Total Annihilation Breakdown

[Weeble]

Okay, here's a more detailed list of what I consider good and bad from TA, in the hope that it has some relevance to battlescape.

The good stuff:

• No selection limit
  I like this. I don't think it's necessary, but it's a big mistake to set a selection size limit lower than the number of units likely to be skirmishing on a single screen.
  
• Tool to select all units of a given type
  This saves so much time when you [i]know[i] you left those tanks around here somewhere... Or, indeed, when you hid your radar jammer behind a tree and forgot about him. Combined with the "track unit" command, this lets you find pretty much anything.
  
• Queued orders
  It's pretty much standard now, but TA had such a powerful orders system before anyone else. I think Blizzard has yet to duplicate the multi-point patrol routes.
  
• Richness of resource model
  I like the distinction between metal and energy. There's important choices to be made between solar and wind generators (which go anywhere), geothermal generators (which are better but only go on vents) and fusion reactors (which are really expensive and require advanced technology, but produce vastly more energy). With metal you have to decide whether it's worth upgrading metal collectors (can only be built on metal) to moho metal collectors (also only go on metal, expensive and high-tech, but triple yield). Or you can build metal makers (eat up huge quantities of energy to make a little metal, but go anywhere) or even moho metal makers (expensive, high tech, vast energy consumption but improved efficiency over the small ones). With all of these you have to trade off land space requirements, redundancy in the face of destruction and payoff over different time-scales.

The bad stuff:

• Tiny fixed-size mini-map
  This alone wouldn't be a problem, but certain tasks can only be performed using the mini-map. Ordering artillery to attack a radar blip on a huge map is not only fiddly, but it becomes harder the higher a resolution of screen you have.
  
• Mutually assured destruction
  Free for all games are just silly. If you injure another (human) player badly early on, they have a tendency to walk their commander into your base and self-destruct out of spite. This seems to encourage all players to turtle until they have airforces or big cannons.
  
• Unititis
  I've covered this one before. In addition to at least 5 each of L1 K-bots, L2 K-bots, L1 Vehicles, L2 Vehicles, L1 Aircraft, L2 Aircraft, L1 Seacraft, L2 Seacraft, in the Core Contingency expansion we see a few extra to most of the above categories, plus Hovercrafts and Seaplanes. And the Krogoth.
  
• Single-file charges
  I can't really blame TA for this, since I think everything suffered from it at the time. Units don't really need to hold strict formation everywhere they go, but they need at least not to try to converge to a point.
  
• Aerial carrier that's impossible to use
  The troop carrying plane is slow, fiddly to use, fragile, carries only one unit and destroys it if shot down. Even if you weren't worried about the high chance of most of them being shot down, it's still completely impractical to transport a number of units by air because you have to manually load and unload every unit separately. You can't even load them separately then issue one drop order - they'll all try to drop on exactly the same spot and complain that they've been blocked. This means that non-aquatic island maps don't even give you a choice - you can only go for an air-force.
  
• Grabbable enemy commanders
  Okay, there is one despicable use for that plane. You can pick up enemy units, including commanders. Once you're holding an enemy commander, you can't fail to kill him if you want to. I have no idea why they allowed this cheap tactic.
  
• Units become obsolete
  Every building and unit counts as one towards your unit limit. (Normally 200 or 250.) So as the game goes on and you reach the limit, the low-tech units become valueless. Your small force of 10 L1 K-bots is stopping you from building 10 heavy tanks. You can't upgrade the K-bots. There isn't some support unit that can make the K-bots more useful. They're just a waste of space.

Weeble.

[Poo Bear]

good set of points there, how does it affect us:

No selection limit - yep

Select all of this type, show me - also good, I' not sure how important it is though, but that is probably because I didn't even know you could do that in TA also becomes more important with a very big army.

Queued orders - i'm looking at that now and TA's system is very sophisticated and rarely fully implemented to this day. You can even see the full set of stacked orders on the map and trim any out you no longer want by clicking on the icons.

