Enemy Exchange Program: Difference between revisions

** [[Good Bad Bugs|Weirdly]], combining the above two examples did not work as you would expect. Some versions (and mods) allowed non-Ordos to capture an Ordos factory and produce their own Deviators, but no matter who owned the Deviator, it always turned its victims to Ordos.

** Of course, taking over a unit for as short a period as you could didn't really do that much good...except against Devastators, which could be ordered to self-destruct.

** Certain scenarios can also trigger capture in ways that are not conventionally possible. For example, several times in the ''Tiberium'' series, Nod stole a GDI [[Kill Sat|Ion Cannon]] by cracking into GDI's network infrastructure. Another type of scenario-triggered capture happens in the ''Red Alert: Counterstrike'' mission, "[[Deadly Gas|Sarin Gas]]: [[Elaborate Underground Base|Down Under]]": an Allied Spy can hijack vehicles by infiltrating Soviet War Factories.

** Quite possibly due to software limitations, unit quotes from ''Red Alert'' and beyond can be quite jarring if they are side-specific like, say, a GDI commander producing a Nod Militia squad whose one of many lines is "Down with GDI!" or an Allied commander's Ant whose response is "Vehicle reporting." Granted, the last one isn't so much Enemy Exchange, as much as it is a [[Game Mod]].

** One of the scenarios starts you with a single priest, requiring you to convert any units that wander past in order to build an army - gets easier when villagers start showing up.

** The expansion for ''Warcraft II'', however, had such scenarios in each campaign (Alliance and Horde).

* In ''Warcraft III'', the Undead Banshee unit can possess a single enemy unit, sacrificing itself to give you control of it. The Death Knight hero can temporarily raise up to 6 dead units regardless of former allegiance to fight for him, although without any special abilities or spells that the unit might normally have.

* In ''[[Star Craft 2]]'' there is an achievement called Zerglot. While playing as Zerg against a Protoss opponent, use an Infestor unit's mental parasite ability to take temporary control of an enemy probe, which is the Protoss worker unit. While the probe is still under your control, build a Nexus, the Protoss Command Building. Then continue building Protoss buildings with probes built at the Nexus until you can build a Zealot, and then build it. This earns the Zerglot achievement. It is possible to do this in any game mode, but playing against the AI makes it much easier. It is also possible to do this with Terran units by capturing an SCV, but it will either have to be captured again by different Infestors, or multiple ones will have to be captured sequentially to build a Command Center.

* In ''[[Total Annihilation]]'' both commander units can capture enemy units, including construction units. Core has a resurrection unit that can raise enemy units. In the sequel, ''[[Total Annihilation Kingdoms]]'' Elsin, the Aramonian monarch, can resurrect enemy units and Zhon's Harpy and Taros' Mind Mage can capture enemy units.

** ''Supreme Commander 2'' has a mission where an [[AI Is a Crapshoot|an AI has gone insane]] and [[Ascended Glitch|builds engineers and turrets nonstop]]. Staying in control of your base is surprisingly hard until you get the hang of it.

* The same applies in the ''[[Dungeon Keeper]]'' series, where enemies can be converted in the torture chamber, but neither they nor your creatures will enjoy each other's company, and will likely require separate dungeon areas.

* The tabletop RPG ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' allows clerics (well, evil clerics) to use their Turn Undead ability to control undead creatures and have them fight for the party as expendable minions. This doesn't work any more as of fourth edition.

* ''[[Seven Kingdoms]]'' allows you to easily reproduce each race's buildings and units, with the exceptions of the powerful Seat of Power, which can only be built if you have the respective scroll (and each human nation starts with only one). However, human players can't build any of the demonic Frythans structures even if they control some of their units, but it works the other way around. (Getting a large enough number to operate the structures is another issue entirely, as well as keeping them from rebelling).

** Homeworld 2 also allows for capturing with the Hiigaran Marine Frigate and its Vaygr equivalent. The frigate flies up to an enemy vessel and launches a boarding party to take over the ship. However, it's a lot harder to do this than with Salvage Corvettes in the first game, and the game's [[Dynamic Difficulty]] makes larger fleets less useful.

* Played straight and averted in the ''[[Warlords]]'' series. In the first two games, once you occupy an enemy city (without pillaging or sacking it) you can produce any units that the enemy could in that city, including special units that are specific to the enemy side and otherwise unavailable to you. In the third game captured cities cannot produce those special units unless your side is already capable of doing so.

