6 ms·

For those of us who are not into RTS games, which of the features listed on this front page are ones that Total Annihilation was known for (and which other RTS

For those of us who are not into RTS games, which of the features listed on this front page are ones that Total Annihilation was known for (and which other RTS games presumably failed to follow up on), and which ones are further innovations this game is making atop TA’s take on the genre?

majormajor 5y ago
Unit count and "planning" were the two things that separated TA from others for me. You could build more units and you could command larger groups of them compared to something like SC where you couldn't group more than 12 per hotkey. The sheer number of units you could crank out also had interesting strategic effects if, say, your opponent had a balanced defense but not quite enough flak cannons, say, to hold up to a giant swarm of air units. I remember having to worry more about the specifics of what they were building than in games where there was a unit cap that increased the relative value of fortifications and defensive structures. Sequencing was great too. Tell your commander to build a factory, then another factory, then a solar plant, etc, with seemingly no queue size limit. Queue up dozens of things in each of those factories too. Etc. It always felt less "clicks per minute" dominated because of these things for me - though I was not a high level player or anything, just playing for fun - while the industry went the opposite, way into the Micro side and turned into things like Warcraft 3 and then LoL. (I forget the name of Cavedog's TA sequel set in a fantasy world, but even that, IIRC, backed away from the giant armies thing.)
- tomc1985 5y ago
  In its successor, Supreme Commander, you could completely automate your base construction using those assist features and looping build queues
- uCantCauseUCant 5y ago
  The whole automation thing UI in spring was even more optimized by some games. Basically- you could turn your whole base into a state machine- with trigger zones, were discovered enemies would launch automated counter-attack-patrols by units waiting in staging areas. Good times.
vosper 5y ago
They don't seem to mention the thing I most remember TA for: the soundtrack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljDyp__ejco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljDyp__ejco
- mcbuilder 5y ago
  The BAR music is really good, in the same theme done by a professional composer. It's not a full orchestra on the level of the TA soundtrack, which is simply one of the best of all time, but it excellent on its own and captures much of the essence.
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    I really hope its better than Zero-K's music, their "professional" composer produced some of the most eye-rollingly awful syntesized orchestral music I've ever heard
    - mcbuilder 5y ago
      It's here if you'd like to judge for yourself. https://soundcloud.com/ryankrause94/sets/beyond-all-reason-full-music/s-xgNyqfjSiyC https://soundcloud.com/ryankrause94/sets/beyond-all-reason-f...
- GrumpyYoungMan 5y ago
  Along with the soundtrack, John Patrick Lowrie's amazing voice work also form some of my most vivid memories of the game. I still get goosebumps when I hear his narration of the opening cinematic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6mZZiI4ShQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6mZZiI4ShQ
- blunte 5y ago
  Same. Although I do remember the graphics and number of simultanously visible independent units as being impressive... But the music was magnificent orchestral work. It was also so depressing [ https://youtu.be/ljDyp__ejco?t=995 https://youtu.be/ljDyp__ejco?t=995 ] that I decided to play the game without music after a while. It's gorgeous, but too emotive.
astine 5y ago
In addition to what majormajor said, there TA had a bigger sense of scale than Starcraft or Command and Conquer. There was a greater discrepancy between the size of large and small units and the size of the units had a bigger impact on the movement speed and how much room on the map the unit took up. This went a long towards making the game feel bigger in scope whereas SC and C&C always felt more tight and controlled.
Karunamon 5y ago
One thing TA and all of its successors kept was the ability to have units assist in construction. For instance, you have your commander plunk down a factory, then order the commander to assist with anything the factory is doing. Early on, this will be creating engineers (builders) and your first defensive units. Then you have your commander and engineers build/upgrade your level 2 factory.. rinse and repeat. It turns into a virtuous cycle. The upshot of this is that it creates opportunities for prioritization (and opportunities for blowing past your income if you're not careful).
- majormajor 5y ago
  Oh, yeah, THIS was a huge one. As well as just how construction/payment worked in general. This thing costs you X metal, and this factory can deliver metal at a rate of x/sec... but if you throw in all these helper units, you can up that. Very interesting and unique twist. You also didn't have to pay up front when queuing things, like you say with the opportunity to blow past your income, so your cash flow was the counter-balancing production speed limiter, but not in a way where you had to be constantly watching that bank account dollar amount before clicking "build."
GrumpyYoungMan 5y ago
Total Annihilation was the first to have projectile physics for artillery and other weapons. One could actually have, for example, an artillery projectile in mid-flight accidentally collide with an aircraft. [EDIT] Not mentioned on the BAR front page but also pioneered in TA was wreckage. Destroyed units left wreckage behind that had to be navigated around or fired upon to clear a path. Wreckage could also be scavenged to recover the material used to construct them, allowing the construction of more units. In the race to build enough infrastructure to overwhelm the enemy, this could be the difference between life and death.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > One could actually have, for example, an artillery projectile in mid-flight accidentally collide with an aircraft. Or, anti-air units used as ground defense and ground assault units :). In my TA days, I had plenty of cases where I saved my base by ordering AA bots to fire on the ground, counting on weaker but much further-flying missiles to accidentally collide with the attacking force. Also, Commander's D-gun. That one was an exercise in aiming, but early-to-mid-game, one well-placed shot could cut the attacking force in half. I also appreciated the little things - like the solar generators automatically closing down when hit, to protect themselves. Or, dropship bombing - IIRC when a dropship gets shot down, it crashes with all its load, which can sometimes be pretty explosive. Maybe I'll just stop now. I have a lot of good TA memories.
  - icexuick 5y ago
    All this is in BAR. We've seen some mid-air collisions of aircraft with artillery or tactical nukes :).
- icexuick 5y ago
  Correct. We recently even saw that a tactical nuke dropped from a bomber, created a blast-wave that pushed 19 flash-tanks so much their got a temporary 300% movement speed (if they weren't flying/crashing/exploding). https://www.twitch.tv/tarnishedknight/clip/AssiduousAttractiveLarkPeanutButterJellyTime-AhWxgHUOCON52gQa https://www.twitch.tv/tarnishedknight/clip/AssiduousAttracti...
GasPoweredMaker 5y ago
Two key characteristics of TA/SupCom that set it apart were economic. First, map resources (metal patches) were not depletable. So, the game would see massive economic growth as every metal patch would give resource indefinitely. Big econ ramp up, and a marked ability to come back due to non-exhausting resource patches. The second characteristic is the flow-based economy that worked with build queuing. A player could queue up as many units or structures to be built as desired, as opposed to "buy and build" where you must currently have the resources necessary to build something. "Queue" may be an imprecise word here, as the player could, for example, have ten factories all attempting to produce a series of units simultaneously (and similarly, have a swam of engineer units all attempting to build a number of structures simultaneously). That is, it was simultaneous building that would consume resources on the fly as they came in that was the core of this model. The flow economy model meant that a player tracked resource income and resource usage: kept positive, all the queued up units or structures could be built. Go into the negative, however, and the resource buffer would be eaten into and the player would see all currently-building units/structures slow down in their rate of build progress, awaiting resources to come in. The last bit was disabled in SupCom 2, out of concern that newer players often bottomed out their economy and had a bad time. However, after fan outcry, the flow-model and infinite queuing was re-enabled as an option.

