My first game of Total Annihalation

Tasoth · Post by **Tasoth** » 2003-06-24 09:16pm

Today I bought the jewel case version for around $6 after hearing how good was. I make it home, intsall it and fire it up, having no idea what to do since there is no real instruction manual. I begin playing the Red Planet map and just build some random buildings and a kbot lab. after a few minutes I have a couple of random tech level 1 arm kbots kicking around and am in the middle of building base defences when a plane goes flying buy. I think nothing of it. Then I look at the mini map and notice the mass amounts of little opposition colored circles zipping around. Kicking msyself into base defense mode, a large fighter, a bomber I soon find out, does a flyby. Fear strikes and then the bomber does, taking out a building, don't remember which one. I panic and then the bomber comes back and blows my commander up

. total game time maybe 15 minutes.

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2003-06-24 09:28pm

Teehee. You got owned. Freedom Fighters and Brawlers are your friends.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-06-24 09:29pm

Isn't there a PDF or readme file?

Tasoth · Post by **Tasoth** » 2003-06-24 10:21pm

Nope, no PDF or read me. My second game was a bit more successful until the missle boats showed up... I was Pwned....on easy

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-06-24 11:03pm

Damn. There are a lot of keybindings and such, just play around for awhile to get used to things.

If you can get a good fleet up, the computer generally is poor at sea.

justifier · Post by **justifier** » 2003-06-24 11:11pm

The tech tree is pretty easy to figure out, I never looked at the PDF that came with my game. Playing as the arm, I usually set up three power generaters and build metal extracters until I have enough to built either a k-bot or vehicle lab(depending on map size) then build either 10 peewees or 10 light tanks and send them to run amok (sometimes even killing a commander). From there you should be stable enough to do whatever you want.

PS-Its fun to use the commander's capture abilty

XaLEv · Post by **XaLEv** » 2003-06-24 11:47pm

You gotta be fast in that game or you'll get your ass kicked.

I recommend setting up a skirmish on the map Seven Islands (I think that's what it's called) with your starting energy and metal really high and the AI's really low. That should let you play around and see how everything works without being bothered.

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2003-06-25 12:35am

I was always fond of Evad River Confluence...

Drooling Iguana · Post by **Drooling Iguana** » 2003-06-25 01:08am

You might want to play through the single player campaign so that you can get the various concepts in the game introduced gradually.

Only problem with that is that the single-player campaign tends to completely deprive you of certain unit types in the earlier missions, which can get really annoying in a game with as much of an emphasis on combined armes as TA.

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2003-06-25 03:15am

I played like one mission in the campaign. It was always skirmished for me, that's how I learned and how I would still play if I had it installed right now.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-06-25 06:21am

phongn wrote:Damn. There are a lot of keybindings and such, just play around for awhile to get used to things.

If you can get a good fleet up, the computer generally is poor at sea.

Poor? It's far worse then poor. I once sank seven of its battleships which where unable to move because it had blocked them in with other structures. It seems to have improved with the Core Contingency though, and the swarms of hovercraft the AI likes to build also make things more interesting.

To learn how the play the game you should just go through the single player missions.

El Moose Monstero · Post by **El Moose Monstero** » 2003-06-25 07:00am

I always loved the extra naval unit addons, floating nuke silos, the arm Yamato battleship, the Fusion Reactor ship, but the Yamato was the favourite, the computer never did naval stuff, and was blindingly stupid at times - on the big 7 islands map, never even came close to me, and always piled its units in one corner of the island, just begging to be nuked - in the end, I gave up, built a fleet of battleships, Yamatos and the extra carrier units, and sauntered over to the islands and kicked their asses. All fun.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-06-25 07:39am

The only one of those I ever had was the floating nuke silo, it was useful when I was building vast nuke farms with 30-50 launchers while fighting several AI's each of which had built vast bases and had fuckloads of construction units to rebuild with. The key was the nuke every spot twice in close succession. The first nuke kills the buildings, the second kills the units that move in to rebuild.