Tiny mini-map - this should scale up/down as you change rez and you do need to hit that balance between usability and taking up too much screen real estate.

Too many unit types - yes, it was a bit overwhelming.

Single file charges - with a heavily obstructed map you soon get everyone in single file and keeping a squad formed up is very tricky. One thing that makes this problem worse is the speed of combat in TA, it can all be over very quickly and there are a lot of one-shot-kill units. If tha pace of combat is slowed down to give you time to move your units around then maybe it wont be so bad. Again it is a ballance though, because if combat becomes too drawn out you start to lose the "real time" bit of the rts.
Map design plays a part too, you don't want too many narrow funnels leading to an enemy machine gun, that kind of map based meat grinder can be annoying if there aren't other ways in.

I'd say the rest is split between:
a) poorly ballanced features that I'm sure would have been fixed if they hadn't gone bust.
b) problems relating to construction and resources that we wont have because there aren't any - although i'm sure they will surface in some other way i.e. calling reinforcements, etc.

[Weeble]

I think the thing about the mini-map is that some games force certain interactions to be performed only through it, and not the main map. In TA it is the only way to accurately hit a unit you have detected by radar and not by sight. In many games it is by far the most useful way to move your point of view, but when the box for the current screen is only a few pixels across it becomes silly. Solution: Either limit map-size or create a key you can hold down that expands the mini-map to fill the screen. Never create a task that can be performed on the mini-map and not the regular screen.

[starscape junkie]

I gotta say that one of ta's greatest assets is that you can plan out your stratedgy, set up your buildings and then just leave your things to do what they do, leading to less micromanagement if thats what you want.

In aoe theres nothing more annoying than trying to coordinate your army, and then suddenly 5 farms are falling apart all the way across the map, and a set of resources runs out. This leads to decreased attention to one area or another.

So...My two cents ballooned into a long drawn out cause i havent been here for a while

-You should be able to select by, area, squad, and unit.
-The less you have the player worrying about something halfway across the map, the better the experience will be, and the combat can be more evolved*
-queing is great, virtually unlimited queing being the best, as long as you allow for corrections
-aoe's formations werent that great, and it kept the single file, just widened it, but you should (if its going to be sqaud based) be able to set some basic formations yourself
-the select all units of a type is nice, but if i have three sqauds, i might want to keep them apart. perhaps a select all, and a select all within a certain distance

*important part, the rest is not so much

[Weeble]

If Battlescape works like it sounds it will, I think the unit selection commands mentioned here will be less important, because all your units will already be in the sensible squads you've defined. Other RTS games allow unit-production on the battlefield, and the game has no idea how new units are intended to be grouped with existing units. Commands like "select all of a type" are most useful for finding newly produced units or units you've accidentally lost track of - in theory neither of these things should happen in Battlescape.

[Lothar]

Take a look at how the Baldurs Gate series (including Icewind Dale, and possibly a few other games) deals with moving your party -- it has a number of pre-selected formation shapes that are automatically available whenever you have multiple characters/units selected. Then when you click for the party to move, it actually puts the whole shape of that formation there, and each party member moves toward the right area.

For example, a common form is a simple triangle -- the leader out front, then 2 behind, then 3 behind. You'd select your 6 party members, glance down to see that the triangle formation you've been using is still selected, and then click where you want to move that form. 6 "move" cursors show up where you clicked, in a triangle formation, and your party moves and forms up on those 6 spots. If you want to make that formation face a certain direction, you can right-click where you want them to move and then drag the mouse in the direction you want the form to face, and they'll form up just like you wanted them.

Something like that could be really useful in Battlescape -- have a bunch of standard formations available for troop movement. Things like "form a wide line" or "single file" or "infantry out front, tanks in the back" or "gather around this spot" would be really, really useful sometimes.

[icarus]

[Johnh]

[Vaystrem]

A few things you missed from TA.

1 - Units moved more slowly up hill and faster down hill.

2 - Artillery had a larger range when firing from an elevated position

3 - Units had a further visual range when at a higher position

4 - You briefly touched upon the beauty of TA's queing system and I completely agree, but what was most useful was how its 'patroling' was setup within the queing system.

