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Total Annihilation (abbr. TA) is a futuristic real-time strategy game for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS, created by Chris Taylor and Cavedog Entertainment and released on 30 September 1997 by GT Interactive. It was the first to feature 3D units and terrain, a significant achievement in the days before graphics cards with hardware-based 3D acceleration became commonplace. Two expansion packs were released, The Core Contingency on April 30, 1998 and Battle Tactics on June 30, 1998.

A remake of the game with a completely 3D graphics engine (lacking any fixated camera angle), named Spring, has been created by the Swedish Yankspankers. Total Annihilation creator Chris Taylor has also recently created the game Supreme Commander through Gas Powered Games, which bears many similarities with Total Annihilation, and has been popularly considered its "spiritual successor".

Background Story

The opening video has a voice over which summarizes the background story effectively:

The storylines in both campaigns focus on the respective side's commanders, which resemble alter-egos of the player and the heart of both side's war efforts.

Both factions' campaign storyline is also told primarily through voice over narration before each mission. The first five of the Arm 25 missions in the campaign take place on the Arm homeworld of Empyrrean.

Features

The game features three-dimensional rendering technology from one fixated camera angle, true Newtonian physics, and customizable units. Screen resolution as well as the limit of maximum units per player are customizable, depending only on the quality of computer hardware. The default unit limit was originally 200, which was changed to 250 in Total Annihilation: The Core Contingency—by modifying the totala.ini file in the game folder, users can increase this limit up to 500. With a binary modification of the program file and sufficient hardware, the unit limit can be increased to 5000 per team.

Interface

The interface is designed to minimize micromanagement by automating many of the routine tasks.

The player can queue unit actions by holding down the shift key. This allows a plethora of management possibilities, such as the establishment of patrol routes to be automatically assigned to units as they emerge from factories, the commanding of construction units to autonomously repair groups of buildings or assist with nearby construction, or the instant mapping of an entire base's or outpost's blueprints. Unlike numerous other strategy games produced during the 1990s, as well as even some games of today’s times, armed units automatically attack equally armed enemies, even if moving and not directly assigned the action (unless specifically commanded to hold fire). However, units may be manually micromanaged to fire at a much further distance using radar sensors via the minimap. This is known as "radar targetting".

The unit action queue system of Total Annihilation is impressive, even by today's standards. A given unit could have a queue to, for example, built ten energy collectors, then build laser turrets in front of them, repair five other damaged laser towers, collect metal from fifty unit carcasses, build several nuclear missile silos, build another vehicle plant, and then guard another unit and help them finish their entire queue of actions. This queue can be set by the player and then forgotten about while the player is setting up the queue of another unit. This is impressive when one considers that one hundred units could each have a queue of one hundred actions all going at the same time. It is also worthy to note that a unit's queue will always end with the Guard command (when a unit is told to assist another construction unit in whatever it is doing, or, if it is an attack unit, repair it whenever it gets damaged or attack whoever attacked it) until the unit it is guarding is destroyed. If it is never destroyed, the unit will be on the Guard command until the game is over, even if it has another hundred commands in it's queue.

Units

Originally shipped with 150 discrete units, the expansion packs The Core Contingency and Battle Tactics allow players to choose from 230 units, and over 6,000 units are available after 3rd-party installations from Total Annihilation's many different fansites (although only 512 units can be installed on any one copy due to engine limitations). The two factions were balanced by giving both sides similar, well-rounded selections of units which filled all possible roles. These include aircraft, tanks, ships and legged vehicles known as KBOTs (Kinetic Bio In-Organic Technology). All aircraft are VTOL and have unlimited fuel, which allows them to hover or endlessly patrol as well as land on slightly uneven terrain. Except for nuclear missile silos which must construct their missiles, all units have unlimited ammunition and fuel, although many laser weapons derive their power from the player’s energy resource (as explained later below regarding economic management) and cannot fire without sufficient energy.

