In 1997, CaveDog released the RTS title, Total Annihilation, which was my first RTS ever. If you've ever watched any Gundam title or even Zoids, you know why TA was cool: giant fighting robots. When I started playing, I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT, but I kind of kept it a secret, because I felt weird telling people I loved a strategy game with fighting robots. Then, there was that title, "Total Annihilation", which, to the untrained ear (aka your grandma), sounds like KILL DESTROY RAPE PILLAGE EVERYTHING, BURN THE WORLD. My shame kept me from sharing it with anyone, but my nerdiness kept me coming back, lusting with burning desire to make robots blow each other up.
Actually, fun fact!: I played in the Chess club in school. Looking back now, my sense of strategy was god-awful, but I felt like strategy was my intellectual niche. So, when our family adopted our first computer, I spent all my computer-time (I had three other siblings at the time, all whom wanted their 'turn' on the computer) playing strategy games.
Total Annihilation was, again, my first RTS. So, for those of you who are not aware of this awesome amazing game of pure epic uber-awesomeness, TA was developed in 1997 as the first fully 3D RTS, meaning that the units are rendered every frame. For a 90s game, that was pretty boss. TA also had "realistic" terrain, where units would crawl over hills, and the physics for the game dictated that units would go slower going uphill, and faster going downhill.
The game was WAY ahead of it's time in terms of like, fricking everything. It actually makes me wonder why Command and Conquer and StarCraft had so much more staying power. Here's my theory, which I will not support with facts and evidence: TA was not marketed as a multiplayer game, and the single-mode storyline absolutely blows. Furthermore, after a few hundred units appeared on the map, the game would slow down significantly. The system requirements were quite hefty, and it wasn't until much, much, much later that technology's processing and RAM abilities were able to catch up to the game. Meanwhile, StarCraft cost less money to buy, had a way better storyline, and didn't have ridiculous system requirements.
Boo.
Anyhow, that's not the point. ZE POINT IS that I would like to apply some of the lessons I've taken from playing StarCraft, and apply them to TA. What would a 'decent' TA game look like between two serious players?
When something blows up in TA, you know it.
So, let's start off with the basics. The game has two basic resources like StarCraft, metal and energy as opposed to minerals and vespene gas. Energy can be harvested from anywhere, but metal can only be mined by building an extractor on top of a metal patch. The main game-mechanic difference between TA and SC is that in SC, you get a limited amount of resources per map, but unlimited storage space, whereas in TA, you have an infinite amount of resources per map, but limited storage space. If you have a storage capacity of 100,000 (which is insanely high, btw) and are mining 1.5 metal per second and spending 0 metal per second, eventually, you will fill up your storage space to capacity. If you are mining 1.5 metal per second, and are spending 3.0 metal per second, your storage capacity will decrease until it hits zero. At this point, everything you're building will build slower; it'll still get down, it'll just take longer because you're not generating enough income.
Extractors are quite cheap to make, so as you build more factories, units, static defense, etc., you would also be constantly taking additional metal patches around the map. You could defend each extractor, but the defenses would be spread out and not very effective. Therefore, part of your game would (or could) consist of harassing your opponents metal income. The computer AI can kind of do this with their air units, but the TA AI has the same pitfall as it's SC counterpart: it just attacks the closest target indiscriminately. That means you can mass a bunch of really strong static defense at your front, and then build a huge base behind it that's only defended with anti-aircraft turrets, and the computer will just throw waves and waves of units at a tiny point at your front.
Balance
All the tier 1 units are balanced almost perfectly, with the Arm faction having a slight advantage. Tier 2 units are god-awful for the Core, except for the Core's tanks, which are way better at tier 2 compared to the Arm. The release of the expansion packs really fixed some of the balance issues, but the Core's blue-laser weapon DOESN'T EVEN WORK RIGHT, whereas the Arm's blue-laser weapon can be glitched to make it even more dangerous than normal. The Core's long-range plasma cannon has the accuracy of an Imperial Stormtrooper, and although it has a longer range than the Arm's long-range plasma cannon, the Arm's cannon is significantly more accurate. I guess to make up for this, the Core gets to make one super-powerful robot called the Krogoth, which takes forever and a half to build, but is the most literally imbalanced unit you can imagine. Still, the Krogoth walks slower than an old lady crossing the street in front of you in the parking lot of the grocery store, so it's not difficult for it to be picked off by long-range plasma cannons before it can even get close enough to do a lot of damage.
