| abstract | - It has been a staple of Real Time Strategy games ever since the seminal Dune II that the player must construct a base to provide units right on the field during the battle. These bases most often resemble small cities devoted to military production rather than any kind of realistic field base. Only rarely are these in place at the beginning of a given scenario. The enemy usually does not suffer from this restriction, but will thankfully refrain from attacking until you can establish your own base. Highly unrealistic and often not even addressed, this is still necessary to some fans. The feeling of building and managing a city in wartime is oft preferable as a fighting experience than going through with tactics and strategy. A great many varieties of Applied Phlebotinum are invoked as justification, generally some way of ultra-fast manufacturing or teleporting assets onto the field. This is such a staple of Real Time Strategy that games lacking it are sometimes categorized as being in a different genre altogether - specifically, Real Time Tactics. Several of the best-regarded games in the genre are ones that do something interesting with the concept. In Battlezone 1998, the struggle for the Applied Phlebotinum behind such wonders leads to a plot where the Cold War is secretly duked out in hovertanks across the solar system. In Total Annihilation, the ability to build armies out of nowhere is not an incongruity but the basis of the gameplay mechanics. If one constructor can build another constructor, then those two can build four, those eight, those sixteen...
* The initial building being created from a large, slow-moving vehicle. A staple of Dune II and its descendants. Creating another one usually has huge requirements to prevent early expansions.
* Building factories and barracks that spew out vehicles and soldiers without anyone or anything entering them. Usually not to scale either.
* Arbitrary restrictions on placement of buildings, usually called the control radius or somesuch. Trope Codifier Dune II could justify it by restricting your construction to rock, instead of building your houses on sand. Most games don't have such justifications. Increasing this radius is part of why Starcraft tells you to construct those additional pylons.
* Having to build entire power plants right on the field, instead of hooking up to the power grid or relying on field generators.
* Having to gather resources during the battle to fund the war effort. Particularly ridiculous in Red Alert and its sequel, with ore and gems growing out of the ground.
* Having to build some arbitrary "support" building before being allowed to field a particular unit.
* Having to build houses or similar buildings with the sole purpose of increasing the Arbitrary Headcount Limit up to a certain limit (the trope-naming pylons also do that.) You may be able to solve this via Ridiculously-Fast Construction. However, it's quite possible that You Require More Vespene Gas to fuel your Command and Conquer Economy. Also, you may need a Worker Unit or two to get you that Vespene Gas and put up those pylons already... Examples of Construct Additional Pylons include:
* The Trope Namer is Starcraft, which tells you incessantly that "You must construct additional pylons" in order to build more Protoss buildings/units. Said pylons also provide power to nearby buildings, and as such act as a control radius for the Protoss. However, if they are destroyed, buildings in the radius not covered by other pylons go offline. The game justifies the control radius for the Zerg by requiring them to build on the Creep, an area of purple biomass "carpet". Their supply cap is "control", provided by the Overlord air units. Terrans rely on Supply Depots to extend the unit cap (and act as ad-hoc walls), but can plonk their buildings down pretty much anywhere there's room, and can relocate certain larger buildings through slowly moving them through the air.
* Also Warcraft with farms, burrows, moonwells, and ziggurats.
* The weird thing is that, canonically, you aren't constructing Pylons. You're warping in already-constructed pylons.
* Made weirder by the fact that the planet you're supposedly warping them in from has been overrun by Zerg in the expansion.
* The weirdest is in Starcraft II, where in one mission you are warping the units in, despite this being the galaxy's last stand against the zerg
* We owe this trope also this in return.
* They did manage to avert some degree of The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard, however, by simply having you fight more than one faction at once (though infighting rarely occurred).
* Dune II, while not the first RTS game, is the prime Trope Maker here. It and its derivative Command and Conquer and Red Alert game series feature every element mentioned above to some degree.
* The first Command and Conquer game did have a minor avoidance of this ... as Nod, you didn't manufacture your vehicles. Instead, you bought them, and had to fly them in. Given what's going on, you'd think that the backing powers would give you a bit more opening resources when you're, say, staging an attack on enemy HQ that's meant to wipe them off the planet.
