Question about Tiberium in Command and Conquer.

[Diablo1099_v1legacy]

I was playing some Tiberium Dawn on OpenRA and I kinda realized something.
So, Tiberium is basically a blend of Gold and Oil, right? Cocaine for the economy, right?
Well, as I browsed the wiki and played the game, I have to ask:

Why on earth would someone want to buy this stuff and in that volume?

It basically turns the environment into a wasteland, it's extremely toxic to human beings, it spreads like wildfire and from what I've gathered the one real "Use" for it is just making mutants and bombs.

Now, if I understand things right, the entire world economy in that series is built around Tiberium, so who is buying it in enough quantities to finance both GDI and Nod forces and what are they using it for?

 

[seris]

its a very valuable fuel source in the C&C games, not to mention its a foreign substance from space, and people love space rocks. asteroids sell for tens of thousands of dollars in real life

it also sucks up all the precious minerals out of the ground, so companies probably refine it to get the goods out of it

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well I don't know the exact lore, but the rough shakedown is tiberium being some kind of strange space mineral that allows the creation of crazy new tech as well as super soldiers, also grows on it's own at an insane rate... I can't imagine any country passing up on a resource like that if it was real.

 

[Barbas]

It's rich in precious minerals, which apparently means that it can be used for the manufacturing of advanced weaponry at least. Like series mentioned, it also gathers those minerals up like a sponge where previously people would have to mine deeper for them. Refining the Tiberium gets you those minerals which you can use for...whatever those minerals have always been used for, really.

 

[x EvilErmine x]

Wow, blast form the past much? I loved me some C&C back in the day D

Sorta game spoilers ahead, but seeing as the game has been out so long then I wont be using spoiler tags.

Ok so IIRC Tiberuim came to earth from space, originally it's source was unknown, but as we learn in C&C, it was sent to earth by the Scrin as a sort of teraforming agent. Hence it's rapid growth and destruction of the ecosystem. It was meant to wipe out all indigenous life and make the planet ready for the Scrin harvest the Tiberuim which they use as fuel for their empire.

As for tiberium it's self then the crystal grows by leaching minerals and elements from the soil and air and then incorporating them into it's molecular structure. It's an auto catalytic process as it's growth causes more Tiberium formation ad infinitum as long as there are things it can use to grow. The value in it is it's ability to concentrate and purify rare elements within it's structure. This means that when the Tiberium is refined all these elements can be extracted and used, making it extremely valuable from an economic point of view. Also it emits a strange form of radiation that interacts with biological life in very strange ways causing mutation and it can be used as a very powerful fuel source as it has an insane energy density.

All that makes it very useful. Hence why the global economy of the C&C universe runs on Tiberium, it really is all things to all men.

 

[Muspelheim]

Like the posters above have said, Tiberium basically collects valuable minerals from the earth's crust and brings them up to the surface in an enriched form. All you've got to do is harvest it and shove it in a separation vat, and you'll be up to your ears in minerals.

The Scrin seeded earth with Tiberium presumably to make it much easier for them to omnomnom all the mineral resources on the planet, rather than having to dig them up themselves.

(If I remember correctly, it's called Tiberium because the meteor that contained the Tiberium seed landed by the Tiber river in Italy)

 

[Rayce Archer]

The Scrin campaign in C&C3 makes it clear that worlds are seeded with Tiberium (or as they call it, Ichor) in the millions, the player is a harvesting foreman who has been in suspended animation in our quadrent of the Milky Way awaiting Earth's eventual maturation (IE, transformation into a Tiberium-leeched, ion-storm covered wasteland). Earth, even in its highly corrupted state by the events of 3, is still considered unready for harvest; whether this is a result of humanity containing and harvesting the Tiberium themselves or merely an insufficient passage of time is not explained.

Much of the propagation of Tiberium on Earth is the work of Cain who makes extensive and rather crude use of Tiberium to enhance and power Nod's armies. Given the very strong implications that Cain is himself a crashed member of another, more advanced alien race, it seems likely that the real purpose of his abusing Tiberium was to lure the Scrin to Earth so he could access their technology and leave the planet.

 

[beastro]

whether this is a result of humanity containing and harvesting the Tiberium themselves or merely an insufficient passage of time is not explained.

It's meant to weaken any complex native life before they move in. Such life will not exterminate Tiberium because of the resources it provides while they still have a chance to do so while by the time they realize what it does to their global ecosystem it's too prevalent to get rid of.

The problem was that Kane triggered their awakening process far earlier than expected his own goals so they wound up invading at the worst moment, when Mankind was still strong and numerous enough to to make full use of Tiberium to fight back.

 

[Stryc9]

So, directly from one of the FMVs in the first game Tiberium leeches minerals from the soil and concentrates them making them easier to collect. Essentially it's like having a substance that can suck all the gold, silver, copper, what have you from the ground in the area it's growing and serve it up to you on the surface without having to dig for it.

The waste product after the Tiberium crystals are refined is highly toxic and that's what Nod uses to make all of it's Tiberium based weapons.

