Total Annihilation
The Real-time Strategy genre was already established as a primary market for Mac and PC games when Cavedog Entertainment released its first title, Total Annihilation, in late 1997. The Command & Conquer and Warcraft series, soon to be joined by Starcraft, had set the standard for RTS gaming and many producers were attempting to make inroads into the market with their own take on the familiar genre conventions. Total Annihilation broke this mold by completely redefining what the genre was capable of.
The basic gameplay of Total Annihilation departs from the standard RTS mold almost immediately. Each game, whether in single or multiplayer, with a few campaign exceptions, starts with the Commander Unit, a powerful mech that produces a modest amount of resources and can construct the basic buildings needed to start a base. The Commander is also very tough and possesses the D-gun, a disintegration weapon that can destroy anything in one shot. Structures are built over time by the Commander or other construction vehicles, with higher tier vehicles required to produce higher tier structures.
The game’s two resources are metal and energy. Metal appears as tinfoil-like deposits on the map (or anywhere on Core’s metal homeworld) while energy is simply generated by buildings like solar collectors and fusion reactors. Both resources are harvested at a fixed rate by buildings and provide both a stockpile and income rate. Players can produce units and buildings within the income limits, or can deficit spend by overclocking their resource requirements and dipping into the stockpiles. Resource harvesting is fairly easy to manipulate; certain buildings can convert energy into metal and some worlds have high wind speeds or tidal force for alternative energy generation. However proper management is extremely critical in the early game where resource shortages can slow production to a crawl. Most units also require energy to fire their weapons and high energy output is needed for higher tier weapons to function.
Total Annihilation is set in the distant future where the technology to transfer the human mind into a machine body has caused a galactic civil war between the robotic Core and the biological Arm. Both sides employ analogous units with similar functions but different aesthetic designs. Arm units have a more terrestrial design while Core units tend to be skeletal and lack cockpits or other indications that they might have a pilot. Arm units are for the most part faster, possess rapid fire weapons, and have lighter armor. Conversely Core units are heavier, slower, and feature high powered, slow firing weapons.
Each faction has its own campaign with twenty five missions, for a total of fifty in the base game. Each campaign starts on the faction’s homeworld and takes the player through the final stages of the galactic war before climaxing in an assault on the enemy’s homeworld. Most missions begin with the Commander and a small starting force from which the player must construct the army necessary to destroy the enemy’s fortified bases. Occasionally a special objective will be featured, but for the most part the only requirement is the annihilation of the opposing force.
Total Annihilation’s story is told purely through a brief opening cinematic and text based mission briefings, each with an audio narration providing some additional flavor. Little in the way of character is presented and there are no characters mentioned by name except for the Core ruling entity, a super computer called Central Consciousness. The missions follow a linear progression of the player’s conquests, with roughly three to four missions taking place on a single world before the player moves on to a new world. The lack of flavor keeps the immersion level somewhat low and sometimes fails to give the player an adequate sense of his or her accomplishments. However the campaign is very detailed in its mission designs and tech progression allowing the player to fully enjoy the different strategic options each faction presents.
The AI opponents in Total Annihilation leave something to be desired. Even for the time the AI was considered simple and this is a side effect of the game’s innovation. The combined arms tactics and strategic planning required for a truly challenging situation are difficult even for modern AI to accomplish properly. For the most part Total Annihilation does the best it can and the AI is capable enough to utilize its tech tree and create thorough defenses inside its bases. These deficiencies somewhat hamper the enjoyment of the game’s skirmish mode and to a degree the player must explore strategies on their own initiative rather than be forced to adapt by the AI’s maneuvers.
The skirmish and multiplayer modes would be familiar for the time period. Elements like fog of war, population cap, and victory conditions can be switched between a limited number of options. Sadly a cheat code is required to unlock more than four player slots. This can allow up to ten players, but cannot be used in multiplayer. Multiplayer is no longer officially supported but fan sponsored servers now host multiplayer games, although matchmaking is not supported.
