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Total Annihilation seriesI don't get it.(23 posts)(23 posts)
(23 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted October 23, 2010
After seeing so many glowing reviews of this game and many people touting it as the greatest RTS of all time, I was prepared to be blown away. I haven't played a whole lot of different RTSes (basically just Age of Empires and Blizzard's stuff) so I was looking to expand my horizons.

I have to say, after buying this game and playing it for the past few days, that I just don't get it (and I'm the only one who doesn't, apparently). The game throws you into the action with no tutorial to speak of, and only a moderately helpful section in the manual telling you the basics of the game, leaving you mostly to figure things out on your own. Like the fact that your commander can only build certain structures (even though he can help build any structure, I don't know how that makes sense), and you'll need the construction bots to build others.

Easy mode is NOT easy, despite what the manual would have you believe, and I end up getting my ass kicked on the 6th mission (the one where you teleport to this island swarmed with enemies and have to build a navy from scratch). Even when I try to build mass battleships out of 3 shipyards at a time, which my economy can barely support, it's still not enough. Also, the pathfinding and AI for those battleships are TERRIBLE. I thought Dragoons in Starcraft were bad, but these guys take the cake. It makes it an incredibly slow and tedious chore to navigate some of your ships to the other side of the island where the enemy is picking off your metal extractors because your light towers can't reach them and your torpedo launchers or whatever they are are just terrible and take too long to build.

Also, there are so many units in the game, and most of them aren't very distinguishable from each other. Try as I may to remember their names and assign them some sort of uniqueness, I end up referring to them as "vehicle that shoots rockets", "other vehicle that shoots rockets", and "more expensive vehicle that shoots rockets". And then once you find out that you need to make a construction bot to make more buildings, you make an advanced vehicle plant and guess what, more vehicles that shoot rockets! It's like Baskin Robbin's 31 flavors, except they're all variations of vanilla. So usually I just say screw it and get equal amounts of everything and bum-rush the enemy, which works fine but it certainly takes away the strategy element of the game.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I feel like I'm missing something. Is this one of those games that's only fun in multiplayer, or after you've played the game for months? No flames please, I'm just trying to figure out why literally everyone who plays this game is in love with it.
Posted October 23, 2010
Years ago, when I bought it, I got stuck in the same mission (the moho mine one) and gave up too. XD But I've always loved the skirmish part of the game, even though I suck at strategy games. TA is a classic kind of game, so no wonder you found it so very non explicative nor forgiving.

Keep in mind that TA was the first game with a completely different gameplay and actually closer to realistic simulation.
* It had terrain influence over battles,
* it had 3D units,
* it had a different take on economy (where you balance how much resources is getting in with how much is getting used all time, instead of gathering a significant amount then using),
* it had a different take on upgrading (where instead of a bunch of buildings and upgrades you just had to access specific units to be able to build more advanced stuff and so on),
* it had both air and naval battles (most games would only do one of them and when they did both, they would do it poorly),
* it featured a single extremely powerful unit as the center of your army (the D-gun will really kill anything in the game with a single shot and the death of the commander will too),
* most importantly, it didn't have a rock paper sicsors game structure.

This last one is the catchy one. You see, you don't really need to build a huge variety of units, no one of them is particularly weaker or stronger against anything. They just are. So, if you decide that the best aproach is to build one hell of a lot of a single unit, it might as well work very well. Yes, it opens up a grand opportunity to turn the game into a bloody steamroller kind of game, but really, real life war would be exactly the same if any army could infinite build any autonomous murder machine. So, if you're playing Core and wants to play a build a wall of Krogoths strategy and steamroll the heck out of your enemy, you can.

Also, there's this huge variety of units that end up being somewhat similar, but TA really is about having a load of options and making up your mind about how to aproach each battle.

If you'd like to meet a more modern approach to the game's style, I suggest you pick up the spiritual successor, Supreme Commander. It basically updates and expands all concepts in TA, bringing in a lot of new ideas too.

