Total Annihilation nostalgia

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Nephtys
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

Post by Nephtys »

Uraniun235 wrote:I'm going to go on record as saying that I think 'researching' is really truly awful.


Also god damn please tell me I wasn't the only one that thought HW: Cataclysm's ships were totally buttugly.
Super-Acs were pretty cool, as were their utility craft. The resource controllers, and Kuun-lan were fine. Their Frigates also were slick. The Multibeamers were awesome, and the Hive Frigs were good.

Though really, everyone knows the Dreadnaught is the worst designed ship ever. Quick everyone! Let's design a repulsor upgrade to the ship that reduces it's forward firepower by a half, because the damn generator is placed right in front of the main turret!
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Post by Shortie »

SAMAS wrote:
Uraniun235 wrote:
HW1 had fuel for fighters! Made some missions a bit tricky when you needed to keep them out there. Some of the HW2 mods also had expendable missile weapons for fighters, too (though it never really worked all that well)
I remember that HW1 had fuel! I can't remember how much there was, though. Stark nailed it really, the micro could become overbearing really easily with fuel limitations, I mostly wanted it more as a "okay you can send your fighters out but you can't just roll a big swarm of them all across the map and back and mop up whatever you find" thing.
I think a better way of implementing that would be to give the fighters a specific range, that they can't go too far out from their parent ship. You could then have the refueling vessels as a way of expanding that range. You could keep the fuel thing, but automate it so the fighters will automatically know when to return for fuel.
Simply make it an auto-return for refuelling, which in turn gives you an automatic max range like any other weapon - which you can choose to override by toggling them to kamikaze (another thing that isn't in enough games - aggression & self-preservation settings)
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

Post by Adrian Laguna »

Stark wrote:Nexus sucked. Three types of damage, three types of hitpoints, all the micro ever. Terrible mission scripting killed the rest even worse.
The main problem is the ships are fucking retarded, you can't order them to attack the shield/hull and the subsystems. The enemy AI is also wonky. I didn't have any problems with mission scripting until the 14th mission, the outcome of which appears to be decided entirely on random chance.
Uraniun235 wrote:Also god damn please tell me I wasn't the only one that thought HW: Cataclysm's ships were totally buttugly.
I liked Cataclysm as a whole much better than the original, including the ship designs. Maybe the fact that I played it first might have something to do with it, or maybe I just have interesting aesthetics.
Hawkwings wrote:The dreadnaught and the carrier were pretty bad, but I liked the destroyer and the acolyte.
Funny, out of the three carriers I always thought the Somtaaw one was the best. I loved its armoured bays and tough-looking blocky shape. I consider the Dreadnought is the best damn ship of the whole series, it's entire front is nothing but missile racks. The Somtaaw destroyer, on the other had, always bothered me because it has these two black pieces that stick out the front for no reason whatsoever.
Nephtys wrote:Though really, everyone knows the Dreadnaught is the worst designed ship ever. Quick everyone! Let's design a repulsor upgrade to the ship that reduces it's forward firepower by a half, because the damn generator is placed right in front of the main turret!
Really? I never noticed the Dreadnought losing its ability to use the ventral cannon after the repulsor generator was built. If it does that was a pretty silly design decision, they could have easily made it a couple of small generators added to the sides. Usually my end-game fleet consisted of four Dreadnoughts, a few Multi-Beam Frigates, and a handful of specialized craft like leeches, mimics, and scouts. I didn't even bother with fighters, since missile waves and Frigates slaughter the enemy's.
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

Post by Hawkwings »

The dread can still fire forward it the target is slightly above it.

My end-game fleet consisted of a ton of destroyers, sentinels, and ACVs. If you're talking about the slightly-before-endgame fleet, then yeah, it was more balanced and diverse.
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

Post by Chris OFarrell »

Ah TA.

My fav game, and I've played more then a few, was actually against bots. Me and Alyeska against bots on Uberhack.

Bots on insane difficulty.