The Core Contingency expansion pack further diversifies both sides' arsenals by providing both races various units bearing features that the opposing side’s own units lacked—a general discrepancy among the two factions is also represented through their overall structure, with the Arm’s units tending to be faster but weaker and the Core’s slower but stronger. A major component of the expansion pack is the inclusion of hovercraft. Underwater construction, as well as increased support for amphibious units, is also greatly expanded upon in The Core Contingency.

After The Core Contingency, Cavedog released several units online, free for download, which further broadened the Arm and Core: the Arm Flea (the smallest, puniest scout Kbot in the game), the Core Necro (a slow, unarmed Kbot capable of restoring the wreckage of destroyed units to functionality), the Arm FARK (the "Fast Assist and Repair Kbot" for battlefield deployment), the Core Immolator (a short-range plasma tower), and the Arm Scarab & Core Hedgehog (mobile anti-nuclear missile vehicles). These units, like any other added-on units placed within the game folders, are only accessible in multiplayer if all participants possess the corresponding files.

Utilities have also been produced by the fan community, with varying support by the game's authors, for creating freely downloadable third-party units. Many thousands of such units have been produced, in some cases being packaged as total conversions for complete replacement of the original units. Fans have even created their own races to join or replace the game's two original factions.

Ultimately, there are 236 official Cavedog units, with well over 6,000 third-party units available online.

Total Annihilation's Conceptual Revolution

An aspect of Total Annihilation's units (and thus the game’s quickly ensuing initial popularity), which no other real-time strategy game of its time was capable of realizing (and even most RTSs today), is its hierarchical proportionality. In most RTSs, one unit is quickly prone to destruction from multiple other types, such as, for example in the Command & Conquer series, a general rocket trooper’s utter uselessness against other infantry. This is because Command & Conquer uses, like most other RTS games, the so-called rock-paper-scissor principle. All units in TA are scaled proportionally; a higher-technology unit which requires more resources to produce, with some exceptions, is generally able to successfully destroy any type of lesser unit beneath it in ranking if pitted together in combat. Players do not need to use any specific "destroyer" unit to quickly defeat a particular type of enemy; lower-technology units are almost absolutely weaker than and can be proportionally destroyed by anything of higher technological ranking. In many cases, a higher technology unit can defeat dozens, and in some rare cases, hundreds of enemy units before being taken down. However, because of this strength, it may take just as long to create the one powerful unit as it does the one hundred weaker ones.

AI and physics

The default computer player artificial intelligence is fairly simplistic; the computer player, for instance, cannot detect on its own what types of units would be feasible for a given map, and will generally produce as many land and sea units as can fit into any available space, which often results in humorous scenarios, such as small islands congested with tanks and infantry, or small ponds full of battleships. This can be overcome by carefully rewriting the AI and adjusting weights {the probability that a certain unit type will be built} & limits {maximum number of units of a specific type, to be calculated as a percentage of the max. unit count}. Normally, adjusting the difficulty will only increase the rate at which enemy units are built and the frequency of attack attempts, and has no effect on the computer's strategy, which is only to produce more units. However, manually rewriting the AI will allow multiple AI profiles on a single map, albeit at only a single difficulty level. The default computer AI will only use construction units' reclamation ability (see Resources) to supply itself with resources, and does not know how to clear paths. This can give players an advantage on maps strewn with reclaimable material, like houses, urban areas, trees, or boulders. This can also be upgraded manually by modifying the AI. It should be noted that individual unit pathfinding and combat AI is considered very decent with respect to contemporary titles.

The physics engine supports true trajectories, inertia, momentum, thrust, and collateral damage. The game's terrain is a two-dimensional rendering with a matrix of height values mapped over it. All objects in the game interact with it as though it were fully, illusorily three-dimensional—hills obstruct artillery fire, and, if line-of-sight is set to "true", height enhances units' visual and firing ranges. If terrain is steep and jagged, units tilt and turn to meet the face of the ground. Bases can be built on steep terrain to protect them from artillery fire and to create choke points. Artillery shells are affected by gravity, which is variable on different planets in the Total Annihilation universe. Particularly on lower-gravity moons, some artillery units can strike targets 10 or more screens away.