Despite my huge paragraph of bitching, the game is really well-balanced. I'm just being picky.
Unit types
Okay, here's my official position on "unit compositions" in the RTS games I've played: Your unit composition is important, but not as important priority-wise as your overall game plan. For example, in BroodWar PvT, some players will go up to three bases and rush for Arbiters, whereas other Protosseseses will delay getting Arbiters, and go with more gateways and possibly high templar as well. Neither one of these options is "wrong", as long as your unit composition accomplishes your goals. Another thing to keep in mind is that you can have an excellent unit composition, but a really shitty economy, so even though you have what you may believe to be the "perfect army", you'll still lose. Another thing to keep in mind is: don't add shitty units to your army just to make it "diverse". Your unit composition should always be formulated to accomplish your goals.
K-Bots: Basically mech suits with legs. They are more agile over difficult terrain (especially when going through forests) than vehicles. Vehicles: Tanks and mobile artillery. Vehicles are slightly faster than K-Bots when moving in a straight line, so on flatter maps, vehicles can move across the ground faster.
Aircraft: Way faster than ground units, but they have low armor and shatter like glass. Aircraft also require the most micro to be fully effective, however, despite this and the fact that aircraft are very susceptible to anti-aircraft defenses, they are extremely flexible in their ability to harass and attack undefended targets.
Naval units: Ships have a lot of firepower and armor, which means they're super-good against land-based units, and when they have anti-aircraft ships with them, are also good against aircraft. The problem with ships is that they can only travel on water, are expensive, and have terrible pathing that would make a dragoon laugh at them.
Amphibious units: These suck ass, period.
Strategic missile: The nuclear missiles in TA are way different than in SC. They can hit anywhere on the map, and will blow up almost anything in a large area with one hit. It takes awhile to work your way up the tech tree to get to a nuclear silo, and once you do, the silo itself takes awhile to build, then on top of that, building a nuclear missile costs about 1000 energy per game second. After all this, your nuke can be deflected by an anti-missile defense.
Rushing for a nuclear missile would almost certainly end badly. Rushing for tier 1 aircraft seems like a very viable option, because you would be able to harass metal extractors early on. The main drawback is that once the other side constructs a K-Bot Lab, they can start making anti-air units, and will be able to fend off the aircraft, and that side will ahead in ground units. You could counter their ground units with some static defense, and your Commander's disintegration gun.
Doing some harassment then turtling up and macroing is a strategy that StarCraft players use all the time, like with Mutalisks or Vulture drops, and using their harassment to get a lead early on. Constantly building small numbers of bombers and hitting extractors around the map could potentially pay off in the late game.
There is, however a distinct quirk to TA that really makes it different from StarCraft in that you can turtle very, very hard with few consequences. This means that even if you gain a big advantage, the opposing player can drag the game out for a very long time, and possibly even win. For this reason, you may find it necessary to build a ring of static defense AROUND their base to prevent them from getting out, but even then, this would be a huge investment and frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.
Overall, I think the ideal strategy would be to end the game BEFORE your opponent can start building a lot of heavy static defense, because otherwise, it's just going to be a hair-ripping nightmare.
I'm guessing that competitive TA would be very similar to competitive Supreme Commander (original or FA, not 2). Here are a bunch of commentated competitive SupCom games. The basics, mechanics, and economy are all the same. Some unit interactions might be different, the commander has some different mechanics, and there's the additional experimental tech level, but everything else is pretty similar. Maps are also generally massive compared to TA or Starcraft (any other RTS really).
On September 09 2012 04:53 theonemephisto wrote: I'm guessing that competitive TA would be very similar to competitive Supreme Commander (original or FA, not 2). Here are a bunch of commentated competitive SupCom games. The basics, mechanics, and economy are all the same. Some unit interactions might be different, the commander has some different mechanics, and there's the additional experimental tech level, but everything else is pretty similar. Maps are also generally massive compared to TA or Starcraft (any other RTS really).