We both got steadily overrun back into the top right corner of the map. I was out in front so I took a lot of the early hits, he got time to build up something a little heavier. In the end, we both were cramped into this area frantically throwing up every medium range artillery unit we could, with lines of flackers behind them, all linked into auto targeting facilities, as we churned out non stop nukes.

Literally, despite all our defensive firepower, ALL that was keeping us alive for quite a time we Alyeska and I throwing nuke after nuke after nuke into the forward enemy positions and armies that advanced on us, choking off the attacks long enough to rebuild.

After an hour or two of that, we had managed to nuke the enemy back across the river somewhat and claw back a deeper defensive line and more critically, resource points, metal -though we were reclaiming so much enemy shit that it really didn't matter.

We finally knocked the enemy out with the brawler rush of DOOM. Both of us building hundreds of brawlers and nukes, using the later to open a hole to rush the former through and shoot the hell out of everything.

Then we lost all those brawlers in 20 seconds and spent 5 minuites building up to do it again.

And again.

And again.

BUT in the end, we managed to break the back of the AI and mop up...

Our nuke launchers each had an *absurd* number of kills :D

We've also had a lot of fun games of Forged Alliance, but nothing comes close to that game.
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

Post by Adrian Laguna »

Oh man, this thread made me go and get Total Annihilation. I found one with both expansion packs, and I think I got all the patches too. I've been playing the Arm campaign and this game is wicked cool. It's rare to find a game where even the weakest units are worthwhile after the early game. But here having huge numbers of infantry rushing into the enemy formation while your tank battle line backs it up doesn't result in your infantry getting slaughtered uselessly. I'm having way more fun with this than with any other RTS I've played. The combat is fast, furious, and intense, and the economic system based around resource extraction and usage rates is way better than the typical stockpile and lump sum spending systems.

Though I'm having some problems controlling large numbers of units. I tend to try and group them by type, and have some semblance of tactical formation, but usually battles end-up being my huge formless mob walking forward and overwhelming everything by sheer weight of fire-power. This is a bit dull.

Chris OFarrell wrote:Ah TA.

My fav game, and I've played more then a few, was actually against bots. Me and Alyeska against bots on Uberhack.

Bots on insane difficulty.

-snip awesome tale-
This Uberhack mod, I take it's good?
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

Post by Uraniun235 »

What once began as a minor tweak to the Penetrator escalated into a mod which altered dozens of units...


Uberhack was pretty cool, it struggled to try and make most of the units useful in their own niche. I started to drift out after they made the Fido into more of a fast/light arty unit and gave the Fido's old role and stats to the Maverick, as I felt like they were really starting to veer off into "change for the sake of change because we're addicted to change-logs and discussing what's imbalanced" by that point. That said I thought there were some really worthwhile changes in there and overall I did tend to enjoy UH more than "OTA" (Original Total Annihilation - ahh, how the old terms come to me so easily). Possibly one of the most iconic changes was the uprated "Krogzilla", with penetrating arm cannons (they behave like D-guns although obviously don't do as much damage) and amphibious capability.


As for unit control, yeah, TA does show its age in that regard. If you want to control all units of a certain model, I believe that's Ctrl-Z - so at the very least you can send every one of your air superiority fighters screaming towards a single point. Advance warning, the naval units are wicked cool, but the naval pathfinding is sadly pretty awful - big fleet battles can be enormously frustrating. (Although I do remember crossing my friend's T once, on Seven Islands... now there was a moment of wonderful satisfaction!)
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

Post by Adrian Laguna »

Uraniun235 wrote:Advance warning, the naval units are wicked cool, but the naval pathfinding is sadly pretty awful - big fleet battles can be enormously frustrating. (Although I do remember crossing my friend's T once, on Seven Islands... now there was a moment of wonderful satisfaction!)
I noticed. Mission 6-8 of the Arm campaign are pretty naval heavy. Your units can't keep to a sensical formation to save their lives. This is made worse by the fact that Core seems to have a slight naval edge. There was this one mission where I had to fend off waves of Warlords by the end of it. I was saved only by building lots of coastal plasma cannon batteries, sonar pod spam, and BVR radar targeting.