A particular feature to note especially of long-range plasma cannons, which are meant to steadily bombard enemies from multiple screens, is their illusion of adaptation—the first projectile they fire usually misses, but if the target to strike is stationary, the cannons seem to readjust their aim and are exponentially more accurate with successive rounds.

Multiplayer

Total Annihilation allows total control and customization of unit numbers within multiplayer games. Using the in-game interface, it is possible to stipulate the exact number of any particular unit that a player may build—for example, so that only a limited amount of more powerful units can be present at any moment in time.

Up to 10 players can play simultaneously in a multiplayer match. Unfortunately, all of the original TA servers have since disbanded or no longer host TA, such as Boneyards and MPlayer, which were shut down in 2000. The Macintosh game server "Gameranger" still allows for games of Total Annihilation, although there are very few players nowadays. Some TA players still meet at WarZone (a server set up by the Axis & Allies community), the Phoenix Worx Server, at Gamespy, and on Internet Relay Chat at irc.gnug.org on the #tauniverse and #gnug channels. Warzone appears to be the most active with an average of 50 people logged on at any given moment. There are also some active clans and ladders at these sources. The TAUniverse IRC Help Page is available for assistance with partaking in IRC.

Help for setting up TA for internet play via TCP/IP can be found on TCBW's TA Page.

Extensibility

Data files containing game information can be placed within the game directory, whose contents would then be incorporated into the game. Units, weapons, AI tweaks, missions, races, and new map tilesets can be added, as well as a wide range of modifications and total conversions.

Apart from official enhancements released by Cavedog for free, including units and patches, there is large community support with thousands of third-party add-ons and utilities. A prime example is the Uberhack modification, which modifies all of the existing units and adds several additional ones, in the attempt to balance the game and create unique roles for each of the wide variety of units.

Soundtrack

The game has an original orchestral soundtrack composed by Jeremy Soule and performed by the 96-piece Northwest Sinfonia orchestra. The music changes according to events: during a battle, louder and more frenetic music plays. During post-war damage reparations or idle construction, a more ambient and mysterious track is played. The soundtrack is in CD-audio format and can be listened to with ordinary CD players. An ordinary music CD can be inserted once the game is under way and can replace the original game music with its own tracks. It is even possible to program such custom CD tracks to the various battlefield situations (conflict, construction, defeat, etc) like the default set.

General strategy

Structures build relatively quickly in the game to compensate for nimble, heavily armed aircraft and long-range artillery. Nuclear weapons are relatively cheap, powerful, and quick to build. Several warheads can be stockpiled for devastating bombardments. This can lead to the creation of large, sprawling bases as opposed to tightly clustered districts, to limit the damage of a nuclear attack, airstrike, or artillery barrage.

Total Annihilation uses two resources to regulate production: energy and metal. Either of these resources is unlimited with regards to generation, but the rate at which a player accumulates or restores resources depends on the amount of resource-gathering structures/units. Unit production is otherwise only limited by micromanagement speed and the number of production units/factories. There is a limit on the maximum number of total producible units, but this can easily be raised to a higher amount through the editing of a game file (see above). This makes offensive strikes a necessity, as a purely defensive strategy will never curtail the enemy's capacity to produce more units (however, note that, in playing against AI, the units produced will be a random mix; hence, as offensive units are destroyed, the AI player is left with a weak amount of low-offensive-value static units).

The presence of infinite resources can often lead to very long drawn-out games that last anywhere from 1 to 4-5 hours; sometimes an almost incorrigible stalemate may develop. The only other discerning factor from other RTS games is the existence of the Commander: the most powerful unit in the game. The one unit that players start off with in multiplayer matches, the Commander is the fastest solo constructionist and also bears the most powerful weapon, the Disintegrator gun (abbr. "D-gun"), a short-range, manually targeted one-shot-kill weapon. It is also armed with a moderately powerful auto-fire laser (useless against aircraft or deep-water naval units), as well as an energy-draining cloaking device. Additionally, the Commander is one of few amphibious units and is capable of building both land and naval structures. If the Commander is destroyed at an early stage, the resource capacity of the corresponding player becomes severely limited. The game options may be (and usually are) set so that victory is achieved by simply assassinating the enemy Commander, although, the spirit of the game usually automatically assumes the end of the match after the death of a Commander, particularly if it is killed within the player's base as it causes a nuclear explosion upon death. Some tactics are based around this explosion: the ability to airlift enemy units allows someone in multiplayer battles to, instead of delivering a killing blow, use the enemy Commander as a nuke.