SupComm 2 is a bit more traditional (AKA like everything else in the market) in some areas (like economy and upgrading) and features less repeating units so you may find it a bit more fun to you in case you don't like SupComm either.

Original Fans of TA tend to like TA more than SupComm, though. As for me, I'm a bit more of a SupComm guy, even though I've played the heck out of my TA.
Posted October 24, 2010
The trick to TA is estimating change over time. Like if it is safe to cross a road given a car x distance away with a speed of dx/dt, you have to estimate whether you will be able to finish building given the amount of resources you have, and their consumption rate. With this, you have to maximize your consumption so you can maximize the increase to your production, in an exponential increase in both reward and investment, while keeping your enemy in check so this process is not threatened.

Also, there isn't 3 vehicles that shoot rockets. There is a missile truck, with tracking missiles, and there is the ballistic rocket truck, which launches vertical rockets.

Also, people on these boards have very scattered, unreliable, and limited information about TA. You should probably try TAUniverse.com
Posted October 25, 2010
In that mission you'll want to use plasma batteries built by construction kbots. Perhaps a few heavy laser towers for backup. In between, build a pack of submarines and use them to clear the entrance to the bay. Once you have a good number you can start to circle the island and pre-empt any more attacks by the enemy destroyers. Reclaim enemy ship wrecks for metal if you find yourself short. Admittedly the map's a tricky one, you dont get much space to move around with your ships..

Basically you'll have to "re-learn" RTS with this game, it doesn't play like Red Alert or Warcraft. Your resources are infinite but limited by the gather rate.
Post edited October 25, 2010 by H2IWclassic
Posted October 27, 2010
If necessary, you can skip the missions that you really can't complete. Arm #6 is a particularly tricky one, arguably the hardest of the original game.

I've never found much use of Guardians in this particular mission, though. They attract enemy fire like there's no tomorrow, making them impossible to repair once the Core fleet starts showing up in numbers. During my recent playthrough, after I had built a couple of destroyers/skeeters/construction ships, I went for the advanced naval yard, fencing off the initial attacks with what I had available till I could start pumping out cruisers. In this mission, battleships are useless. They're too slow and resource-hungry in what is essentially speed chess. And as H2IW says, reclaim the wrecks as soon as possible. That's what the construction ships are for. And make sure you have enough of them (3 or 4 by the middle of the mission) to be able to fix and reclaim everything inbetween waves.
Posted October 27, 2010
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Arctic-Nation: If necessary, you can skip the missions that you really can't complete. Arm #6 is a particularly tricky one, arguably the hardest of the original game.

I've never found much use of Guardians in this particular mission, though. They attract enemy fire like there's no tomorrow, making them impossible to repair once the Core fleet starts showing up in numbers.
One on one a Guardian will nail an Enforcer. Obviously on the higher difficulty levels the strategy needs to be different.
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Arctic-Nation: During my recent playthrough, after I had built a couple of destroyers/skeeters/construction ships, I went for the advanced naval yard, fencing off the initial attacks with what I had available till I could start pumping out cruisers.
Don't recall being allowed anything better than a cruiser in #6 or 7 for that matter.
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Arctic-Nation: And as H2IW says, reclaim the wrecks as soon as possible. That's what the construction ships are for. And make sure you have enough of them (3 or 4 by the middle of the mission) to be able to fix and reclaim everything inbetween waves.
I tended to use the commander for speed repair\reclaim as he can take punishment, unlike the c-units. Plus if the enemy ships get close the D-Gun is a viable option.
Post edited October 27, 2010 by H2IWclassic
Posted October 28, 2010
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H2IWclassic: I tended to use the commander for speed repair\reclaim as he can take punishment, unlike the c-units. Plus if the enemy ships get close the D-Gun is a viable option.
I tried this, but he refused to use the D-Gun underwater.
For what it's worth, though, I enjoyed the mission.