majormajor 5y ago

Unit count and "planning" were the two things that separated TA from others for me. You could build more units and you could command larger groups of them compared to something like SC where you couldn't group more than 12 per hotkey. The sheer number of units you could crank out also had interesting strategic effects if, say, your opponent had a balanced defense but not quite enough flak cannons, say, to hold up to a giant swarm of air units. I remember having to worry more about the specifics of what they were building than in games where there was a unit cap that increased the relative value of fortifications and defensive structures. Sequencing was great too. Tell your commander to build a factory, then another factory, then a solar plant, etc, with seemingly no queue size limit. Queue up dozens of things in each of those factories too. Etc. It always felt less "clicks per minute" dominated because of these things for me - though I was not a high level player or anything, just playing for fun - while the industry went the opposite, way into the Micro side and turned into things like Warcraft 3 and then LoL. (I forget the name of Cavedog's TA sequel set in a fantasy world, but even that, IIRC, backed away from the giant armies thing.)

tomc1985 5y ago
In its successor, Supreme Commander, you could completely automate your base construction using those assist features and looping build queues
uCantCauseUCant 5y ago
The whole automation thing UI in spring was even more optimized by some games. Basically- you could turn your whole base into a state machine- with trigger zones, were discovered enemies would launch automated counter-attack-patrols by units waiting in staging areas. Good times.

vosper 5y ago

They don't seem to mention the thing I most remember TA for: the soundtrack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljDyp__ejco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljDyp__ejco

mcbuilder 5y ago
The BAR music is really good, in the same theme done by a professional composer. It's not a full orchestra on the level of the TA soundtrack, which is simply one of the best of all time, but it excellent on its own and captures much of the essence.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  I really hope its better than Zero-K's music, their "professional" composer produced some of the most eye-rollingly awful syntesized orchestral music I've ever heard
  - mcbuilder 5y ago
    It's here if you'd like to judge for yourself. https://soundcloud.com/ryankrause94/sets/beyond-all-reason-full-music/s-xgNyqfjSiyC https://soundcloud.com/ryankrause94/sets/beyond-all-reason-f...
GrumpyYoungMan 5y ago
Along with the soundtrack, John Patrick Lowrie's amazing voice work also form some of my most vivid memories of the game. I still get goosebumps when I hear his narration of the opening cinematic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6mZZiI4ShQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6mZZiI4ShQ
blunte 5y ago
Same. Although I do remember the graphics and number of simultanously visible independent units as being impressive... But the music was magnificent orchestral work. It was also so depressing [ https://youtu.be/ljDyp__ejco?t=995 https://youtu.be/ljDyp__ejco?t=995 ] that I decided to play the game without music after a while. It's gorgeous, but too emotive.