At least the terrible path finding can be turned into an advantage. I found that scout ship spam can clog the enemy's naval formations and distract their fire away from your valuable warships. They'll die by the dozen in short order, but it their deaths can buy you time to concentrate against the forward elements of the enemy fleet.
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

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Chris OFarrell wrote:Ah TA.

My fav game, and I've played more then a few, was actually against bots. Me and Alyeska against bots on Uberhack.

Bots on insane difficulty.
We weren't playing Uberhack. We had unit conflicts, remember? For some strange reason we could not turn on Uberhack. We could only turn on BAI. Anyway, that game was freaking insane.

Chris and I are playing on East Side West Side. Its an urban map with a river in the middle. We decide to allow the enemy to have everything. Chris gets beat to shit because he was nearest the single Ai (yes, one Ai). I managed to get up a defense line that could barely hold out. I started cranking out flak cannons because the Ai has a habbit of sending 50+ raids of gunships.

We were playing against an Ai that grows nearly exponentially with a 5,000 unit patch. They grew HUGE. We held the line with heavy fortifications of Medium Plasma Cannons and an entire forest of Long Range Plasma Cannons. The LRPCs were picking off most of the enemies at range. We managed to secure our side of the river by building a creeping line of cannons slowly walking south until we could cover our entire side. That took time because their cannons counter batteried our stuff. Powering the base was a shitload of fusion reactors.

And of course the nukes. Good god, the nukes. I had like 8 nuke launchers. I would fire my nukes in a grid pattern nuking each block individually and in less then 2 minutes the enemy swarmed the location and took it over again. Each nuke launcher had insane kills as well as 20+ nukes stockpiled in each launcher.

6 hours, 6 freaking hours that game took. While it was my base that survived, only Chris retained his commander. My commander died on a capture mission. I was hoping to nab an enemy construction unit so I could get Krogoths. Sadly my commander got hammered by about 20 LRPC shells after he decloaked.
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

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I decided to upgrade the AI because the vanilla one is just sad. A few missions are hairy, but only because the AI starts with lots of units and is scripted to throw them all at you, the ones were this is not true are boring push overs. I found myself more than once building a might army of doom, only to find that a fourth of the strength would have been necessary. Would have been nice if their raids were at least vaguely threatening, virtually all of them can be easily D-gunned out of existence, often a good chunk of the raiders in one shot. Sometimes I even hold off the final assault, despite knowing I have enough forces, because I want to try a new unit or weapon. You'd think if they gave you new stuff it's because the situation is difficult enough that you might need it.

Anyway, after looking around I decided to get a non-cheating AI to start with, and settled on Queller. It seemed to be pretty versatile, and the description said that it does early raiding, which is important because I am terrible at defending my base in the early game. Mostly Harmless also looked interesting, and I might give a shot eventually, but I was sold on Queller. So far it has not markedly improved the mission difficulty by much, except in the 17th Arm mission, where you have to capture a nuclear launcher, and with Queller installed my fleet and base kept getting hit with nuclear missiles, which made things a bit difficult. I countered with sheer size. The armada I assembled consisted of 1 carrier, 3 battleships, 6 cruisers, 2 missile frigates, and 18 destroyers. They were supported by air assets numbering 20 stealth fighters, 10 bombers, and 5 torpedo bombers. Such a tremendous force meant that when the leading elements of my fleet were taken out by strategic nuclear weapon, I simply brought my reserves up and kept advancing.

More stupidly, or the nuclear launcher had an annoying tendency to kill itself with its own munitions if enemy units were parked next to it. I had to bomb every single power source in enemy hands out of existence before I could even think of sending the commander to capture it. It's actually not that stupid under the specific circumstances of that mission, since my objective was to capture it, but in a skirmish it would be rather idiotic.

