Base on Wheels: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

One of the craziest ways a villain can keep their base hidden is to keep it moving constantly around the country. Of course, there's no way your typical [[Elaborate Underground Base]] will fit into the average mobile home, (unless it's [[Bigger on the Inside|bigger on the inside than the outside]]) but rather than compromise and throw away the [[Shark Pool]], the villain will put his base in an overly large truck or train.

 

 

There have also been cases of armoured trains in real life; during the Second World War both the Russians and the Germans used heavily armoured locomotives and wagons, sometimes even using spare tank turrets to give additional firepower, and artillery trains have been used as late as the war in Croatia in the 1990s. See also the [[Military Mashup Machine]] known as the Land Battleship, which is usually one of these, too.

 

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* Landships of ''[[Combat Mecha Xabungle]]'' are [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]] - a full scale land battleships carrying around companies of [[Humongous Mecha|Walker Machines]] and Iron Gear type landships can transform into giant Walker Machins themselves, turning into Base on Legs.

* The ''[[Excel Saga (anime)|Excel Saga]]'' episode "Bowling Girls" features the a massive tractor trailer owned by the bowling terrorist organisation which goes straight through a toll booth, but which apparently has no bearing on the story.

* The ''Gundam'' Meta-Verse ''loves'' this trope with all its heart it seems like almost every timeline ''must'' have at least one absurd rolling base/battleship examples include:

** The Universal Century line includes the [http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/msgundam/bigtray.htm "Big Tray"] class and the Zeon equivalents the [http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/msgundam/gallop.htm "Gallop"] and [http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/msgundam/dabude.htm "Dabude"] classes, but all of these pale before the grand champion and perhaps most insane of all examples in UC the [http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/v/adrastea.htm "Adrastea"] class yes it's a giant ''motorcycle'' land battleship.

** The SEED Timeline meanwhile brings us the [http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/seed/lesseps.htm "Lesseps"] class.

** [[SD Gundam Force]] gives us ''Tenchijo'', a castle on giant tank treads. And on each tower is a different weapon; a giant hammer, mace, claw, and spinning blades.

* ''[[Overman King Gainer]]'' features a city on wheels, functioning as a base and living space for both the heroes and the entire population of the city that was mobilized. The enemies have control of the railroads, so quick transit of their forces makes a mobile base necessary for the Exodus.

* ''[[Revolutionary Girl Utena]]'' - Movie only. {{spoiler|The castle is on wheels big enough to crush cars, and they try to do exactly that.}}

* ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'' features a Base On ''Legs'', the Dai-Gurren.

* Anime example: ''[[Zoids]]'' has mobile bases for the titular mechs to travel in. They are themselves giant Zoids, and therefore animal shaped. Team Liger travels in a giant snail, the bad guys use a flying sperm whale, and the standard cargo hauler is the pillbug-shaped Gustaff.

* The mobile command centers from ''[[Code Geass]]'' certainly fit the bill, until they are eventually replaced with flying equivalents. The Chinese still use the [http://codegeass.wikia.com/wiki/Longdan#Longdan Longdan bases] into the Second Season, however, along with their <s>[[Stargate SG-1|Ha'tak]] cruisers</s> Da Longdan upgrade.

* ''[[Soul Eater]]'' gives us a [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|Awesome]] versions of this. {{spoiler|Death City on Legs!}}. Best yet, it's on the side of the protagonists, and is controlled by a [[Cloudcuckoolander]], [[Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass]], [[Anthropomorphic Personification]] of [[The Grim Reaper|Death]]. Eye-Poke Attack indeed!

* The Fugaku, the mobile sea fortress of Chosakabe Motochika from ''[[Sengoku Basara]]'' is revealed in one episode to be capable of traveling on land as well as water. {{spoiler|It becomes a completely land-based base on wheels when Mori assumes control of it}}

 

== Comic Books ==

 

== Film ==

* ''[[Live Free or Die Hard]]'' features an improbably big hacking center packed into a shipping container on the back of a tractor trailer. They do at least make it a little sensible, as the container is able to expand and contract to reasonable sizes to make it inconspicuous in city areas.

* ''[[Naruto]]'' - The Big Bad in the second movie had one of these. In addition to a number of World War 2 style warships. Needless to say they actually managed to looked out of place even in the [[Schizo-Tech]] the series runs on.