Yeah, I mentioned the insane turtling aspect of TA, and I think experimental units are there to break a turtling player and win the game decisively.
Pretty good summary for TA newbs. Good captions too. ;D
Man I love TA, I used to play endless games with friends way back in the day. I think competitive TA would need significantly altered map paradigm (much like BW and SC2 hmm....) to make it work.
In the end, you can turn an economic advantage into a win by slowly accumulating long range stuff (nukes included) and firebombing everything they have. Sort of like in chess, as long as you have a king and rook against their king, you'll win eventually. The other player should concede unless you're way bad and don't know how to checkmate.
In my experience trying to play TA seriously, the game revolves around putting up metal mining faster than it gets knocked down. Since metal extractors are soooo fragile, it's better to constantly harass with fast tier 1 units and spam your own hoping to pull ahead. Your first real choice is installing some kind of static defense to secure an area with some extractors, or to tech up to bigger units. This is kind of map dependent. Eventually aircraft are great to scout for tech and positional openings, especially if the game starts to turn turtley.
One of the most interesting things is maps that provide a geothermal site in a reasonable location. This lets you play very different style, sort of like an in base natural in SC2. (But it's all different based on metal availability.)
Sigh so nostalgic. I hope Planetary Annihilation provides a similar experience without obligatory space lategame.
This was the BEST fucking game ever. Dark Reign came in second back in those days, then BW came and took second. I'd play twenty hour games on one map called seven islands or whatever. So many units getting built and destroyed and built and destroyed. Total gridlock, total death. More and more units and more and more nukes and explosions and 3rd party units!
Supreme commander didn't really do much for me, but maybe that's cause my compupu sucks.
oh the nostalgia, i played the game so much when i was small :D remember when i first played it online, i got owned super badly all the time, was happy when i won one game now and then ^^
On September 09 2012 06:33 EatThePath wrote: Pretty good summary for TA newbs. Good captions too. ;D
Man I love TA, I used to play endless games with friends way back in the day. I think competitive TA would need significantly altered map paradigm (much like BW and SC2 hmm....) to make it work.
In the end, you can turn an economic advantage into a win by slowly accumulating long range stuff (nukes included) and firebombing everything they have. Sort of like in chess, as long as you have a king and rook against their king, you'll win eventually. The other player should concede unless you're way bad and don't know how to checkmate.
In my experience trying to play TA seriously, the game revolves around putting up metal mining faster than it gets knocked down. Since metal extractors are soooo fragile, it's better to constantly harass with fast tier 1 units and spam your own hoping to pull ahead. Your first real choice is installing some kind of static defense to secure an area with some extractors, or to tech up to bigger units. This is kind of map dependent. Eventually aircraft are great to scout for tech and positional openings, especially if the game starts to turn turtley.
One of the most interesting things is maps that provide a geothermal site in a reasonable location. This lets you play very different style, sort of like an in base natural in SC2. (But it's all different based on metal availability.)
Sigh so nostalgic. I hope Planetary Annihilation provides a similar experience without obligatory space lategame.
Yeah, the problem with most TA maps is that they suffer from the same balance issues as Blizzard maps. Having access to a geothermal vent is always good, or least a map where you can reclaim a lot of energy from biomass, like 50 trees stacked on top of each other.
On September 09 2012 07:02 Myrkskog wrote: Having 5+ Big Bertha's pummelling the enemy base across the map was always satisfying.
Yeah, if you play on a map like Metal Heck, you can just turtle and make one Big Bertha or Intimidator and win the game, which is why I would think competitive TA would take place on larger maps, and probably not on Core Prime maps, because that's like cheat-mode.
I think the one problem(if you can call it that) of TA is that the games can take so so long. Honestly, I've never played the game but heard a lot of praise and tried the demo out, wasn't bad but some of those games can take hours on end to finish. Compare that to a SCII game where 40-50 min games are in the minority and most games finish around 20-30 mins so it would be hard to host the game in a tournament. I can only imagine the poor casters after several hours of the same game XD
I played SupCom on hard for SP and I can tell you games would take me 5-6 hours min to finish. In one game, I decided to mass tier 1 bomber jets(think 250 or so) and attacked the AI's base to take out their cloaking device but aside from taking one or two out, I lost everything. My other complaint is, assuming that SupCom and TA had similar ideas with units, that units feel so disposable, maybe a bit too much imo. In BW or SCII, a unit can be micro'd and it feels like it has a value to it. If I lose a couple of marines early on or lose some infestors, colossi, queens, etc... there is a cost and I'm behind. Several units can make a difference in the game. In SupCom(again assuming it's similar to TA), I always found myself throwing units at the AI and finding that there wasn't much I can do to maximize their efficiency so it was, make units, throw and redo again and again so it got annoying lol.