Unfortunately the next couple of serious (ie, with base building) missions showed the AI to be a bit lacking still. I was hoping the first mission in Core Prime would lead to a decent fight, what with the unlimited metal, but I walked over the enemy with some Flash and Bulldog tanks. I didn't even have to build air assets. I might try that mission again on the Hard difficulty setting, I left it on Medium because of how M17 had gone.

On the skirmish map, however, Queller is quite a bit more impressive. It actually managed to defeat me in Metal Heck. Granted I wasn't trying very hard, since it was mostly a test, but damn. I had to fend off wave after wave of missile launching units and gunships. I couldn't build turrets fast enough, especially flakkers, I started building them too late for it to matter.

I also got the TA Bugfix, to patch some of the holes still left in the original game. It certainly deserves the high praise it gets, there a few changes I don't agree with, but overall it's pretty good.
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

Post by Stark »

Don't rate the AI based on the missions; not only are SP missions in RTS games shit, they don't give proper scope to the AI. They'll almost certainly be optimised for multi anyway.

Frankly, the fact that most RTSs have cheap units that quickly become totally useless is something people have hated for more than a decade. Build best unit x 10000 = you win.

If you're playing TA it might be worth looking at Spring; back before Supcom came out it was pretty cool (if possessing the worst UI ever) and had some cool ideas (and driving around in a flash is fun). Watching the air combat was cool-ass.
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

Post by Alyeska »

You haven't seen anything until you have tried fighting the Krogoth Encounter.

I beat it the first time around with little trouble after doing some reading on how to best the Ai. My 2nd time through I used a tweak that allows you to use TA:CC units. Problem is I had UberHack installed. This gave me and the Ai access to the units. Worse, it changed the mission and I believe I was fighting against BAI (Not entirely sure on this one).

I had fun. I was ARM but I resurrected 14 Krogoths. I marched the Krogoths towards the enemy and watched every single one die, from nukes. You see, UberHack gives the AI usable nukes. The AI doesn't launch at radar targets, they launch at what is visibly seen. They spotted my Krogs with a single scout overflight. I had mobile anti-nuke escorts. A single nuke slipped through and obliterated every anti-nuke. The following nuke swarm fucking murdered EVERY SINGLE KROGOTH in less then 30 seconds.

I finished the mission by nuke spamming the AI. Mopped up with roves of Krogoths.
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

Post by Adrian Laguna »

Stark wrote:Don't rate the AI based on the missions; not only are SP missions in RTS games shit, they don't give proper scope to the AI.
It really depends on how well they are scripted. Not that you are wrong, most of them are certainly utterly worthless, but there are a few gems hiding in the shit. I've had fun playing the Arm campaign because of those few missions that were, by accident or design, actually pretty well designed, and thus barrels of fun.
Frankly, the fact that most RTSs have cheap units that quickly become totally useless is something people have hated for more than a decade. Build best unit x 10000 = you win.
Huh? Cheap units don't become totally useless in TA. Using level one missile launching vehicles and K-bots is deadly effective, especially because you can just spam them in huge numbers. It doesn't matter a damn if there's a dozen uber units chewing up my army in one place if I have a spare corps attacking the enemy base from another direction and he doesn't have enough reserves to counter.

Even the lowly PeeWee makes for a pretty good distraction, tell them to rush a spot behind the enemy formation, then open up with the heavy hitters as soon as the enemy's guns are pointing in the wrong direction.
If you're playing TA it might be worth looking at Spring; back before Supcom came out it was pretty cool (if possessing the worst UI ever) and had some cool ideas (and driving around in a flash is fun). Watching the air combat was cool-ass.
I've been thinking of giving it a try, but not yet, right now I'm playing TA.
Alyeska wrote:UberHack gives the AI usable nukes. The AI doesn't launch at radar targets, they launch at what is visibly seen.
Same with Queller and/or TA Bugfix. If the AI could radar target I don't think I'd have ever finished Arm Missions 17 or 19. I already mentioned the first, I dreaded air attacks because nukes always followed, that's why I had 20 stealth fighters, they were all patrolling the approaches to my base. In the second the AI had a pre-built Intimidator. It's a good thing I like to build my bases behind hills, it actually tried to bombard it at one point. It only hit the defensive batteries on top of the cliffs. I was building a fire-base in another part of the map, and I put an Annihilator there to test it. It proceeded to gut the Core base all on its own, starting with the Intimidator. Now I know what they meant by "blue lazers of doom".
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

