Total Annihilation

I think this game needs a bit more love, don't you? After all, it was groundbreaking when it came out, and to date there is no musical score for a game that I would put higher. On par with, maybe, but not higher. And the customization that could go endlessly...there are just not enough words in the world to describe how brilliant it is. Do any of you still play it, and if you do, what's your favourite custom unit or unit pack?

Of course, if you disagree, feel free to say so as well, but it won't stop me raving.

I knew nothing about the customization, and preferred Kingdoms, but my favorite unit in the original was the bomber plane, mostly because, after playing Starcraft, I really liked how they made bombing runs as apposed to standing in place. In fact, aerial units in general were my way to go during that game.

Despite the fantastic premise and technology the game actually has far more nods to reality than any of its competitors. The only problem is the barely existent AI, which would have given the game the replay value it needed to compete in the dial-up era.

I used to be addicted to the FARK DLC unit. Nothing like having multiple commanders' worth of nanolathing power to feed one's megalomania. Of course, picking up the game much later and realizing that any number of hard A.I.s will fall to a T1 rush on default resources kind of killed it for me.

edited 21st Dec '10 2:05:29 AM by Recon5

There's a great mod out there (Unit Compilation Pack) which not only includes a bevy of good units but also gives the game's AI a bit of a boost, intelligence and resourcewise. I didn't notice it until I played an FFA game on medium with 9 AI, and suddenly was getting nuked every five seconds. My missile defence lasted maybe two minutes until all hell broke loose.

One of my favourite units was always the ARM Falcon (also a custom unit), a plane which, when massed, could do a ton of damage in its fast strafing runs.

edited 21st Dec '10 4:49:37 AM by balrog1911

I love this game. In fact, there is a shortcut to it on my desktop. Sometimes I play the right way, but sometimes I just want to blow off some steam and use a cheater unit that builds anything nearly instantly. I then go against five or more A.I.s.

I wish I had known about the game back when the Boneyards servers were working.

Too much realism for my tastes. While it was fun for a while to watch bombers actually bomb and huge explosions from blowing up power plants, as a game it lost my interest pretty fast. Of course, that was over a decade ago.

Hydross missions are the pits. It takes forever to get an economy that can support constructors and unit factories on those maps.

Okay, can someone kindly inform me as to how Core level 16 is even supposed to be possible? I mean, honestly, what approach can work here? What am I doing wrong?

edited 14th Feb '14 1:43:17 PM by Meklar

Would an FAQ be of any interest? If so, here's one.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/43335-total-annihilation/faqs/12719

I never played the game to that great extent so I can't be of any more help than that. Sorry.

That one seems to only include Core levels up to 5.

I've seen other guides for the campaigns, but at least for this level they seem to assume that I've already gotten...well, farther than I've been able to get, what with meteors and Arm units gang-beating everything I have in about 5 milliseconds.

edited 14th Feb '14 3:59:05 PM by Meklar

I finally managed to do it. It required one of those precious rare starts where the Arm troops don't show up as soon as the game begins, and I abandoned the original area and built my entire base in the very southeast corner (the meteor showers didn't seem to hit that area). Aside from the metal patch in that corner, I got most of my metal from metal makers, leaving the metal patches in the middle of the map bare because I simply couldn't afford to secure them. I didn't really build up my base, just massed missile trucks and prayed that the meteors wouldn't trash them all. By the time the Arm units came for me I somehow had enough trucks to hold them back and enough income to keep building trucks. It took a few tries to kill the Arm airplanes before they took out my vehicle factory (they would tend to fly in when my trucks were away dealing with the Arm ground forces), but once I managed to keep the factory alive, I just massed enough trucks and tanks and took out the remaining Arm units.

Still, this has got to be one of the least well thought-out levels I've seen in any RTS game. Seriously, Cavedog, did you even playtest this shit?

Man, I loved this game back in the day.

My friends all play TA Spring now though.

I still have fond memories of spamming Brawlers (ARM gunship) to wreak havoc on my opponents by mightily reducing their framerate.

Okay. Core Contingency Arm campaign level 7. How do you even defend against the Core, much less defeat them, when they start with a thousand times as much stuff, build a thousand times as fast, and get to blow up everything you build with long-range guns before you even finish building it? Is there something I was supposed to learn in the previous levels that I missed, or is this level really 110% impossible?

Dunno what to tell you. I recently found all of my disks for this. :3

Spring can bite me. I prefer the disk original. Wish I could get the unit packs offered by cave dog a while back.

I loved the big metal planet skirmish maps.

Master list Check the mission name against this list and watch the appropriate vid.

Try this. It is Arm Mission 7

edited 15th May '14 4:42:57 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Wait, realism? We are talking about this game,◊ right?

If you are responding to Clarste you should check the time stamp on the post. That comment was made years ago.

Well, I have one more strategy to try (namely, not building a factory at the start, and using the money for extra resource buildings and missile towers) before I resort to watching a video.

Good luck.

I am going to scour the net and try find the cave dog dlc.

There's a community patch that fixes a bunch of issues (improves pathfinding, has some optional improvements to the controls, ups the unit cap, and a bunch of other stuff). You can get it over at tauniverse. I think it also includes the extra Cavedog units. Alternatively, you can download them separately from the same site.

Also, man, 16 years since release and there are still people making mods for this game.

I found that site earlier. It does include the bonus units. Yeah this game is great. It was my first pc game that I purchased and played on my personal computer.

Aaaaaand now the screen flashes whenever the game is running, making it unplayable.

EDIT: The screen flashing seems to be associated with having SpeedFan running on the taskbar. Weird.

edited 17th May '14 3:07:33 PM by Meklar

Is this with the community patch (it is noted to have some issues with Windows 8 and some graphics cards; there's an extra few files to download that fixed it for me) or just from the C Ds?

I think it's some sort of patched version. It has both expansions, a 1500 unit limit, and maybe a few extra units. It doesn't require a CD, an image, or even an install.

Like I say, after turning off SpeedFan the problem seemed to disappear.

edited 17th May '14 6:38:03 PM by Meklar

Good Ol Games sells a copy like that.

Beat the level.

The video wasn't entirely relevant. I think that guy must have been playing on a lower difficulty setting, because I got attacked by planes a lot sooner and a lot more frequently than he did. I did try to take the metal patches early like in the video, but it wasn't nearly as easy and effective due to the attacks by planes and then by rocket trucks that would take out my turrets. I think I just got lucky this time around because the enemy never managed to destroy my long-range guns (despite having no small number of his own). Anyway, that's probably the hardest TA level I've played yet, and possibly the most grueling level I've encountered in any RTS game.

EDIT: And, in true TA fashion, the next level was absurdly easy.

edited 19th May '14 9:31:41 PM by Meklar