On September 09 2012 07:32 BigFan wrote: I think the one problem(if you can call it that) of TA is that the games can take so so long. Honestly, I've never played the game but heard a lot of praise and tried the demo out, wasn't bad but some of those games can take hours on end to finish. Compare that to a SCII game where 40-50 min games are in the minority and most games finish around 20-30 mins so it would be hard to host the game in a tournament. I can only imagine the poor casters after several hours of the same game XD
I played SupCom on hard for SP and I can tell you games would take me 5-6 hours min to finish. In one game, I decided to mass tier 1 bomber jets(think 250 or so) and attacked the AI's base to take out their cloaking device but aside from taking one or two out, I lost everything. My other complaint is, assuming that SupCom and TA had similar ideas with units, that units feel so disposable, maybe a bit too much imo. In BW or SCII, a unit can be micro'd and it feels like it has a value to it. If I lose a couple of marines early on or lose some infestors, colossi, queens, etc... there is a cost and I'm behind. Several units can make a difference in the game. In SupCom(again assuming it's similar to TA), I always found myself throwing units at the AI and finding that there wasn't much I can do to maximize their efficiency so it was, make units, throw and redo again and again so it got annoying lol.
The bigger problem is that your'e comparing playing the AI to playing real people. Individual units are that valuable when you're facing the AI in Starcraft either.
Though it is partially true, the value of individual units, especially in the mid-late game, isn't nearly as much as in Starcraft. But this is offset by the fact that you'll have 4-5x as many units as you'd ever have in Starcraft, and you have to manage them over a MUCH larger field of battle. Many people (in particular TLO), describe SupCom as a strategic game, as compared to Starcraft being a tactical game, and it's a difference that creates the big differences between the game. You just can't have every unit be as valuable when you're managing multiple 100+ unit armies, an air force, and a navy, as well as the much more spread-out economy and bases that SupCom features.
I was about the same way as you. I used to play mech warrior, and I was in the chess club too lol. I thought I was a genius, because I could win in chess sometimes, and that I could build a robot. lol
I liked the expansion packs...because they were the first to add experimental weapons but not the ridiculous types that were put into Supreme Commander. There was an experimental long-range cannon that was basically like four or five rotating big-bertha cannons. It took forever to build, but it was so awesome to see it fire. I like how the screen shakes a bit for those big guns.
I have fond memories of that game. I loved it when for the first time I built a millenium battleship, with its two massive deck guns. It was so cool . Or the first time I built a moho mine, and saw my metal income skyrocket. That's what I love about that game, the scale and the power of some of the items is truly something to appreciate. Plus the music was amazing.
On September 09 2012 07:32 BigFan wrote: I think the one problem(if you can call it that) of TA is that the games can take so so long. Honestly, I've never played the game but heard a lot of praise and tried the demo out, wasn't bad but some of those games can take hours on end to finish. Compare that to a SCII game where 40-50 min games are in the minority and most games finish around 20-30 mins so it would be hard to host the game in a tournament. I can only imagine the poor casters after several hours of the same game XD
I played SupCom on hard for SP and I can tell you games would take me 5-6 hours min to finish. In one game, I decided to mass tier 1 bomber jets(think 250 or so) and attacked the AI's base to take out their cloaking device but aside from taking one or two out, I lost everything. My other complaint is, assuming that SupCom and TA had similar ideas with units, that units feel so disposable, maybe a bit too much imo. In BW or SCII, a unit can be micro'd and it feels like it has a value to it. If I lose a couple of marines early on or lose some infestors, colossi, queens, etc... there is a cost and I'm behind. Several units can make a difference in the game. In SupCom(again assuming it's similar to TA), I always found myself throwing units at the AI and finding that there wasn't much I can do to maximize their efficiency so it was, make units, throw and redo again and again so it got annoying lol.