What annoys me sometimes about TA is that there are some units which are just completely ass. Scout vehicles and light infantry bots are only cannon fodder, and don't serve their purpose. Also, the lategame. Vulcan cannons/big berthas are basically an instant win condition. They're freakin' awesome, but the game's basically over as soon as someone gets one which they can defend.
Posted October 28, 2010
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Tonjevic: I tried this, but he refused to use the D-Gun underwater.
For what it's worth, though, I enjoyed the mission.
I did say ships. ;) I've gotten a few kills that way by hanging around the shallows and aiming the D-Gun manually ahead of the destroyers.
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Tonjevic: Scout vehicles
Scouting and early raiding of outlying metal extractors.
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Tonjevic: light infantry bots are only cannon fodder
Both of these are cheap and excellent early raiders. Later on they're good for hitting fast units that the Level 2 heavy hitters miss.
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Tonjevic: Also, the lategame. Vulcan cannons/big berthas are basically an instant win condition. They're freakin' awesome, but the game's basically over as soon as someone gets one which they can defend.
They're also very expensive and have sod all armour.
Post edited October 28, 2010 by H2IWclassic
Posted October 28, 2010
About the difficulty... on single player

You can adjust the speed of the game on the fly. So when giving orders lower the speed to minimize the downtime that your units aren't doing/building anything.

What I HATE about the campaign is the damn meteor showers later on. I ended up just skipping those missions.
Posted October 29, 2010
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Suiboon: What I HATE about the campaign is the damn meteor showers later on. I ended up just skipping those missions.
Not so bad when you're playing as Arm, although mexes\missile towers get destroyed easily. In the Core campaign, if meteor showers hit the Arm units they respond as if you attacked them, which is basically game over if it's early on :p
Posted November 14, 2010
Falci,,that was a great summary of TA. You are exactly right on and as an original TA player years before SupCom, yes I do prefer TA more. TA does have some sticking points but with the AI being predictable you can replay the rough points over a couple times and get around them. As far as the learning curve, it really is not that steep and there is really no story line to TA so I am sure that throws off some people. I would recommend anyone having issues with what to build and when, etc. to play the skirmish mode for a while. Get used to using your construction bots and moving around the map.

Btw, since you mentioned SupCom and skirmish mode in TA, there is a bug in one of the skirmish modes of SupCom.....right now I don't if SupCom calls them that. But one of the factions in SupCom, I think it might be the EF(not 100% sure) has a "scout" type unit that you can build easily and quickly, crap them out LOL and they are unstoppable. You have dozens built before anyone can even get their defenses up and just go into the enemy bases with them and wipe them out easily. Unbeatable.....I am sure a patch has come out to fix it, but I have never checked for patches and I bought the game first day it was out.

Interesting, don't you think? You have to be a good guy to love TA and SupCom. Take care.
Yep those meteor showers are a bitch,but I have never really lost a game because of them. They are mainly annoying and can weaken your structures mainly if they are caught in them. If you get under a major attack it might hasten your demise I guess. What I did find helpful was to look at the terrain. In most of those scenarios with the meteors the terrain in very rugged with high spots. If you build as many of your structures as possible in the "shadow" of these high points it greatly reduces damage: yes, this is an area where the game uses the terrain as a tactical advantage if you want to.
Post edited November 14, 2010 by gamer_dan1957
Posted March 01, 2011
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atrocity3010: After seeing so many glowing reviews of this game and many people touting it as the greatest RTS of all time, I was prepared to be blown away. I haven't played a whole lot of different RTSes (basically just Age of Empires and Blizzard's stuff) so I was looking to expand my horizons.

I have to say, after buying this game and playing it for the past few days, that I just don't get it (and I'm the only one who doesn't, apparently). The game throws you into the action with no tutorial to speak of, and only a moderately helpful section in the manual telling you the basics of the game, leaving you mostly to figure things out on your own. Like the fact that your commander can only build certain structures (even though he can help build any structure, I don't know how that makes sense), and you'll need the construction bots to build others.

