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You may or may not have heard of "Total Annihilation", the first 3d RTS game, and still considered by many to be the best RTS game ever made (even rated above starcraft). The game was made back in 96 by a small company named "Cavedog". It's been pretty much dead for a long time in online play, but recently a group of people have been trying to revive the game with this free reworked version of TA called TAS (total annihilation spring)
About TA: SpringYou may have played Starcraft, or Warcraft, or Command and Conquer. This RTS is rather different. While the other games focus on careful control of individual units, TA is all about massive battles. Hundreds of units flying around. Giant nuclear explosions that can wipe out half your base in an instant. 100 foot tall robots with lasers, cannons, and rocket launchers taking on giant armies and winning. More unit types than you can count. Awesome action on a scale you might not have seen before. All this for free. Downloading TA: Spring (for free!)The game itself.Absolute Annihilation, the main mod people play.Getting startedWhen you first jump in, the game can seem daunting. There are a million different units and buildings you could make. My best suggestion is to just hop in and start playing. Sure, you'll have no idea what's going on at first, but you'll learn quickly. There are some other options, though. The game lets you observe games. It also autosaves replays of any game you are in, and you can review these replays later on to see what you did and what your opponents did. You can learn a lot from replays. 1. Don't forget to move your comm away from important stuff later on/cloak your comm 2. Don't forget AA 3. Don't forget antinukes 4. Don't forget to replace mexxes with mohos 5. Don't e-stall 6. Don't forget LLTs early on 7. In L-view hit ; to switch between line of sight and radar coverage 8. Never forget to keep expanding your economy! 9. Spread out exploding buildings like metal makers and fusions so that if one explodes they don't chain react. Strategies1. Thud/Hammer rushing early on 2. Brawler rush 3. Nuke rush 4. Nuke spam 5. Bertha rush 6. Load up air transports with pyros and tanks and things 7. Have a lot of units 8. Big robots 9. Be sneaky: hug the edge of the map to avoid defenses, send spiders over mountains/walls, etc. 10. Build plasma batteries to stake out your territory. Not only do you usually get more metal area out of it, you can really irritate your opponent. Nothing's worse than getting harassed by battery fire. 11. Try using tactical nukes if your opponent is turtling. They have pretty good range, do decent damage, and can't be shot down like real nukes. 12. On maps with relatively flat terrain, in a fairly even battle, the winner is often the first team to get long range plasma up and running. If you do use LRPCs, don't let them free fire. Force fire them on important targets, such as enemy fusions, factories, or defenses.
I've personally been having a lot of fun learning this complex and action-packed RTS. Like he said, it's different from starcraft because it's not as focused on control over specifics, rather on the bigger picture. Maps can hold up to 5,000 units, if i'm not mistaken. That's not to say micro isn't important - hell no, micro plays a huge role in this game, specially when you want to use few big units of your own against large numbers of the enemys'.
Here's a little picture story (not by me) of a 3v3, to give you an idea of the gameplay:
Hope some in the TL.net community takes interest and decides to play with me and the rest of the TAS community :D
edit: well images didn't work T_T sucks.
edit2: the official site has some screenshots. http://taspring.clan-sy.com/screenshots.php
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holy shit i just posted this in the strategy section.
sorry sorry sorry
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First off, those images did work, you just had to copy and paste them so that it didn't send the referrer. Secondly, why is this under strategy?
Edit: I see you realize 
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United Kingdom2674 Posts
Moving to sports and games.
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On July 17 2006 19:49 Arbiter[frolix] wrote:
Moving to sports and games.
thank you.
sorry for remaking the thread there (thought this one would be deleted or closed)
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I never played Total Annihilation, but Spring looks so much better than the original.
I'm going to try it out. It looks like something worth playing until Supreme Commander comes out. Supreme Commander is the unoffical Total Annihilation sequel.
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MURICA15980 Posts
Woah, this might be good for my boring summer days. Man, TA was the first RTS that got me into the genre... I played this for many years before I moved onto SC.
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Coincidentally i installed normal TA again last week, because a friend and me were having a huge fight over which is better. Man did it still blow, i uninstalled after 1 skirmish. I don't see how ppl can defend that to be the best rts game ever. There is totally no control, all units just do stuff, doesn't matter much which ones you build, as long as you have more.
My friend claimed sc is only big because of korean fanatics and because of the ease of bnet, but as a game TA is better. Now he's not my friend anymore^^.
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you must've played on a metal map or something (like a "fastest" map in bw). it's much different on real maps.
though, after the first skirmish, i was thinking just like you are. now i don't.
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Haha, I loved this game. It's got some solid music.
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Belgium8305 Posts
oh man I loved TA
and this new version looks pretty cool, I might try it in a few days
in terms of gameplay I don't think it's anywhere near SC but it's just fun to play
robots go boom
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Sweden33719 Posts
The lobby is FULL of people, maybe you're using an old version?
Anyway, I don't like TA Spring.. I do like TA tho.