* The ''[[Speed Racer (film)|Speed Racer]]'' movie had Cruncher Block hanging out in the well-furnished (complete with piranha tank) back of a big red truck. This is possibly a [[Shout-Out]] to the Mammoth Car from the original cartoon, which blurred the line between [[Cool Car]] and ''[[Cool Train]]''.

 

== Literature ==

* The ''Wind On Fire'' books had the rival cities Ombaraka and Omchaka. These were driven by sails, and whenever they crossed paths they would attack each other by launching smaller 'land-sailers' at each other like torpedoes. Most of these intercept and destroy each other; actually scoring a hit on the other city is quite rare.

** Ironically the house is smaller inside than outside. The large castle is fake and just contains a moving door that is a portal to a normal house (normal apart from the magic door). In the anime the house is in some sense inside the steam punk castle so there you can look out of a window to the moving landscape.

* Half the premise of Philip Reeve's ''[[Mortal Engines]]''.

* ''[[The Thrawn Trilogy]]'' - A non-villainous example [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Nomad_City is] Nomad City from the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]. It's a very large old ship carried by a large number of captured [[Spider Tank|AT-ATs]], so it's sort of a base on legs. The reason why it needs to move is that it's a mining station on a slow-turning planet very close to its hot sun, so it must always remain on the night side or would melt - as eventually happens once it is immobilized by an attack.

** {{spoiler|The city is actually Coruscant, the capital of the New Republic, and a City Planet, and the Lusankya was actually buried ''upside down''!}}

* Patrick Tilley's ''Amtrak Wars'' novels, set a long time [[After the End]], feature the Amtrak Federation, fighting an expansionist war out of Texas using giant "wagon-trains" that act as bases for troops and aircraft carriers for fleets of microlights. They're called the Amtrak Federation because they live in underground cities that were originally nuclear bunkers, connected by the "rail garrison" trains mentioned above, running on the Amtrak rail network. [[Truth in Television]]: The wagon trains are based on the [[wikipedia:Overland train|Overland Train concept]] tested by the U.S. Army.

* ''Absolution Gap'', the last part of [[Alastair Reynolds]]' Revelation Space trilogy, has sections set on a moon where a whole religion has sprung up that involves giant mobile cathedrals constantly doing circuits of the moon without stopping. [[It Makes Sense in Context]] (though there is far too much context to go into here).

 

* ''ARK II'' had the good guys rolling around an [[After the End]] landscape in a mobile home/lab/storehouse of [[Lost Technology]].

* ''[[Power Rangers SPD]]'': SPD HQ is revealed about ten episodes in to be one of these, transforming into a sort of tank formation. Around the midpoint of the series we find it to be capable of ''intercontinental'' travel. It also turns into a giant robot, but that's a [[Humongous Mecha|different trope]].

** ''[[Power Rangers Zeo]]'' had a recreation vehicle that served as a base of operations for Rita Repulsa and Lord Zedd.

* ''Wild Wild West'' had a train (complete with a steam locomotive) filled with gadgets and spy-equipment, as an operating base for the heroes.

* UNIT has an HQ on wheels that is featured in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episodes "The Sontaran Stratagem" and "The Poison Sky".

* Jim Rockford on ''[[The Rockford Files]]'' both lived in and worked out of a old, dilapidated mobile home, which usually remained parked on a Malibu beach, but on a few occasions, when he needed to skip town in a hurry, he hitched his trailer up (with the help of his retired trucker dad) and took home with him.

 

== Music ==

* The music video for "Army of Me" by [[Bjork]] features a tractor trailer so large that the wheels themselves are taller than most people.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* ''[[Eberron]]'' has Argonth, which patrols the border of Breland. Though it's not on wheels so much as it [[Magitek|hovers]].

** The monastery-fortresses of the Iron Hands space marines are literally (massive, massive) Bases on Wheels.

** An let's not forget the Necron's Monoliths. Which are less Bases on Wheels and more mobile floating (and teleporting) tombs of death and destruction.

** Also, the Chaos airbases in [[Dan Abnett]]'s ''Double Eagle'' are over a mile long, and mobile.

** And the 'Spike' from [[Gaunt's Ghosts|Necropolis]], a kilometer tall tracked spire mounting a normally spacecraft based weapon capable of cutting a ''Fortress'' in ''half''

** And the role-playing games in the setting give us Ambulon, the wandering city (well, that's a city-sized Base On Legs, but close enough), and the hive-ships of Zayth, which are tracked megalopoli carrying ridiculous amounts of (occasionally starship-scaled) weaponry, used to battle other hive-ships for resources

** The demon prince (and Patron of Gnolls) Yeenoghu has a palace on rollers that is endlessly dragged around his domain by hordes of slaves.