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Adrian Laguna wrote:It really depends on how well they are scripted. Not that you are wrong, most of them are certainly utterly worthless, but there are a few gems hiding in the shit. I've had fun playing the Arm campaign because of those few missions that were, by accident or design, actually pretty well designed, and thus barrels of fun.
Mission scripting creates problems for the AI, particularly enthusiast AI that's probably designed for open multi.
Huh? Cheap units don't become totally useless in TA. Using level one missile launching vehicles and K-bots is deadly effective, especially because you can just spam them in huge numbers. It doesn't matter a damn if there's a dozen uber units chewing up my army in one place if I have a spare corps attacking the enemy base from another direction and he doesn't have enough reserves to counter.
Thanks for getting my point. This DOESN'T HAPPEN ANYMORE. Fuck, most RTSs limit the capabilities of units so much it's not funny, whereas in TA most units can at least TRY to do all sorts of shit (fire while moving, go indirect, spam at planes, etc). Your example is ridiculous; no shit it you win if you have more dollars worth of units. Amazing. With the advent of 'hard counters' this simply doesn't work in more 'modern' RTS games, because xyz unit is totally useless against jfk unit and is super-effective against abc unit.
I've been thinking of giving it a try, but not yet, right now I'm playing TA.
Um... it's the same game. You can't waste your life playing SP with it, though, lol.
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

Post by JointStrikeFighter »

Spring is basicly TA [uses the same assets] with a 3D map and movable camera. Oh and proper cueing
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

Post by Uraniun235 »

I always felt like I was fighting the camera when I played Spring, but that was years ago so maybe they've since cleaned that part of the UI up.
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

Post by Stark »

One of the camera 'options' is usable, but most of them are horrible. The ui overall is poor but it's amusing how much a free engine gets right.
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

Post by Adrian Laguna »

Stark wrote:Mission scripting creates problems for the AI, particularly enthusiast AI that's probably designed for open multi.
That just means a well scripted missions keeps it to a minimum.
Thanks for getting my point. This DOESN'T HAPPEN ANYMORE.
Ack, sorry, I fail at reading.
Fuck, most RTSs limit the capabilities of units so much it's not funny, whereas in TA most units can at least TRY to do all sorts of shit (fire while moving, go indirect, spam at planes, etc).
Yeah, it's stupid, they put artificial constrains for the sake of "balance" when you can accurately model things like why tanks aren't used against aircraft through their natural capabilities. A tank's rate of fire and turret traverse is too slow to engage fast movers, but that doesn't mean it can't try if desperate. UberHack has an aspect of this, they don't let AA units fire at ground units, which I silly. This thing is an AA unit, and yet if any enemy infantry try to approach there's no reason why it wouldn't make mincemeat out of them.
Your example is ridiculous; no shit it you win if you have more dollars worth of units. Amazing.
No, my example makes perfect sense even in a situation where both sides have armies worth about the same amount of resources. For a given amount of resources you can makes lots of cheap units or a few expensive ones. It's easier to split your forces if you have more units, and being able to do this gives you flexibility in how you conduct your operations. There are even real life analogues, in WWII the German Panther tank was cost about four times as much as a Panzer IV, yet because a given tank can only be in one place at a time it would have been better for the German war effort that they have stuck with producing Panzer IVs, which were quite adequate for their needs, than switched over to the more expensive Panthers.

