Why TA was so Grand?

awesome single player campaign, epic feel, very cleverly designed levels and maps and the final few missions on each side were all kinds of awesome. some levels took me months to beat!

the soundtrack was a piece of art in itself, all original, beautiful orchestra music. really added to the game. and i usually turn off any music in games.

multiplayer was really awesome. tactics evolved to suit certain maps. i suppose my only gripe here was the heavy focus on T1 units. most games, even long ones would not use t2 kbots or tanks. it was a t1 zerg fest for ground battles. bit more variety in the island maps. but still, many units were considered useless. i suppose if cavedog didn't..um..'cave'... than they would have worked a bit on balance. turtling on most ground maps was not viable at all. not sure if this was good or bad. it's fun to turtle sometimes!

it was truly groundbreaking in so many ways, the gameplay is still more fun than most rts games since.

huuuuge mod scene that is still going strong today. some truly epic units were made.

micro-ing hawk squads

microing T1 bomber squadrons for max damage

trolling with commander atlas bombs!

nukes

big bertha

the hum sound from nuclear power plants.

btw you can still play online at gamespy (i think) and warzone. you can usually get a game during the week. be warned though, these guys are uber pros.

Gameranger is also another option; the one I use.

TA is a paragon of design, no question about it. Winning is rewarding, losing is amusing, playing is the best tactical and strategic exercise that an RTS could aspire to. Teching to Adv. Units was a legitimate choice, and a very risky one at that, with "standard" units holding their ground at all times and levels of play, from the shortest stomp to the longest back-and-forth between Pros. Tech provided an increased pool of units, but if you didn't know how to use them, or how to support them with standard units you'd be floored soon after investing in them.

The pacing was superlative, individual units being able to soak damage like champions, yet dying en-masse to select, specialised counters. You are always on your toes, from the very first second of play, to the last moment of your defence against the onslaught. Every moment of play oozed a professional finish, from the unit design, the sounds, the music and even the campaign (John Patrick Lowrie helps no end in that regard).

Even today, Total Annihilation stands strong, head-and-shoulders above not only its contemporaries, but as a standard that every RTS should be judged by.

Planetary Annihilation will be judged against Total Annihilation. Let it not be found wanting.

The first thing you do is accuse me of stealing your story? What value would there be to steal someone's story? Unless you're from a small town in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia and we happened to be playing against each other, it seems more likely we had similar thought processes.

Planetary Annihilation does not stack up against Total Annihilation. Not yet. I hope that it does, but it has a long way to go still.

I knew it! You're me from the future aren't you!

I've lived the past decade and a half of my life realizing that there are no people that wouldn't take what they shouldn't, or have what they're not supposed to. Child, teenager, adult, online, offline, doesn't matter. Noone would deny to backstab if that someone else was 'the enemy'. People betraying those who trusted them the most. Others thinking they're righteous when they're just selfish and ignorant of what they do. It's not just the place I live. (Though I won't lie, it's bad.) It's not just the slew of kids online. It's anyone and everyone. I don't completely trust anybody. At all. Not even those I live with or those talk to every day. I can't, because noone has proven what I just said incorrect. Ever.

That said, I did specifically state "perhaps players with the same idea". Should I have said that first? Instead of? You would have gotten angry at me whether I said that or not, so I guess that sentence had no purpose. I don't know what value there is by taking someone else's story, but it isn't like I haven't seen that happen before, or any other non-valued actions resulting with a valued action but with bitter feelings. I don't see a purpose in non-valued actions either, but they happen and it's the same end result either way.

I didn't mean to offend or accuse you, so I apologize. I stand by my original feelings that the stories are similar due to life's convenience, though. You want to call me bitter and angry, go ahead. It won't make people nicer. They won't make the right choices. It won't change anything. [/grumpy ol' coot]

I was raised to give everyone the benefit of the doubt until they give me reason to doubt them. Many of the old ways have been forgotten, morality and respect is diminishing. It's disappointing to see. The only way we can change it is to lead by example, though to be fair I'm a very poor example of morality, respect or responsibility!

I was raised the same as well. I used to put my trust into many people, friends and family alike, online, offline, wherever. I've never failed to encounter someone who I thought was trustworthy just to be backstabbed and betrayed by them at some point for reasons I can't always look at logically. People I've offered roof over their head, food to eat, and a place to get away from whatever horrible situation they're currently in. This isn't only offers either, I've actually done this for multiple friends now.

Like you said, morality, respect, and responsibility are key. I know there's more than just those, but it's always one or two out of the three. I try. I try so hard to find them, but the more I see, the more I doubt they all exist together.

Well TA is a 97 game.
Because it is the first game to introduce 3D, a Complex Eco, Nukes, Krogohts.
if you look TA and them look SC, you will see that TA is, Better in gameplay Mechanics.

I think how realistic it was, missles would chase planes, bombers would bomb in a line, if they moved the bombs would follow. Arty would miss and often if the thing it was targeting was moving. Things never miss in SC.

well you don't have Arty in SC.

The ability to build anywhere was the biggie for me. Anyone else remember building lines of sandbags (and then selling them) in C&C so you could create that defensive line you always wanted? To me it was a revolution when I found in TA that I can just build my defence at the top of the hill, no adjacency required. I spent ages in the third mission of the demo building LLTs to fend off attacks over the river.

Of course the music was glorious and the AI threw enough stuff at you that you could play turtle and have fun. And let's not forget that the AI focus firing was considered a major improvement over other RTS games at the time.

PA definitely feels more TA than it does SUPCOM. I think a lot of that has to do with hordes of missile turrets and powerful lasers blasting units apart.

I doubt Uber will top the TA soundtrack though (and I don't think the original composer Jeremy Soule ever has), that thing is absolutely fantastic.