Post by **Vympel** » 2003-06-25 07:52am

I feel like installing Total Annihilation now.

Evil Sadistic Bastard · Post by **Evil Sadistic Bastard** » 2003-06-25 08:47am

What's the Yamato again?

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-06-25 08:49am

It’s a fan made addon battleship

Tasoth · Post by **Tasoth** » 2003-06-25 12:45pm

News from the front lines. I almost beat the Pincushion map, creating a fielkd of rubble starting on the east side of my base and extending to the right edge of the map. Problem was my large armada of aircraft were only shooting at enemies and not the large number of ground installations. I gave up after my waves of cans, goliaths hardly put a dent in their base....

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-06-25 01:09pm

Tasoth wrote:News from the front lines. I almost beat the Pincushion map, creating a fielkd of rubble starting on the east side of my base and extending to the right edge of the map. Problem was my large armada of aircraft were only shooting at enemies and not the large number of ground installations. I gave up after my waves of cans, goliaths hardly put a dent in their base....

Units do not destroy infrastructure unless specifically told to. This is so you can bring in your commander and capture them of if you want. They will however often end up destroying factories when they shoot at the units building in them. To change this press enter, type +shootall and hit enter again. You units should then automatically engage everything.

justifier · Post by **justifier** » 2003-06-25 01:24pm

Where can I find downloads for TA?

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2003-06-25 01:25pm

Ah yes, Total Annihilation. Too bad Cavedog sank

For me, I currently have a saved game where I'm fighting one comp. I didn't rush, so both of us had time to make our bases into things resembling fortresses. And I'm trying to beat it without resorting to nukes, since in its initial form, the AI can't use nukes.

So I've now sent like 300+ planes in one attack, 300+ land units in one attack, 300+ planes in another attack, etc.

AI still hasn't gone down, though I'm the one on the offensive now, rather than it.

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2003-06-25 02:13pm

justifier wrote:Where can I find downloads for TA?

find the official cavedog site, or the official TA one...i had the link recently, but can't find it for now.

EDIT: i just found the TA site on fileplanet...it's planetannihilation, that's got loads of extras i should think

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-06-25 02:19pm

Shinova wrote:
For me, I currently have a saved game where I'm fighting one comp. I didn't rush, so both of us had time to make our bases into things resembling fortresses. And I'm trying to beat it without resorting to nukes, since in its initial form, the AI can't use nukes.

So I've now sent like 300+ planes in one attack, 300+ land units in one attack, 300+ planes in another attack, etc.

AI still hasn't gone down, though I'm the one on the offensive now, rather than it.

Best way to deal with that kind of situation is to leapfrog a series of firebases towards the computer. The core contingency with its automatic radar targeting makes that easier as does being Core since your long-range artillery has better range. But it works quite well with Berths, just keep a bunch of bombers ready to kill any Immolators that open fire on your firebase.

Captain Cyran · Post by **Captain Cyran** » 2003-06-25 03:38pm

I LOVE playing TA. I used to play StarCraft and Galactic Battlegrounds but then a friend showed me TA and I've been hooked ever since. The only problem I have with the game is that the AI sucks, even at hard it's a piece of cake to beat it as long as you hold out for the first hour or so.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-06-25 03:52pm

Captain_Cyran wrote:I LOVE playing TA. I used to play StarCraft and Galactic Battlegrounds but then a friend showed me TA and I've been hooked ever since. The only problem I have with the game is that the AI sucks, even at hard it's a piece of cake to beat it as long as you hold out for the first hour or so.

Try playing against five allied against you

Captain Cyran · Post by **Captain Cyran** » 2003-06-25 03:53pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:
Captain_Cyran wrote:I LOVE playing TA. I used to play StarCraft and Galactic Battlegrounds but then a friend showed me TA and I've been hooked ever since. The only problem I have with the game is that the AI sucks, even at hard it's a piece of cake to beat it as long as you hold out for the first hour or so.
Try playing against five allied against you

I can't get 5 allied against me on my computer...but I've played with 3 allied against me.