The bigger problem is that your'e comparing playing the AI to playing real people. Individual units are that valuable when you're facing the AI in Starcraft either.
Though it is partially true, the value of individual units, especially in the mid-late game, isn't nearly as much as in Starcraft. But this is offset by the fact that you'll have 4-5x as many units as you'd ever have in Starcraft, and you have to manage them over a MUCH larger field of battle. Many people (in particular TLO), describe SupCom as a strategic game, as compared to Starcraft being a tactical game, and it's a difference that creates the big differences between the game. You just can't have every unit be as valuable when you're managing multiple 100+ unit armies, an air force, and a navy, as well as the much more spread-out economy and bases that SupCom features.
ok, fair enough but because of that aspect, it made the game seem more of a grind >< When I first saw SupCom and wanted to play it, I got the demo but my laptop couldn't run it so I built a gaming rig just to play the game. I bought the game, built the rig and tried it. At max settings, game looked amazing and the gameplay was new so for a while, it wasn't bad but eventually, I found it was really difficult to keep playing because it just felt like I was throwing wave after wave at the enemy. I kept on trying to get into it since I saw the youtube videos and it wasn't all that bad but one day, I just realized(lol?) that I just wasn't enjoying myself at all and maybe the game wasn't for me. I liked the idea of special units, the really big map, multiple attack path, openess, commander idea, etc... but it felt to me like I didn't have much control over my army aside from just sending them to a certain location to attack so I guess that's inline with the fact that the game is considered a strategic game in comparison to BW/SCII which is considered a tactical game. Anyways, all in all, it wasn't my cup of tea unfortunately
[/QUOTE] ok, fair enough but because of that aspect, it made the game seem more of a grind >< When I first saw SupCom and wanted to play it, I got the demo but my laptop couldn't run it so I built a gaming rig just to play the game. I bought the game, built the rig and tried it. At max settings, game looked amazing and the gameplay was new so for a while, it wasn't bad but eventually, I found it was really difficult to keep playing because it just felt like I was throwing wave after wave at the enemy. I kept on trying to get into it since I saw the youtube videos and it wasn't all that bad but one day, I just realized(lol?) that I just wasn't enjoying myself at all and maybe the game wasn't for me. I liked the idea of special units, the really big map, multiple attack path, openess, commander idea, etc... but it felt to me like I didn't have much control over my army aside from just sending them to a certain location to attack so I guess that's inline with the fact that the game is considered a strategic game in comparison to BW/SCII which is considered a tactical game. Anyways, all in all, it wasn't my cup of tea unfortunately [/QUOTE]
It is an ongoing myth about supreme commander, that you just send units to a position and they do the rest. The game is very hard and in order to get good enough to actually have enough concentration and apm to begin microing your units in multiple places on the map, it takes a long time. This is the way the game is play online between good players however, and where it really becomes fun.
Most "supcom" players never really played supcom because you don't get to play it without investing a lot of time into it. Here is an example of how good players who micro play:
Like TLO said: Any idiot can understand starcraft, but supcom takes time.
Wahooo! I loved this game! So many memories playing this game. What were those one units called, Walking Cans? Tin Cans? Walking tin Cans? I remember playing on some map where the two land masses were split down the middle by water. And then you could build this super cannon that could blast their units across the water. Seriously, great game.
On September 10 2012 13:46 Fumanchu wrote: Wahooo! I loved this game! So many memories playing this game. What were those one units called, Walking Cans? Tin Cans? Walking tin Cans? I remember playing on some map where the two land masses were split down the middle by water. And then you could build this super cannon that could blast their units across the water. Seriously, great game.
That was "The Can" lol
Cans aren't very good though, because they're too slow and have really bad range. The expansion packs have "Sumo" bots, which are kind of the same, but with more armor. I don't think the Core's tier 2 k-bots were good until Mortys were added.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/WLbfU.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/yzVgY.gif)
. Or the first time I built a moho mine, and saw my metal income skyrocket. That's what I love about that game, the scale and the power of some of the items is truly something to appreciate. Plus the music was amazing.
