Remembering defensive structures of TA & looking to PA's future roster

Light Laser Tower: Does not have enough range to be useful at any time in the later game, and is a tad too expensive to be worth it in the early game. It would be better to crank out mobile units instead. However, they can be used to counter tank rushing in early stages.



Torpedo Launcher: An automated defense unit. Launches torpedoes at enemy ships or subs that come within range. Vulnerable to air attack as it is incapable of defense against aircraft.



Heavy Laser Tower: Excellent laser tower, with enough range and firepower to be useful right up until the end of the game. It is a bit expensive, but worth every penny. These HLTs chew up light units, and can dent the armor of more powerful tanks too. It can occasionally hit gunships, though this is rare.



Defender/Pulverizer: level 2 anti-air tower; it fires high speed guided missiles that are effective against aircraft and when built en masse can also do damage against surface units. It has weak armor and doesn't stand up well against enemy fire. It has more range than the Sentinel, though less than the Guardian.



Dragon's Teeth: A single Dragon's Tooth, designed to delay enemy movement. Dragon's teeth are able to soak up a LOT of enemy fire. Their height keeps them low enough to allow defense turrets to shoot over them, but enemy units have difficulty shooting back. Use them as walls to force the enemy to move where you want them, to slow the enemy down, or to help shield defensive structures from enemy rockets. NOTE: After building, Dragon's Teeth are not counted as "units" in the 200 unit limit. Thus, you can build as many of them as you want.



Floating Dragon's Teeth: is a level 2 structure available to both the CORE and the ARM. It is not controllable and has no purpose other than providing blockade; it can be built at choke points to block enemy ships and subs or around towers to shield them from low-trajectory fire such as torpedoes and plasma shells. It is not counted into the unit limit and can take quite a beating before it breaks, however construction units can make quick work of it by reclaiming.

Continued:

Guardian/Punisher: Large plasma ballistic shell launcher. Expensive but worth it for the havoc it can wreak on ground forces. Also useful because it out-ranges the unguided rockets used on the more advanced Merl and Diplomat units. This makes it much easier to dispose of them.




Anti-Nuclear Missile Launcher: Shoots down any nuclear missiles that would have landed within the unit's range (indicated on the minimap), provided that it has at least one shot. The unit is built without any ammo, the anti-missile rockets must later be built by clicking on the unit and selecting the rocket icon. [it just makes me think of how far we have come with PA's design in the 17 years since TA's release...]




Toaster: These work roughly the same as the Guardian/Punisher. Although they are of a higher tier, their range is less than that of Guardian/Punisher and they deal the same amount of damage. They do have the ability to fold up, increasing their armor which makes them a bit more useful on planets with meteor showers, and lowers their damage taken from bombers and long range artillery. Against ground units you would want these guns to be deployed to deal damage so they don't benefit from being a pop-up gun. All in all the Guardian/Punisher is better for base defense, but because the pop-up guns can be built by tier 2 construction units the pop-up cannon can be built faster.




Flakker: level 3 tower with only one purpose that is anti-air; it cannot attack surface units. It fires high-speed unguided anti-air shells that can destroy aircraft very quickly; however it has a shorter range than the Defender and has trouble hitting fast targets moving perpendicular to its firing trajectory. It has a rather long build time. Its CORE counterpart is the Cobra.




Fortification Wall: "Dragons Teeth on steroids." That's what the manual called them, and its a pretty good description. These walls are taller than Dragon's Teeth, and can take much more damage. However, they cannot be used to shield defensive structures because they are too tall. Therefore, they should be used to protect important structures such as Fusion Powerplants, Geothermal Powerplants, Moho Metal Extractors, Moho Metal Makers, and other such critical infrastructure. Simply make a ring of them around the completed building to protect it (somewhat) from bombing runs and artillery fire.




Floating Missle Tower: level 2 anti-air naval tower; it is basically a Defender designed to be built on water masses, with roughly the same statistics. It is only good against aircraft and tends to get destroyed easily considering how powerful most ships are. Its CORE counterpart is the Stinger.




Floating Heavy Laser Tower: These are great Anti Pelican weapons, though they are very vulnerable to Destroyers. (another reason why Pels and Destroyers work so well together). Protect these with a few tidals to increase their lifespan a little, though don’t rely on these. They are decent last resort weapons – especially if your opponent is going all pels, and not being smart to make a few destroyers with them.




Advanced Torpedo Launcher: Built by the Adv Con sub these are costly but fearsome defensive weapons. They can only be hit by depth charges & torps, but the trouble is getting close to one. They often fire out of visible range of most ships – AND their torpedoes are guided. The torps also do incredible damage (3-4 can kill a destroyer). It is not recommendable to approach these things without a large fleet, and then concentrating fire.