This is the concept of proportionality which TA introduced and in my opinion is one of the game's best features.
With the advent of 'hard counters' this simply doesn't work in more 'modern' RTS games, because xyz unit is totally useless against jfk unit and is super-effective against abc unit.
Yeah, it's something to make games more simple and mindless, as well as the programmer's jobs easier, but it greately decreases overall game quality.

A cool thing about TA is that all ammunition is modelled by the in-game engine, rather than just being an animation. That's one of the reasons why units can do so many things. If a unit and a shell are in the same space at the same time the unit takes damage from it, regardless of which side they belong to or what target the shell was meant for. In other games hits tend to be calculated based on various variables, so you either hit the target or you don't. There's never someone with a hilarious story about how they accidentally shot down one of their aircraft with their artillery.
Um... it's the same game. You can't waste your life playing SP with it, though, lol.
I like SP. As it turns out, the mission "Welcome to CORE PRIME", which is a push over on medium difficulty, is a real challenge on hard. The bastards start with a base on a god dammed metal planet, and they know how to use it, and all you have is a commander and a stargate, either of which will lose you the game if it gets blown up. You have five minutes until the Core forces start arriving, they've always managed to overrun my defences eventually so far. It's a bit frustrating I can't retreat to the very back of the map because that would leave the stupid gate open to attack.
Stark wrote:One of the camera 'options' is usable, but most of them are horrible.
Which one's the usable one? Top-down like in TA?
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

Post by Stark »

I used one of the 'free' types, but to be honest I don't know if it was usable or I just got used to it :).

It's sad they make rts games with very high accuracy or no missing; in TA weapons had very different attributes to consider beyond '23 dps'. If they made games like TA now I'd be pleased just due to this factor.
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

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Stark wrote:I used one of the 'free' types, but to be honest I don't know if it was usable or I just got used to it :).

It's sad they make rts games with very high accuracy or no missing; in TA weapons had very different attributes to consider beyond '23 dps'. If they made games like TA now I'd be pleased just due to this factor.
I discussed this with Covenant before at length. In a lot of the 'Warcraft' styled games about (DoW, I'm looking at you too), all you have is a DPS, range and damage type. RoF is meaningless for the most part, as shooting once every second for 10 damage vs twice a second for 5 hardly matters.

But in TA, you have to literally go 'Oh sheesh, my Goliaths are going to have issues tracking those Flashes if they engage me in open ground. I should make my attack route through that narrow pass so they can't maneuver around me' or 'You know, this Penerator is strong and has good range, but it's fire arc is partially obstructed by that hill 400 yards away. If they rush a lot of Peewees over that, I can't take them out fast enough'. Not to mention that Radar in TA is an asset beyond just making enemies appear on a screen. Virtually all the weapons are beyond line of sight.

TA's balance for units was also different than most. Instead of in Warcraft or CNC where a big, powerful unit is just more armor and more firepower, virtually all of TA's heavy units were a marginal or modest increase in firepower, and an exponential increase in armor. This made it so swarms of light crap was still useful in the late game, as were the advanced vehicles.
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

Post by JointStrikeFighter »

I used the top down TA style camera myself
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Re: Total Annihilation nostalgia

Post by Chris OFarrell »

You know, one of the most vicious fights I can recall in a TA game was a 3v3 where both teams were fighting for a central point with a perfect LOS to the rest of the map for heavy arty, but which was itself due to balistics, rather well protected from counter battery fire.

It was literally the strategic chokepoint on the map, we of course had lots of other skirmishes, generally from arty units sniping at each other across canyons with a few chokepoints, but the game revolved around the rise in the middle; we only won once we got a massive CAP up and landed a whole slew of AAA and arty units on it with a forced air assault, allowing our construction aircraft to build up heavy AAA, then start building the Big Bertha farm of DOOM, which we got up and running and used to gut 2 of the 3 enemy bases, the third nuked it, but by then we were ready to overwhelm them.

The vast majority of other RTS's which don't give a damn about issues like LOS just can't match that, though at least Supreme Commander implemented most of TA's good stuff again.
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