astine 5y ago

In addition to what majormajor said, there TA had a bigger sense of scale than Starcraft or Command and Conquer. There was a greater discrepancy between the size of large and small units and the size of the units had a bigger impact on the movement speed and how much room on the map the unit took up. This went a long towards making the game feel bigger in scope whereas SC and C&C always felt more tight and controlled.

Karunamon 5y ago

One thing TA and all of its successors kept was the ability to have units assist in construction. For instance, you have your commander plunk down a factory, then order the commander to assist with anything the factory is doing. Early on, this will be creating engineers (builders) and your first defensive units. Then you have your commander and engineers build/upgrade your level 2 factory.. rinse and repeat. It turns into a virtuous cycle. The upshot of this is that it creates opportunities for prioritization (and opportunities for blowing past your income if you're not careful).

majormajor 5y ago
Oh, yeah, THIS was a huge one. As well as just how construction/payment worked in general. This thing costs you X metal, and this factory can deliver metal at a rate of x/sec... but if you throw in all these helper units, you can up that. Very interesting and unique twist. You also didn't have to pay up front when queuing things, like you say with the opportunity to blow past your income, so your cash flow was the counter-balancing production speed limiter, but not in a way where you had to be constantly watching that bank account dollar amount before clicking "build."

GrumpyYoungMan 5y ago

Total Annihilation was the first to have projectile physics for artillery and other weapons. One could actually have, for example, an artillery projectile in mid-flight accidentally collide with an aircraft. [EDIT] Not mentioned on the BAR front page but also pioneered in TA was wreckage. Destroyed units left wreckage behind that had to be navigated around or fired upon to clear a path. Wreckage could also be scavenged to recover the material used to construct them, allowing the construction of more units. In the race to build enough infrastructure to overwhelm the enemy, this could be the difference between life and death.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
> One could actually have, for example, an artillery projectile in mid-flight accidentally collide with an aircraft. Or, anti-air units used as ground defense and ground assault units :). In my TA days, I had plenty of cases where I saved my base by ordering AA bots to fire on the ground, counting on weaker but much further-flying missiles to accidentally collide with the attacking force. Also, Commander's D-gun. That one was an exercise in aiming, but early-to-mid-game, one well-placed shot could cut the attacking force in half. I also appreciated the little things - like the solar generators automatically closing down when hit, to protect themselves. Or, dropship bombing - IIRC when a dropship gets shot down, it crashes with all its load, which can sometimes be pretty explosive. Maybe I'll just stop now. I have a lot of good TA memories.
- icexuick 5y ago
  All this is in BAR. We've seen some mid-air collisions of aircraft with artillery or tactical nukes :).
icexuick 5y ago
Correct. We recently even saw that a tactical nuke dropped from a bomber, created a blast-wave that pushed 19 flash-tanks so much their got a temporary 300% movement speed (if they weren't flying/crashing/exploding). https://www.twitch.tv/tarnishedknight/clip/AssiduousAttractiveLarkPeanutButterJellyTime-AhWxgHUOCON52gQa https://www.twitch.tv/tarnishedknight/clip/AssiduousAttracti...

GasPoweredMaker 5y ago

Two key characteristics of TA/SupCom that set it apart were economic. First, map resources (metal patches) were not depletable. So, the game would see massive economic growth as every metal patch would give resource indefinitely. Big econ ramp up, and a marked ability to come back due to non-exhausting resource patches. The second characteristic is the flow-based economy that worked with build queuing. A player could queue up as many units or structures to be built as desired, as opposed to "buy and build" where you must currently have the resources necessary to build something. "Queue" may be an imprecise word here, as the player could, for example, have ten factories all attempting to produce a series of units simultaneously (and similarly, have a swam of engineer units all attempting to build a number of structures simultaneously). That is, it was simultaneous building that would consume resources on the fly as they came in that was the core of this model. The flow economy model meant that a player tracked resource income and resource usage: kept positive, all the queued up units or structures could be built. Go into the negative, however, and the resource buffer would be eaten into and the player would see all currently-building units/structures slow down in their rate of build progress, awaiting resources to come in. The last bit was disabled in SupCom 2, out of concern that newer players often bottomed out their economy and had a bad time. However, after fan outcry, the flow-model and infinite queuing was re-enabled as an option.