** The ''Dragon Magazine'' description of Baba Yaga's Dancing Hut fits this trope, probably more so than the original Russian myth, because the cottage on chicken legs is really a [[Pocket Dimension]] on chicken legs.

* The d20 worldbook ''[[Dragon Mech]]'' has entire societies living in [[Humongous Mecha]], from two man human powered walkers through 50 foot high clockwork or steam powered ones up to city-mechs carrying thousands of people and fleets of the smaller mechs.

 

== Toys ==

* During the late 80s and early 90s, ''[[G.I. Joe]]'' had a whole series of these; probably the most well-known was the Defiant space shuttle launch complex, and there was also the Rolling Thunder mobile ballistic missile launcher and GI Joe's aptly named Mobile Command Centre.

** [[G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra]] also got a mobile version of the Pit (the Joes' underground base) in the toyline and videogame.

 

== Video Games ==

* The Eagleland and [[Dirty Communist]] 'recyclers' and factories in Battlezone are basically giant hovering... factories. They can fly around, deploy on a geyser, crap out a couple units and pack up and move along.

* The G-1 Mobile Bases from ''[[Code Geass]]'' are a fairly typical example.

** There's also the MCV, which is basically a vehicle that can transform into a Construction Yard and then build bases. It can also pack up and leave when needed.

* ''[[Drone Tactics]]'' has one of these. It's a giant robotic snail with a cannon hidden under a hatch in its shell, which [[Rule of Cool|justifies the use of this trope all by itself.]]

** Too bad the Snail practically dies in one hit in later levels, and the cannon it uses hardly dents the enemy hp, though you can buy upgrades to mitigate this.

** And probably, as this is the Fallout universe after all, a nuclear reactor powering all this. Of course, this 'verse has [[Every Car Is a Pinto|nuke reactors powering]] ''[[Every Car Is a Pinto|cars]]'', so that's not necessarily that remarkable.

* ''[[Front Mission]]'' has the Chinese Tianlei Mobile Fortress. Yes, [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]], housing many wanzers, helis, and home to the enigmatic Imaginary Number special forces. Depending on your scenario, you either try to take it down, or defend it.

* Featured in the ''Halo 3'' multiplayer map "Sandtrap" are two vehicles officially called "''Behemoth''-class Troop Tansport", colloquially known as "Elephants". While small examples of the Base On Wheels trope, they are the largest pilotable vehicles in the game. They also on default map settings come equipped with two detachable Gatling gun turrets and one fixed turret. They can also hold up to three ATV or two "Warthog" jeeps. In the universe of the game, they were designed for troop transport and vehicle recovery and feature large cranes, and an upper and lower deck. Though, in a few fan-made multiplayer modes, they are used as mobile flag-bases in Capture the Flag games.

** Amusingly, you can actually flip one over, though it is very hard to do. Even more amusingly, you can then go to flip it back over, leading to a prompt; [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|"Press RB to... Wait, what? How did you do that?"]]

* ''[[Marvel Ultimate Alliance]]'' featured the Omega Base, a giant military research station on tracks operated by S.H.I.E.L.D. The only plot reason it was on tracks was to have the villains hijack it and send it towards an hydroelectric dam.

** The mission before involved the [[Airborne Aircraft Carriers|Helicarriers]] prompting Spiderman to wonder why they didn't add a tunnel to Japan to the extravagant waste two such vehicles would produce.

** Then there's also the joke unit Terra-Tron, which is quite literally a base on legs. (It's formed by combining every building in the base into a giant robot.)

* ''Supreme Commander'' has the Fatboy experimental unit. It's as large as several city blocks and can quickly produce most ground units while (not) firing away with its twelve gauss cannons, two riot guns, four railguns and torpedo launcher.

* Classic PC-game ''[[Transarctica]]'' casts you as the commander of a [[Cool Train]]-Base in an ice-covered [[After the End]] world. As you expand your train, it will come to include everything from troop transports, luxury-cars for spies, heavy weapons for anti-train combat, a [[This Is a Drill|huge drill]] on the front, and of course the Mammoth transport cars. No, not some kind of tank or mech called a Mammoth, literal, woolly, betrunked Mammoths, used as beasts of burden.

