the enemy.

Secret Shrine
Secret Shrines operate in a similar fashion of GDI's Armouries, but unlike Armouries they cannot heal and replenish infantry. GDI's infantry therefore has an edge against Nod, since they can be sent to an armoury and replaced. Infantry casualties are permanent as Nod.

They do, however, provide access to Shadow Teams, both the unit and the support power.

Operations Centres
A necessity for higher tech levels, the Operations Centre is a versatile and much-needed building. It allows the construction of garrison-clearing flame tanks and Black Hand. Operations Centres also allow the deployment of Fanatics, a powerful anti-infantry unit.

Air Tower
Air Towers allow the construction of Venoms. They also sustain Vertigo bombers, but you need a Tech Centre as well in order to build those. Vertigos are the only ones who have to fly back for reloads, but Venoms can stay airbourne for an indefinite amount of time, and do not have to fly back to reload. They can always fly back for repairs, however.

In Kane's Wrath, various upgrades have been moved to this building.

Tech Centre
The Tech Centre is a vulnerable, expensive, and much-needed structure. It allows the production of high-end units and structures, such as Avatars, Purifiers, and Stealth Tanks. They also allow great firepower upgrades, such as particle beams and lasers. The addition of EMP Coils can really help against the GDI Mammoth Tank spam.

In Kane's Wrath, the Signal Generator upgrade was moved to the air tower (see above).

Tiberium Chemical Plant
The Tiberium Chemical Plant allows the deployment of advanced support powers - most notably the Catalyst missile and the Tiberium vapour bomb. It doesn't allow for any advanced units or upgrades, but the support powers it provides - especially the Catalyst missile - can tip the tide of battle in your favour.

Temple of Nod
Nod's superweapon, the nuclear missile, is deployed from this facility. Most notably, however, the Temple of Nod has backup generators that can be used to bring any and all underpowered units back online - allowing you to turn the tables on an enemy who thinks he can stop your units with an EMP.

Shredder Turret
All Nod base defences now are composed of four components - a hub and three slave turrets. Destroying the hub is the only way to destroy the turret completely; otherwise the turrets will simply rebuild and repair themselves.

Shredder turrets function very well against large groups of infantry - fanatics, riflemen, and the like. They aren't as effective against singular units because of their splash-like attack, but they can still easily eliminate lone enemies.

Because how the hub and its slave turrets all detect stealth, it is very easy to set up a large network of shredder turrets to secure your base against commando and engineer raids.

The Quad turrets upgrade gives the hub a shredder turret.

Laser Turret
The laser turret is the equivalent of the Guardian Cannon. It packs about the same amount of power when all three turrets combine their lasers. Lasers, like all Nod turrets, have a hub and three slave turrets. The Quad turrets upgrade gives the hub a laser and allows it to attack.

While spreading shredder turrets out is often a good idea to secure your base against commando raids, the same cannot be said about the laser turret, due to its lack of power against vehicles. It is highly unlikely the laser will manage to destroy anything larger than a Predator, Scorpion, or Seeker tank, so the laser turret needs its focused firepower.

Obelisk of Light
The Obelisk of Light is, shot-for-shot, the most devastating base defence in the game, but it cannot slice through multiple units like the Sonic Emitter or strike aerial units like the Storm Column.

The Obelisk of Light is the Brotherhood's iconic defence. Its attacking power isn't quite as powerful as it was before, but it is still extremely powerful. It can be made even more powerful by placing Beam Cannon units around it and having them charge the Obelisk.

Obelisks fire extremely slowly and have a long charge-up time before firing, so it is quite easy to overwhelm an Obelisk with multiple smaller units.

On the topic of smaller units, however, the Obelisk of Light has the new ability to, against a large squad of infantry, make a large sweeping motion with its laser to strike the entire squad with a single strike.

Disruption Tower
The Disruption Tower is the next step for Nod hiding their bases. Unlike the Stealth Generator from Tiberian Sun, Disruption Towers can't cloak themselves or each other. You can use disruption towers in this sense, however, as traps - when the enemy sees a disruption tower, they may believe a quick airstrike can eliminate it and they'll be able to see what's going on. A nest of SAM Sites can make attacking the Disruption Tower a costly move.

SAM Site
The SAM Site is Nod's primary anti-air defence mechanism. Also consisting of three turrets slaved to a hub, the SAM Site fires volleys of missiles at aircraft. Shot-for-shot it causes much more damage than GDI's AA battery, and they cause splash damage; making them useful against massed air units.