I'm not sure how much of the series you're familiar with but Tiberium is also doing something else to the planet that you learn about in later games.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

The C&C wikia practically explains all there is to know about Tiberium and it's links to Kane and the Scrin along with technology and Tib weaponry along with the Forgotten.

http://cnc.wikia.com/wiki/Tiberium

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Escapist, have you been stalking me? I actually went through the C&C wiki last night when I couldn't sleep and was reading alllll about this.

However, the answer has been adequately stated above. Now I want a modern Tiberium C&C game again...

 

[masticina]

You make it sound allot like OIL

OIL is dirty business and if spilled in nature it surely isn't good. It required special machines to harvest and process. And it feeds a whole society..the whole world.

Tiberium isn't that different but then on steroids! Super Soldiers and highly expensive technology lies right in hand if you sell that Tiberium. Oooh must be quite capable stuff indeed.

 

[ForumSafari]

Why on earth would someone want to buy this stuff and in that volume?

Tiberium spreads to an area by planting, accidental contamination or spreading by a blossom tree (Tiberium Riparius iirc) and proceeds to put down roots. The root structure leaches precious metals and elements from the ground and extrudes them as crystals from the top. Tiberium replaces mining, rather than needing huge mines, open cast pits and the ecological damage from all this they simply scrape up the crystals from the surface.

Gold seam underground? Mining you say? Screw that, spray some Tiberium aerosol on the ground over it, come back a month later and pick gold up off the ground.

The economy then gets used to this new abundance to the extent that it would collapse without it. Like oil today. The first company to eschew the use of Tiberium goes broke through having larger overheads.

Now, if I understand things right, the entire world economy in that series is built around Tiberium, so who is buying it in enough quantities to finance both GDI and Nod forces and what are they using it for?

GDI are funded by member states and supplemented by Tiberium collection so most of their funding is actually taxes. The Brotherhood of NOD owns 49% of the World's Tiberium supply through willingness to operate in extremely hazardous conditions and treaties with third world nations. NOD is a two-tier operation of shoestring terrorists and an extremely powerful secret society and they have almost half of the world's funding behind that top tier.

As for who buys it; everyone that buys oil now and everyone that buys ore. Refinery companies mostly. Amusingly enough given how it operates GDI probably sells a hefty chunk of its' Tiberium to NOD.

EDIT: God damn but I love Command & Conquer.

 

[Dr. Thrax]

Everyone pretty much explained it perfectly, but there's also the added benefit that harvesting it themselves allows them to slowly curb its rapid growth, though GDI has found that sonic weaponry is greatly effective against its crystalline structure.
If left alone, it'd be able to grow unhindered and would have wiped out humanity early, since Tiberium has funded lots of R&D into containment/weapons.

Another purpose, as demonstrated by The Brotherhood, is that, when properly harnessed, Liquid Tiberium (Also known as Ichor LQ by the Scrin) is extremely volatile and a very potent weapon. The Liquid Tiberium bomb detonated in Temple Prime is evidence of this, with a blast radius engulfing numerous countries and seeding Tiberium across half the globe at the same time, a few Blue Zones becoming Yellow or Red Zones, and many Yellow Zones had to be reclassified as Red Zones.

Tiberium weaponry is demonstrated by Kane's forces in the expansion pack Kane's Wrath, where you can upgrade your missile toting units with Liquid Tiberium Missiles, greatly increasing their damage. The Marked of Kane Tiberium Trooper is a replacement unit for the Black Hand, equally effective at killing infantry, but is able to slow down vehicles with their Liquid Tiberium spray as well, not to mention that their weapon has a chance to mutate infantry into Visceroids, having a few of those running about an enemy base can be quite nasty. Liquid Tiberium can also be injected into your infantry, giving them more health, increased movement speed, and immunity to Tiberium radiation, and is also used to increase the power output of all Nod Power Plants.

The Scrin require Tiberium to live, they are beings that need repeated Tiberium transfusions to survive, thus they seed other planets with the crystal, wait for all indigenous life to be wiped out and the entire planet covered, then they harvest the now dead planet. It's the reason why in the GDI campaign for Tiberium Wars that all Scrin units die when the Scrin Relay Node is destroyed. Despite how they were overwhelming initially, the forces seen in Tiberium Wars and Kane's Wrather were a simple mining fleet that awoke from stasis when the Liquid Tiberium Detonation was detected, which normally signals that a planet is ready for harvesting operations to begin.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

Escapist, have you been stalking me? I actually went through the C&C wiki last night when I couldn't sleep and was reading alllll about this.

However, the answer has been adequately stated above. Now I want a modern Tiberium C&C game again...

I was doing the same once this thread started and since then I've gotten back into playing Kane's Wrath (albeit with an unofficial 2.3 patch which fixes quite a lot and makes playing it fun again) and still playing Red Alert 3.

Yeah I really could go for a new Tib game tbh, PA from Uber failed in my eyes and a lot of others and didn't really deliver and give me the experience I was wanting so I opted back to playing older RTS games to regain the experience I sought, though I am looking forward to Grey Goo made by the half of Westwood studios that actually survived and their game does look quite promising with 3 factions being the norm while adding new things into the mix.

Speaking of which PA already announced a new RTS game they're going to make even though they still have to finish up PA and gain RTS fans back like myself.