* [[What Could Have Been|Most likely]] what the Train would be in ''[[Red Dead Redemption]]'' if it was present in Multiplayer.

* In Megaman Zero 4, the resistance uses a convoy of moving vans as a mobile base when they need to make a long trip away from their usual base.

* In ''[[Garden Gnome Carnage]]'', the player controls an apartment building mounted on wheels.

 

== Western Animation ==

* ''[[Invader Zim]]'' - Zim's house becomes a Base On Wheels when GIR becomes the computer AI.

* ''[[Metalocalypse]]'': Dethklok's tour bus qualifies as one of these. It takes up the entire road and has a large lavishly furnished room inside with both a hot tub and a two story tall fireplace with a balcony across it.

* ''[[Transformers]]''

** Metroplex, the Transformer who doubles as ''a massive mobile city''.

 

== Real Life ==

* A typical example of an armed train would be the German setup for hauling the giant Krupp K5 280mm railway guns; each battery had three trains. The staff train would comprise around 34 cars including two locomotives, the whole train being over twelve hundred feet long and including a field kitchen, flatbed cars for vehicles, AA guns, an equipment car, generators, and even a mobile workshop. The gun trains were a little shy of a thousand feet long and had 23 or 24 cars including two locomotives, and included the K5 guns themselves, cranes and parts to build turntables for the guns to be mounted on, three boxcars of ammunition and more AA guns. The shorter gun train had two boxcars dedicated to the battery's armourer, the longer an extra passenger car and a wagon of food.

* Projekt NM was a "mobile coastal battery" consisting of three Tiger tanks with their turrets mounted on a giant I-beam girder frame with a false wooden building on top, with the whole thing placed on top of their hulls which would drive the bizarre contraption around. It never got off the drawing boards.

* [[Those Wacky Nazis]] had plans to create versions of their heavy railway guns that ran on tank treads; the one the came closest to actually happening involved the 210-ton Krupp K5 guns, of which there were 25 by the end of the war. The plan was to replace the two rail cars with modified King Tiger hulls. Far more ridiculous was a similar plan to make a self-propelled variant of the 1,400-ton Schwerer Gustav ultragun, which was supposedly on the drawing boards when Albert Speer found out and made the engineers involved go and work on something sensible.

* On a smaller scale, Hitler's first headquarters was a train. It was fifteen cars long and required two engines working in tandem. Part of the reason Hitler initially opted for a train was that if France decided to attack the German border during the invasion of Poland, they could quickly transfer the command staff to the west.

* Armoured trains were used by the Russians and Germans during the Second World War to deter vehicles and infantry from attacking vital rail lines; they had purpose-built armoured wagons and sometimes armoured locomotives, and their armament included machine guns, AA guns in armoured enclosures, artillery guns, and even surplus tank turrets. The armoured trains only got bigger, stronger and meaner as the war went on; perhaps the ultimate example was when the Allies found three Panzerjäger-Triebwagen wagons (51-53) in a German factory after the war ended, each essentially being a heavily armoured mobile bunker equipped with a pair of Panzer IV turrets.

** The earliest examples were the German prototypes for a train-launched A4 (ie V2) missile. These were extensively tested but ultimately abandoned after it became clear Allied air superiority would make them unworkable. Most V2 missiles were still moved from the factory to their launch sites by train, however.

** In the USA, the LGM-118A Peacekeeper, initially known as the "MX missile", was proposed to be deployed by a "rail garrison" system whereby 25 trains, each with two missiles (up to 10 warheads), would use the national railroad system to conceal themselves. When the [[Cold War]] ended, this was deemed too expensive and the missiles were stuck in silos.

* Bucket-wheel excavators are the largest mobile objects on Earth, though they cannot move under their own power and require an external generator to supply electricity. The biggest, Bagger 293, requires 17 megawatts of power and weighs in at 14,200 tons - almost 50% heavier than a ''Ticonderoga''-class cruiser; in one day, either Bagger excavator can strip enough material to fill 2,400 coal wagons. They only move at 0.4 miles per hour, but their ground pressure is just 24.8 PSI: that's significantly less than a ''car''.

** One of Bagger 293's similar-sized siblings has been praised in a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azEvfD4C6ow popular music video].

* Though not usually military, some people do live out of their vehicles for significant periods of time, or even indefinitely. Their standards of living tend to vary, depending on the size and quality of the vehicle.

 

[[Category:Home Base]]

[[Category:Travel Cool]]