* For the 4X-based Rise of Nations, you build whole cities and infrastructure instead of normal bases: the cities expand your territory, your infrastructure increases your resource revenue, the resource increase only applies to farms, mines and lumber fields built within a certain radius of your city, you can only build within your own land. However, building a state is really the point; the game is really aiming at "RTS-style Civilization" than Command and Conquer-style war. The Easy Logistics of battle are averted as your units suffer attrition damage when inside enemy turf, which is nullified if you keep a Supply Wagon nearby. The fact that nothing enters your military production buildings is still kinda strange though (helicopters never land, for instance).
* In Total Annihilation all sides start out with a Commander. The Commander builds factories that build construction units that build more factories and power plants and defenses. While there is no arbitrary limit on the size of your base, you are restricted to building mobile units from factories only. Unlike many other RTS games, resource collection is mostly preformed by stationary buildings - your construction units can reclaim wreckage of destroyed units, rocks, miscellaneous metallic structures, trees and flora, and the bodies of dead alien creatures (the serpents and scorpions) for a set amount of metal or energy, but otherwise you need to depend on stationary buildings for a steady stream of resources. Resource management is an important strategy, as the player who can control more of the metal deposits can get the upper hand.
* The Age of Empires series of course does this. While this is more forgivable when it's meant to show a whole war or at least a section of the war it makes less sense when playing scenarios which are meant to be just a battle, which you can then win by building a wonder and have it stand for 100 years!
* It also has a literal "Construct additional pylons" message in "You need to build more houses!" One solution to this annoyance: play the Huns, who are nomads and don't require houses.
* There's a similar effect in Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, in which everyone has to build Prefab Shelters. Except the Trade Federation, whose troops don't need prefabs because they're stored in boxes when not in use.
* Lampshaded in the Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 tutorial, in which the Soviet Tank wonders why the most powerful military forces must gather ore in the middle of a war and wondering what's in that stuff anyways. He is immediately shot by the other tanks for "asking stupid questions".
* Halo Real Time Strategy game Halo Wars has fixed bases, each of which contains plots for 4-6 buildings. No construction units are present. Instead, the base gets flown in from your Cool Ship (or teleported in the case of the bad guys.)
* War Wind requires the player to set up living quarters for every couple of units, which they then hire from elsewhere or recruit from people in the overworld.
* Plants vs. Zombies has Sunflowers (and for night stages, Sun-Shrooms), which do nothing but produce Sun, which is required to buy plants for attacking or blocking. It's not unusual to have more than a third of the field completely covered in Sunflowers on more advanced stages.
* Played completely straight in the upcoming real-time strategy game Achron.
* Parodied in the Web Comic Sluggy Freelance when Torg, stranded in medieval England and pretending to be the Warlord of Mercia, has to lead his army into battle.
* In the second The Lord Of The Rings: The Battle For Middle-Earth game, the amount of farms (or mallorn trees in the case of the elves, or mines in the case of the dwarves) determines how many command points you have, capping at 1000.
* Dawn of War also has most of these gameplay elements. It also does away with traditional resource gathering (mostly -- you still build field generators). The resource you must gather is controlled territory (represented by Strategic Points). The more of the map you hold, the quicker your requisition points come in.
* It should be noted that several buildings and units (like infantry) are not constructed, but shot from orbit. Which is kind of typical of Warhammer 40,000.
* Averted in DOW 2 and its expansions; the main campaigns feature no base building at all, simply capturing strategic points and at most setting up an automated defense turret. Multiplayer only featured your main production building and whatever structure you could build on captured points.
* In Lego Rock Raiders, you are only allowed to teleport in 9 Rock Raiders before you have to construct a Support Station. After that, you get ten additional worker spaces for each Support Station constructed.
* Justified in many cases because levels often have a limited oxygen supply that depletes more quickly with more workers and can only be replenished by the buildings in question. They also provide places for your Raiders to go and eat, (ignoring any other commands they've been issued) though they can also be made to eat by selecting them and choosing a command in the menu. (Why they don't just automatically pull out a sandwich when they become hungry is anyone's guess.
* Aztec Wars simplifies the usual system. On each map you are limited to a number of pre-placed bases, which can only produce the weakest infantry unit, but can be expanded into one of two or three types: Village, City and Fortress. Each of the types has a different selection of buildings and units available. Getting money is achieved simply by putting down the Farm or Mine buildings, which then produce cash automatically (though they can only be built on a specific type of terrain, and give more income when placed on especially fertile spots, so terrain in the game is sort-of the equivalent of limited map resources).
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