Resource management

One of the defining aspects of Total Annihilation is that both resources, energy and metal, are of unlimited supply. Structures which generate these resources collect them on a per-second basis (at the default game speed). A buffer is used to allow for variations in the speed at which these resources are consumed. Excess resources are placed in this buffer until it is full, at which point further supply is wasted. Storage structures can be built to increase the maximum amount the buffer can hold of either resource. If the player's production is exceeded by usage (mainly due to construction and, for laser weapons, frequent energy use), construction is slowed to the ratio between income and expenditure. The Commander and other construction units (as opposed to non-resource buildings) continuously produce a small amount of energy and metal, so a player is never completely bereft unless all construction units have been destroyed.

For example, if a player has four energy collectors that produce +20 energy each, they have an income of +80 energy per second. If they have a vehicle plant that is producing a tank that requires 4000 energy to complete, and the plant is expelling 10 energy per second into the tank, then the player has an energy increase of +70 (80 - 10)and the vehicle will be completed in 400 seconds (4000 / 10 per second). Now if three construction vehicles assist the plant build the tank and each expel 20 energy into it, then the tank will be built at a rate of 70 energy per second (10 + (3 x 20)) and the player has an increase of +10 per second (80 - 70). They are still increasing in energy, but the tank will now be completed in 57 seconds (4000 / 70). However, if a second vehicle plant starts the same production of the same tank with three vehicles assisting, then the player will have a decrease in energy of 60 per second since the use of energy exceeds the increase. That means that once the energy buffer has depleted (which, if the player has a buffer of 1000, it'll be empty in roughly 17 seconds), the player will be out of energy. The laboratories will be able to fully build and function while this buffer is depleting, (and, if the buffer were to hold out for the 57 seconds it takes to complete the vehicle, they would be fine,) the tanks would finish completion and the buffer would then fill back up. However, since in this case the energy buffer will be out in 17 seconds, the player will be out of energy before the tanks are built and the energy going in (which in this case is 80) will be divided between the two plants and they will only be able to expel 40 energy into the tank every second. This will mean that the two tanks will now complete in 100 (4000 / 40) seconds instead of 57. If a third vehicle plant were to start with three vehicles assisting, or four or five, this puts massive drain on the players limited +80 energy per second increase and can vastly slow down the construction of any building, vehicle, laser tower, etc... to the point where it could take up to ten minutes or more for any one structure or vehicle to finish completion. If, in this example, the player still only has an increase of +80, but has twenty plants with three vehicles constructing the same type of tank, the player would have a decrease of 1320 per second. This means that each tank would be built at a rate of 4 energy per second! It would take 1000 seconds (17 minutes) of real game time for any of these tanks to be completed.

This example only factors in energy. Add in the balance of metals for the same construction, add in other kbots, vehicles, and planes building other buildings, other energy collectors, towers, vehicle plants, metal extractors, barricades, etc..., and plants building other tanks, kbots, planes, and ships all at the same time and one truly has a grasp of just how complex Total Annihilation's resource management system is. This is vastly different than many other games of this type which simply require the "purchasing" method, where a player simply stores up resources and then buys the units. They may take time to build, but they are already bought and paid for in full. In summation, Total Annihilation's resource system is all about balance and timing. If a player can consistently keep their energy/metal increase greater then their expenditures, they can infinitely and endlessly produce units and structures as long as their amount never exceeds the max number of units.