Easy mode is NOT easy, despite what the manual would have you believe, and I end up getting my ass kicked on the 6th mission (the one where you teleport to this island swarmed with enemies and have to build a navy from scratch). Even when I try to build mass battleships out of 3 shipyards at a time, which my economy can barely support, it's still not enough. Also, the pathfinding and AI for those battleships are TERRIBLE. I thought Dragoons in Starcraft were bad, but these guys take the cake. It makes it an incredibly slow and tedious chore to navigate some of your ships to the other side of the island where the enemy is picking off your metal extractors because your light towers can't reach them and your torpedo launchers or whatever they are are just terrible and take too long to build.

Also, there are so many units in the game, and most of them aren't very distinguishable from each other. Try as I may to remember their names and assign them some sort of uniqueness, I end up referring to them as "vehicle that shoots rockets", "other vehicle that shoots rockets", and "more expensive vehicle that shoots rockets". And then once you find out that you need to make a construction bot to make more buildings, you make an advanced vehicle plant and guess what, more vehicles that shoot rockets! It's like Baskin Robbin's 31 flavors, except they're all variations of vanilla. So usually I just say screw it and get equal amounts of everything and bum-rush the enemy, which works fine but it certainly takes away the strategy element of the game.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I feel like I'm missing something. Is this one of those games that's only fun in multiplayer, or after you've played the game for months? No flames please, I'm just trying to figure out why literally everyone who plays this game is in love with it.
I think Dark Reign 2 takes the cake in bad unit pathing.

This game is pretty straight forward. Read your briefing, build your army (if applicable) and complete the objective. You will quickly notice the "tiers" of units. You need the better Construction Kbot to build the higher tech stuff.

The thing is this is one of the first, if not the first, rts to have 3d units and terrain depth. It also features base building, resource gathering, a very generous unit cap, if any cap, and awesome units. Everything is mech in this game, which is a plus from me, love mech games. It's also features land, sea and air combat.
Post edited March 01, 2011 by Ash_Housewares
Posted March 02, 2011
Just on the last point about the "Rock, Paper, Scissors" structure, I don't think this is a bad thing. I'm a long-time Warcraft/StarCraft player, but I also played a bit of TA back in the day, and I'm still with the original poster: I don't get it.

The reason for the rock-paper-scissors of Blizzard games and other RTSs is that it gives you different units for different purposes. There is no one best unit that if you build twenty of them you can beat anything else. Games with one best unit are boring, because it's just a race to build the best unit. With rock-paper-scissors it's much more interesting. If your enemy builds rock, you build paper, but then if they realise you are going paper, they might start getting scissors.

It means you need to be alert and keep scouting your enemy, or they'll take you by surprise. You need to be flexible, and not just have one unit you build in every game. And all the units in the game are useful, in certain constructs, rather than having dozens of units nobody uses. So it's actually a strategy game and not just a race to build the most units.

I just bought Total Annihilation: Kingdoms on GOG and I haven't played it much yet. It seems like the races have a lot more diversity than the Arm Robots vs Core Robots, so maybe I'll enjoy that more.
Posted April 28, 2011
A lot of the cool features of TA have already been mentioned. What I remember really liking was that it was the first game with really awesome artillery and when there was nukes there was also anti-nukes so it was fun for a turtling dude like myself.

Another cool feature is the ability to put construction bots on patrol so they can mitigate minor dmg/splash dmg by themselves so you can do other stuff than microing them.

Ofc the commander is badass, the music, and both the big artillery battles and the small skirimishes with the minibots are fun and effective.
Posted April 29, 2011
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godspeeed: Like a lot of GOG games out there... There is a lot of nostalgia involved in rating this game.
There's a lot of graphics fanboy-ism involved in rating newer games too. :p
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Total Annihilation seriesI don't get it.(23 posts)(23 posts)
(23 posts)