Caltrops - Gamerasutra - Re: I think we've got something here

Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra

by J&T 08/27/2004, 4:07pm PDT

Bitter wrote:

FABIO wrote:

I've never played Total Annihilation (unless being completely unimpressed with the demo counts), but I bet it happened there too.

I guess it *could* happen, but I think it's substantially less likely (unless, as you mention, the big guns are banned). TA has nukes (and also nuke interceptors -- but then it's a race to see who can overwhelm whom first) but also immense ranged artillery against which there is no defense except terrain (far sides of hills), plus super ultimate gatling artillery with absolutely ridiculous fire rates, and the Core side has the Krogoth unit which, while nearly impossible to build, is nigh-unkillable (two nukes or maybe a half-dozen artillery hits).

With the unit variety in the later editions of TA (when they had more differentiation between the fleeter, ballistics-based Arm and the bulkier, more heavily armored and laser-based Core), it would be hard to find a turtle that couldn't be cracked. If they go ground, you can go air, but beware of flak. Or maybe there's a way around via water, in which case you can build a fleet of ships or hovercraft (or hovercraft transports and stick conventional units int them) or even a fleet of lifting aircraft and pick up tanks and stuff and go in over the top.

Hell, you could even build the stealthed assassin units and go in silent assuming the chokehold had a gap (beware of minefields, though). Or send in the walking bombs.

God, what a great fuckin' game.

Bitter.

What was also beautiful about TA was that while there was always away to beat any sort of turtling, the limited "porcupining" (the terminology taken up on most of the TA boards, iirc) and multitude of defense options made tactical offensives less "Get as many units there as possible, and then work to spam their special attack buttons" and far more "choose the right way for the right units to attack." Almost every unit had a perfect counter to it, and because of the constant flow resource system, it wasn't at all rare to see both sides cycling through 8 or 9 types of assault/defense forces in a single game, all to react to a percieved weakness/strength in their opponent.

Oh, it had some pretty cool mods too, but they didn't exactly have the same amount of balance. The space mod, if i remember, was so overly incredibly powered it was stupid. Sure, it did a great job of simulating large cruiser battles, but a single one of those ships would take a Krogoth and snap it in two, and the defensive options included in the mod were equally overpowered. Well, I suppose a mod isn't supposed to be balanced with the core, but with itself, but some degree of attention would have been useful.