Also, a successful player needs to learn to time when to build things. If a player had twenty kbots building twenty energy collectors all at the same time, it may take ten minutes for them to all complete. However, if another player goes about building the same twenty energy collectors, but has one kbot build one, then when they're are benefiting from that collector making energy, they have two kbots build two collectors, then three build three, and so on, it may take only four minutes to build twenty energy collectors. In the end, the energy increase will be exactly the same, but one player will have an extra six minutes to use his energy increase to build up his army and defenses. On the same note though, successful players need to plan when and when not to focus on resources. If a player spends the first twenty minutes making it so that they have a healthy +5000 energy increase and +1000 metal increase by devoting all their time into resource building, they can now make a very powerful army. However, if their opponent only focuses on their resources until they had a steady +1000 energy/+200 metal increase and then focused on building their army, they could easily swarm and overcome the helpless and defenseless, yet potentially powerful player with the +5000/+1000 increase. This is why Total Annihilation's resource system is one of the most crucial and vital strategies to overcome and learn to be effective.

Both resources are vital to all aspects of construction. In addition, energy is continuously required to maintain functionality in many structures, including metal-production structures (which use energy in order to generate metal), and are intermittently required to operate laser weaponry. Structures which generate energy can be built anywhere given that there are no obstructions (such as wreckage or hilly, uneven landscape) and that it is in the correct type of area (i.e., land or sea), excepting special geothermal power plants (which must be constructed over vents). However, metal extraction structures can only be built efficiently on metal deposits. Secure control of these deposits vastly increases maximum production and provides exponentially greater efficiency than the creation of metal through energy-converters. One exception is the Core’s home world, Core Prime, which is composed entirely of metal; on maps that take place on such a planet, metal extractors will always yield the highest amount of metal possible regardless of where they are placed. Resource-production structures vastly increase in effectiveness as the technological advancement of the player progresses. The most advanced energy and metal production structures are significantly more effective than the most basic, with a 50x and 10x increase in output, respectively.

Energy supply is only limited by the player's foresight to build more plants before production is virtually halted by energy shortages. As metal can be produced (albeit very inefficiently) through energy-converters, it is hence possible to construct a base anywhere on the map, as no resource locations are absolutely necessary, although regions with metal deposits are perceptibly favorable. The fastest method of gaining resources early in the game is by 'reclaiming' existing structures and objects such as vegetation and wreckages. These resources are, however, inherently finite and are infrequently used to gather resources later on in the game, as the micromanagement of reclamation requires a lot of time.

Such a resource system allows for many strategies in production. The player can choose to build units at a rate that matches or falls below the production rate so that storage reserves are not touched, and the player can also simply store enough resources prior to construction so that there will still be usable resources after construction is completed. In either case, many construction units can simultaneously assist in building a unit or structure to complete it in the shortest time possible.

Reception

The game was highly praised by critics and players, and won numerous awards, including GameSpot's Game of the Year Award for 1997. TA is considered to be one of the best RTS games of all time and is still played actively today, over 10 years after its release.

It was recently named to Gamespot's The Greatest Games of All Time list of 50 games. The editors stated "It's not as famous as Warcraft or Command & Conquer, but Total Annihilation is arguably better than any other real-time strategy game to date."

Criticism

This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.
Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (April 2008)

The pathfinding AI for naval units is problematic—assembling a group of warships and giving them collective orders to move to a new location often results in the ships colliding with and grinding against each other for the majority of their route.

The AI for computer-controlled armies, due to it's nature to simply build as many armies as possible, has been considered is quite weak and relatively easy to defeat. To counter this there has been some development of a variety of fan-made modifications to make the AI adopt alternate strategies.

The most critical flaw of the computer AI regards anti-nuclear defense. Though the original AI will not construct or attempt to use Nuclear silos (This was presumably done so that the players would not be able to potentially lose a game through a lucky AI strike), fan-made modifications to the AI are able to implement the use of nuclear silos by the computer. In the case of missile defense, the original Computer AI will construct anti-missile silos that are capable of stopping opponents’ incoming missiles, but they fail to actually build the anti-missiles inside the silos themselves; the computer AI thus constructs empty silos, leaving itself completely vulnerable to nuclear missile attack. Unfortunately, this programming was hard-coded into the game itself and cannot be changed with any 3rd-party AI tweak. It is presumed that this was an error in programming by Cavedog that was not detected before launch.