* ''[[Warhammer 40000]]: [[Dawn of War]]: Dark Crusade'' introduced the Necron Lord Destroyer, which could "possess" enemy vehicles and convert them to your side. When these vehicles are destroyed, the Lord Destroyer pops out damaged but "alive". Seeing as you could only build a maximum of two of these, though, using this is situational.

* ''[[Halo|Halo Wars]]'' gives the UNSC access to SPARTAN [[Super Soldier|Super Soldiers]], who have various abilities. One of these includes the power to hijack enemy vehicles, just like they can in the ''Halo'' FPS games.

** Also played somewhat straight in that capturing an enemy construction ship allows you to access the entire tech tree and build a complete fleet of ships of the construction ship's original race. They will, however, be crewed by members of your own race, often with hilarious results such as a Romulan-manned Borg cube responding with, "Warbird reporting..." when selected because the sound bites for a given unit type (in this case "battleship") are simply transfered straight across (in this case from the Romulan Warbird to the Romulan-manned cube) to all "battleship" type units manned by your race without regard to whether they are fitting or not... Also, by the way, only the Borg's Assimilator unit transports the enemy crew off their ship to be assimilated (where they are either added to the Assimilator's crew or added to your general crew pool if the Assimilator has a full compliment) and it does not actually hold the enemy ship in place. The Borg cube's holding beam does hold enemy ships in place, but it just does exactly what the transporter does except on a larger scale (more Drones are transfered per second than with the transporter) and able to do it through enemy shields... Incidentally, capturing an Assimilator as another race does not remove its special ability. This has the hilarious side-effect of having, say, a Federation-manned Assimilator "assimilating" enemy crew, including the Borg player you stole it from in the first place.

* ''[[Warzone 2100]]'' had the NEXUS link turret, which infected enemy units with a virus that made them fight for your side. Somewhat subverted that in single player, it's mostly the enemy NEXUS faction using it on ''you'', and by the time you research the link turret yourself, NEXUS has the Resistance Circuits tech (also obtainable by the player) that makes the link turret ineffective.

* ''Space Empires IV'' allows a player to capture enemy ships, steal enemy blueprints, and reverse-engineer enemy technology. So it's downright easy to get someone else's ships--though only capturing them outright will produce ships that follow the enemy design.

* ''[[Machines Wired for War]]'' features allow you to take over enemy buildings as well as steal unit design plans, also the Judas warlord that can convert enemy units to your side.

* In ''[[Operation Flashpoint]]'', you can literally use any vehicle that isn't locked, so this can and does happen. One mission in the Resistance campaign involves stealing several enemy tanks.

* Similary, none of tanks and helicopters in the ''Battlefield'' games spawn locked, so although each side has their own vehicles, you need to rely on the color of the player's name above the vehicles to determine which vehicles to shoot at.

* In ''[[Rise of Nations]]'', the Spy is capable of converting enemy units to the other side using the ability ''Bribe''. However, the normally invisible Spy is revealed after the ability and is partially revealed during the casting (usually during this time they are insta-killed by the ''Counter Intelligence'' ability). Apparently, the vanilla [[Rise Of Nation]] had the Russians produce spies that don't reveal after using Bribe, so it was kind of a [[Game Breaker]].

* An interestingly version of this occurs in ''[[Achron]]'': The CESO Heavy Tank has the ability to infect enemy units and structures with nanites. The subverted units still retain the colour and the ability to take orders from their original faction... but you can give them orders whenever you want to too. Instant spies and/or traitors!

* ''[[Sword of the Stars]]'' have boarding pods that can be used to take control of the guns of enemy ships, turning them into immobile weapons platforms for your side (presumably, the bridge crew disable the ship's central control before being overrun). Ships 'captured' in this way are destroyed at end of combat.

* While there a few provinces in ''[[Medieval Total War]]'' that specialize in a unit and will produce them for anyone, most troop types are tied to the factions. So if your English crusader army captures Egypt the locals suddenly figure out how to grow yew trees in the desert but forget how to herd camels.

* In ''Cossacks: European War'', you can capture an enemy peasant (or artillery piece, or civilian building, or military building under special circumstances) when your military units are nearby and the enemy's aren't. Enemy peasants however, retain their home nationality, allowing you to build up their tech tree as well as your own. This is less useful than it first appears though, since not one single piece of research you've done crosses over, requiring you to build the new civilisation from the ground up.

* in''[[Company of Heroes]]'', many weapons like mortars and heavy machine guns require crews to operate. If your troops manage to kill the crew of a weapon without destroying it, they can pick it up and turn it on its original owners.

 

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