5 Regarding the usefulness of CTRL-Z (unit type select) a few examples.
- Want to select all fighters or bombers, or artillery or infantry, or RADAR. Selecting all radars was fantastic because on the mini-map it would show you the ranges of all your radar towers so you could check to ensure complete coverage and redundancy of radar coverage. What if you want to send in your amphibious tanks before your aircraft, things like that were much easier with CTRL-Z as well.

6 - I don't have quite the same issues with the "units" as you have listed here for a few reasons. First off TA is one of the first, actually I haven't seen another game to properly implement a Navy. Naval battles can be a lot of fun and the scope of them within TA is remarkable. The Airforce similarily well implemented. The real problem for TA regarding units is on land. Ultimately there will be 1 or 2 units of each type that a person will consider building, so the extra variety is not required. While with the Navy & Airforce atleast the variety is funcational.

7 - Commander suicide issues. I don't think this is a problem for battlescape but just to comment on it. Anyone who is completely dependent upon their commander, can't come back from losing it or is so petty as to march it out to blow up your base, isn't playing with skill. BUT even if someone tries to do this there are a number of ways to avoid it.
a - A fast response strike team keyed up to deal with stuff like a single commander excursion
b - A wide area of warning, be it through radar planes on patrol which are protected by stealth fighters / gunships or properly dispersed radar.
c - Layers of defenses - so your outer ring may kill the commander (or the vehicle he's transported in) and the resulting destruction will impact that line of defenses, but your secondary & or tertiary ring of defenses will still be in tact. Plus its a ONE time thing that you only have to deal with once.
d - a spread out base, harder on small maps I agree but if your base has elements of redundancy and is spread out properly you can withstand this kind of attack and recover
e - As for 'capturing' the commander with the air transport, they user the commander's d-gun to take out the transport in one shot, plus you probably (should) have 1 or 2 units guarding your commander anyways its not a guaranteed thing and its something you can only get away with once against an opponent and if you play against a regular group of people, you'll never pull it off twice.

8 - Are 'no formations' a weakness? Honestly how well do formations stand up once you get into combat anyways? It is true that having a formation would perhaps be useful as you march into combat, but this is not hand to hand fighting, the formation WONT hold up. I appreciated that the infantry in TA would strafe around their targets, especially when on ROAM. And you can avoid the single march of doom by having a diverse force of units, and setup patrol paths through the enemy bases, this helps alleviate it some.

Anyways just my thoughts, very much looking forwards to Battlescape.

Nathan Klassen

[Weeble]

Regarding Commander Suicide, I specifically only consider it a problem early on in free-for-all games. It's really annoying that early defences like light lasers and regular vehicles can't scare off a commander with a d-gun. Someone always over-reacts to the first probing attacks, loses one or two buildings and decides to die. This is when you've got one vehicle plant or k-bot lab, and desperately need to claim metal. A commander charging into your base, even if unable to kill your commander, will still spell your doom. In a 2-player game, it's no problem, because all you need to do is survive his mad charge, and even if you don't it will be a draw. In a free-for-all you both lose. Maybe I just play with too many trigger-happy freaks.

[VonBraun]

OMG TA IS ALIVE!!!!!!!!

I thought TA died a long time ago (Even modding).
+There should be slow reloading missles (Like in TA: The Final Frontier)
AND there should be something that outdates weapons and armour (ie a tank with a **** anti vehicle weapon and **** armour, you could reasearch better armour and weapons but you'd have to refit the tank)

P.S. KBOTS SUCK (IN REPLIE TO THEMESSAGE BEFORE WEEBLES)

[icarus]

[VonBraun]

Well They do!!!!
You build like 50 peewees or crashes or whatever and then they get demolished by a bunch of air units or get minced by laser turrets before they get to fire.
In replie to vaystrems message about all the stuff weeble missed out.

[icarus]

no i mean i dount understand what your saying

[Vaystrem]