From some players’ perspectives, "Total Annihilation" encourages "spamming" or "rushing" large masses of one particular, generally effective unit (such as the Arm "Flash" tank) in order to win. This was perceived to cut down on the number of actually viable strategies in favor of simply amassing one's units, although some argue that skilled players can defeat single-unit spammers easily, pointing to how "Total Annihilation" is unique in the real-time strategy genre in its variety of cheap, fixed defenses. Many strategies have now been thought of to stop these rushers, notably the construction of the unit especially effective for quickly destroying the "flash" tank.

Another tactic that was (and in some cases still is) used was the Two Minute Multi-player Victory. This consisted of one player having his Commander immediately building an airport at the start of a game, and then assist it in building a unit carrying plane. The plane would then be told to fly over to the second player's Commander and pick him up, rendering him completely helpless. If the second player has not built any other units (which, usually by this time most have only built resource buildings), they have already lost the battle. The first player can then either fly the victim's Commander near one of the second player's laser turrets (which will then shoot the plane, destroying it, and causing it to drop the Commander, instantly destroying it and anything around it) or simply self-destruct the transport plane carrying the Commander, resulting in death for both units. Either way, this usually spelled imminent victory for the player(and can be used as an easy, yet pointless, victory against the computer in single player skirmishes.) This specific situation caused many multi-player online games to have unit carrying planes disabled. The Two Minute Multi-player Victory rarely ever works any more as many players build anti-air units early. Some groups of players even prohibit the tactic in multiplayer games, calling it an "unsportsmanlike tactic, requiring little or no skill to execute"

Fan support

Cavedog's Total Annihilation release was one of the first to truly embrace the fansite paradigm. Cavedog provided graphics and a full license to use trademark materials for the benefit of the game's community. As a result, a large amount fan-created content has been produced by various players, groups and organisations, including units, maps and even AI tweaks to improve the game, which in itself generated a large number or players toward the game - many contemporary companies still do not permit others to use their materials for the same purpose.

References

^ ^a ^b GameSpot Total Annihilation page
^ GameSpot Core Contingency page
^ GameSpot Battle Tactics page
^ Supreme Commander Q&A at gamespot.com (2005)
^ Total Annihilation Reviews at metacritic.com
^ Top Ten Real-Time Strategy Games of All Time at gamespy.com (2004)
^ History of Real-time Strategy Games: 1989-1998 - the Second Generation at gamespot.com (2000)
^ at rakrent.com (2006)

External links

A mirror of Cavedog Entertainment's official Total Annihilation website.
Total Annihilation Intro @ YouTube
Spring is a mature open-source 3D RTS inspired by Total Annihilation which can make use of TA's data files.
TA3D is an open-source 3D remake of Total Annihilation's engine which uses TA data files (maps, units, weapons, ...)
Total Annihilation: Twilight The most balanced and one of the only Total Annihilation mods still being worked on to date. Next version will be released in May 2008.
TABA Another TA Mod still actively being worked on. Includes unique features such as upgrading and new balance changes.
FileUniverse contains over 3000 mods, races, maps, utilities and tutorials for TA, TA:Kingdoms, and Spring
UnitUniverse An archive of over 5,000 downloadable first- and third-party units
TA-Zone: The Ultimate TA Resource site, with a TA 1v1 Ladder, TA Replays and forums
D-Gun provides links to information and files for playing Total Annihilation online
Total Annihilation at MobyGames
TA Wiki, by TA Universe
Total Annihilation guide at StrategyWiki
RTSC TA Pages: an introduction to Total Annihilation
Switeck's Junkdrawer has many useful TA files, such as the TA Bugfix and AI Guide
Galactic War Briefings: Galactic War Battle Reports, as cached by WebArchive
Epic Class Productions has a large collection of gigantic 63x63-screen "Epic Maps" by James Beatty

v • d • e Total Annihilation video games

Total Annihilation · The Core Contingency · Battle Tactics · Kingdoms

Total Annihilation

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TOTAL ANNIHILATION KINGDOMS

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