Big Bertha / Intimidator: level 3 tower; it fires highly explosive plasma shells that deal splash damage in a small area, but its most prominent feature is its extremely long range. It can easily shoot from one base to another over very long distances; however at the cost of very low accuracy and firing rate, plus 1500 energy per shot. For this reason it is most commonly used not as a defensive tower, but as a tactical siege weapon




Annihilator: level 3 tower that uses high amounts of energy to function, hence the description "Energy Weapon". It fires devastating blue laser beams that can kill most land units in one shot, while also capable of carving large chunks off of ships; one shot costs 2000 energy though, and the firing rate is low. It needs to "open up" before it can attack, which makes it vulnerable for about 5 seconds, however it can take twice the damage if it remains closed up. It is also equipped with its own radar to complement its excellent range.




Vulcan Cannon / Buzzsaw: level 3 tactical siege tower that fires Intimidator shells at less range and a much higher rate. Though it is fairly inaccurate, the high rate of fire still makes it very deadly and capable of reducing whole bases to rubble within minutes. It consumes huge amounts of energy though, and can easily exhaust the player's energy stock if production is insufficient. It also has extremely long build time and thus is very susceptible to interruption




Doomsday Machine: level 3 tower that uses high amounts of energy to function, hence the description "Energy Weapon". It has two laser turrets that attack independently; one fires small lasers in rapid succession like the Light Laser Tower, and the other releases much more powerful laser beams that drain 850 energy per shot at a much lower rate. It needs to "open up" before it can attack, which makes it vulnerable for about 5 seconds, however it can take twice the damage if it remains closed up. Its ARM counterpart is the Annihilator, of which the Doomsday Machine is considered inferior to.




Immolator: level 1 CORE plasma tower; its sole purpose is to deal with the three main EMG (or "rush") units - the Peewee, the Flash and the Warrior - and does so by damaging them heavily, however, it does minimal damage to anything else. The Immolator is one of the six downloadable units created by Cavedog after Total Annihilation patch 3.1 was released. It has no ARM counterpart.




Gaat Gun: level 2 tower; it fires powerful laser bolts that easily destroy fast but fragile units and can also put a serious dent on tougher targets, all with a good firing rate. It has the shortest range among level 2 towers however, and drains 75 energy with every shot, so the player should make sure to have sufficient energy production for it to function properly. Its ARM counterpart is the Sentinel.




Obviously there are some variants of these present in PA currently, and a great many more missing. We have no clue what Uber plans to include and what will be missing (I guess until release?) so it's anyone's guess what holes will need to be filled by mods on day 1. Which defenses do you miss the most? Which ones do you never want to see again? What new defenses can you think of now that we have an orbital layer? Which ones that we don't have can we not live without?

I personally miss the Annihilator, Guardian and Buzzsaw the most. I also really loved how the on-water variant's had different models to their land ones, it was a great boon to immersion.

There's a lot missing from these summaries, especially in the area of comparing the different tech levels against one another, weapon types against each other, unit interactions, wreckage potential, etc. Overall it just feels very brief, without much insight and a lot of missing information. Perhaps you could flesh the entries out a bit?

As for projecting forward the ideas into PA... that part of the title seems to be absent in the post in almost its entirety.

A couple of tweaks needed to the basic descriptions:

The Doomsday Machine has 3 lasers not 2. The 3rd is a long range cannon similar in style to the annihilator. It also has considerable health (allot more than the Annihilator). It's one drawback is its range is notably lower than the Annihilator.

The annihilator was mainly used as a stalemate ending unit- where you had 2 opposing lines of defences creating a no-mans land. As the annihilator out ranged pretty much anything else (except for Berthas and Timmys) it could sit there and pick off a defensive line with impunity. The DDM on the other hand was better suited at repelling large forces of tanks as it can fire in 3 directions at one. A group of DDM's is almost impossible to attack directly whereas the same number of Annihilators would be easy to take down with a few tanks if not protected by other, lower tier towers like the sentinel.

Another difference is the Gaat Gun- this was shorter range, but had a considerably higher rate of fire than the sentinel. If the 2 were in range of each other the DPS is about the same. The difference again is that the Gaat is better at dealing with larger groups of units.

This was mainly due to the different 'philosophies' inherent in the 2 sides in TA. The arm relied on speed, stealth and numbers to win. The Core relied on fire-power and armour instead (e.g. reapers were tougher than bulldogs, and the arm had no direct counter to the Goliath tank, but similarly the core had no equivalent to the stealth enabled 'sniper' t2 bot).

Sorry to be nit picky- I was one of a small group of competitive Core players on-line. Arm was generally considered better for competitive play although I always used to hold my own.

Looks pretty good unit wise to me. Adv torps can be bombed or roached also.

CORE F-ML21 "Gaat Gun", not 'Gata'.

Tactical siege tower? What? These things were straight up game enders. The only thing that stopped them from clearing whole maps was the size of the map.

Or mountains.

oops! Amended my last post!

And that was only because you couldn't blow up the mountain.

*Hint Hint*

Or lack of power- the BEST way to destroy your opponent both physically and mentally was to bomb their fusions just as they finished a Vulcan It's like giving a kid a new electric super toy and then confiscating the batteries...

Yea, I'm thinking the same thing. I really hope the Holkins get's a rework so that the environment (and potential to change the environment) can become an interesting little bit of play.

VERY Simple building blocks that form a more complicated structure as you build with them; that would be my unit design philosophy.