On July 18 2006 13:35 aseq wrote:
Coincidentally i installed normal TA again last week, because a friend and me were having a huge fight over which is better. Man did it still blow, i uninstalled after 1 skirmish. I don't see how ppl can defend that to be the best rts game ever. There is totally no control, all units just do stuff, doesn't matter much which ones you build, as long as you have more.
My friend claimed sc is only big because of korean fanatics and because of the ease of bnet, but as a game TA is better. Now he's not my friend anymore^^.
Hehe, TA is actually sort of fun but it takes a few games before you can get into it. The control system makes me cry tho 
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MURICA15980 Posts
On July 18 2006 13:43 Zeto wrote:
you must've played on a metal map or something (like a "fastest" map in bw). it's much different on real maps.
I didn't like the "real" maps because they weren't balanced, unless you found some great custum ones online... but the ones they gave you stock, there was no balance in starting locations. Thus the metal maps were better.
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do the units attack the buildgs or do you have to do it manually?
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lots of AI and queueing does the work for you in TAS, you can use shift to queue commands to your units (building stuff, movement, etc.), and AI controls attack units' targetting, when energy converters turns on/off, and some other stuff i guess. since npcs automatically target enemy units by default, micro is based on how you move your npcs, like keeping them out of range of the enemy and dodging missiles.
i believe real maps are balanced after having seen a few pros play on them, the gameplay is just different from metal maps. there is no real imbalance when it comes to any maps, it really does seem you have to create your own balance by getting position. as a beginner i get terrible position and my timing is way off, but i see what teammates are doing, and what i've done wrong, so you can learn pretty fast.
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man, i remember playing TA ages ago.. was fun, gonna try this out
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heh original TA kicked ass, i remember online it was just mass mass flash tanks lol
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Tried to get into TA several times and never liked it. :/
Just not for me, the design, the gameplay... the 165484141 units (might sound like a good thing, but not to me)... well, pretty much everything.
I'll try out Spring and probably Supreme Commander anyway (I'll have to upgrade my comp for the latter tho). They look really great. :o
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yeah
i am pretty much on PoPs side.
i played the TA singleplayer story when the game came out, and it was great.
but multiplayerwise ... well the both races are much to similar and generally, unitspeed compared to other unit activities was to slow.
i tried ta:spring a while ago, but i had trouble getting online play to work and the bots are just plain weak.
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intrigue
Washington, D.C9934 Posts
looks cool, downloading
question: do people play ta:s original or the absolute annihilation mod? is it like bw where starting on absolute annihilation would make more sense and give me more people to play with?
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TA is pretty fun but the fans are always so insecure about it, comparing it to other RTSes and trying to claim it's better every time it's mentioned.
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thanks for posting, TA is a pretty fun game but so goddamn slow
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Is there much of a difference between TA and TA: Spring?
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TA was a great game, but it really doesn't come anywhere close to touching SC.
BTW, Brawlers FTW.
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TA was a mass rts game. With a billion units, there was no balance. It was fun for a while...
But battleships than can shoot 5 screens away? (maybe further?) No thanks. It was even farther than the dreadnought unit of RA2, which was at least balanced by patriot missile systems. TA doesn't touch SC in any regard.
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intrigue
Washington, D.C9934 Posts
i played yesterday for the first time and this guy volunteered to help me. after being in a game for an hour playing the basics we just ended up typing '.cheat' and '.give 1000 armmine6' (for nuclear mines) and '.give 1000 armcom' (for commanders that make huge explosions when killed) and changing the landscape. huge explosions lagged my computer for almost a full minute before the screen showed the hugeeee craters =)
overall a pretty cool game but i'm just too used to starcraft i guess
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After playing SC, other RTS games are depressing
Still an ok game though, fun for a while;o
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On July 19 2006 02:59 gravity wrote:
TA is pretty fun but the fans are always so insecure about it, comparing it to other RTSes and trying to claim it's better every time it's mentioned.
+10000000.
I remember being on the Blizzard forums, after SC and SC:BW came out, and TA fanboys would routinely 'raid' the Blizzard forums en masse,'pimping' their game and trolling/talking a great deal of smack about SC and Blizzard.
After a bit too much of this, SC fans then started 'counter-raiding' the Cavedog TA forums en masse, much to the surprise and anger of TA fans.
It finally died down after awhile, when it sort of became beyond obvious that SC had far eclipsed TA in terms of popularity... it became harder to talk smack from the TA side of things. TA: Kingdoms (which, according to some TA fans at the time, was supposed to "bury" Starcraft) didn't meet with much success, and Cavedog itself being shut down in 2000 ended the rivalry, at least to any reasonable person.
But today, you can still find old TA fanboys talking about their game, and inevitably, certain as clockwork and the sun rising in the morning, they will nearly always add, "It was better than Starcraft!!!". With those guys, that train always runs on time. 
SC fans scratch heads about that, but I think maybe TA fans think that things would've turned out very differently if Blizzard and SC had not been there, and that their beloved Cavedog would still be around today.
But, maybe not. Cavedog's biggest talent, TA creator Chris Taylor, left Cavedog in '98 to found his own company. Not sure how good they would've been even without Blizzard allegedly 'stomping on their dreams'.
User was warned for this post
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EPT