Total Annihilation was one of the first games to introduce 3D graphics. Units make a full revolution instead of shifting to a different model stance when turning. Structures with moving parts operate seamlessly, bringing a surprising degree of life to the world. The most notable effect this innovation has is on the interaction between units and terrain. Artillery shells smash into hillsides while the cannon adjusts its aim; units can hide under trees and must adjust their shots when shooting up hillsides of varying height. The units themselves follow a polygon style of graphic rendering typical of the period of early 3D development and can at times look goofy or abstract. The technology is certainly dated by today’s standards but is still sufficient and supplies some of the best explosions and flying shrapnel that a RTS game has ever produced. It was also very gentle on processors of its day and modern machines should have no trouble running even large matches.
Total Annihilation may not have possessed some of the qualities that today are considered necessary for longevity such as a deep thematic campaign, dynamic AI, and a variety of factions. However its combined arms emphasis, strategic breakdown of tiers, and 3D terrain modelling and interaction were revolutionary for their time and even today have not been seen on such a detailed and well built scale except in Total Annihilation’s spiritual successor, Supreme Commander. These are the elements that not only make Total Annihilation a centerpiece of RTS history but also an enjoyable, engaging, and fulfilling exercise in true strategic, combined arms combat. Everything that the RTS genre was meant to be and can possibly deliver can be found in Total Annihilation.
Author’s note: Total Annihilation is available digitally on gog.com and Steam and is compatible with current operating systems. The digital product features the base game, official expansions, and DLC released during Cavedog Entertainment’s existence.
Supreme Commander
Those of us who remember playing Total Annihilation recall what was easily one of the most unique Real Time Strategy experiences in digital gaming history. Total Annihilation was an ambitious game with dynamic base building, expansive resource collection, a heavily detailed unit roster, and a physics simulator that was ahead of its time. It was the closest thing to war simulation that the technology of the 90s could bring.
Gas Powered Games, now formally Wargaming Seattle, made Supreme Commander to be the spiritual successor to Total Annihilation and in this they succeeded brilliantly. Supreme Commander continues to capture the epic scope of strategic warfare that Total Annihilation first envisioned. Hundreds of air, land, and naval units clash in small or large engagements in an attempt to assault bases defended by gun emplacements, artillery cannons, and shields. A large unit roster features scores of units encompassing nearly any conceivable combat role. Each of the game’s three factions utilize the same unit types, but subtle differences in design give each faction its own strengths and preferences in combat style.
Coming to grips with the staggering number of units and the different faction abilities is perhaps the chief purpose and accomplishment of Supreme Commander’s single player mode. Each faction’s campaign encompasses six separate missions with each mission progressing in stages of increasing difficulty and scope as the player completes objectives. Often the player has to start with little more than their Commander unit, a strong but critically important mech unit with tremendous construction capacity, with which they must construct a fortified base to begin driving back the enemy. Base building and map expansion can take several hours per mission leading to over twenty hours of gameplay in single player. This is a two-edged sword where Supreme Commander is concerned. The first half of the campaign limits the technology tiers, of which there are three plus the mighty Experimental units, that the player can access and thus the units available. This slow progression gives the player a chance to get familiar with units and structures as they become available. Yet the slow pace of each mission can leave players impatient for higher technology tiers.
Although the campaign’s scripted fortifications and unique terrain features can lead to impressive clashes it is in multiplayer and skirmish that the combat becomes truly dynamic. Forty different maps capable of supporting up to eight players offer a wide range of options for multiplayer and skirmish matches. Some of these maps are quite large and allow for multiple combined arms conflicts; while smaller maps make quick victories possible by forcing two or three player matches into close quarters. The game’s online performance is surprisingly lenient given the large numbers of units generally on the map making most matches seamless on a wide variety of speeds. However the enormous numbers of units that can appear with six or more players can lead to a general decrease in speed without higher end machines.
Supreme Commander’s skirmish mode is very well developed for a modern RTS. Four different levels of AI difficulty can be chosen and the AI’s personality can be further customized with options like Turtle or Rush causing the AI to focus on specific strategies and their appropriate unit types. While this can make the AI predictable it also makes a wide range of battles possible allowing players to determine what sort of war they are interested in fighting.
A special mention should be given to the game’s expansive zoom ability which allows players to move from up close unit examination to a map-encompassing eagle eye view. The system is perfect for managing battles on the scale that Supreme Commander delivers and is meticulously designed for easy control and management. The only tragic aspect of this system is that when the action heats up players tend to spend more time gazing down on a world of dim terrain features and unit markers instead of watching the colorful explosions and dramatic unit destruction.
Supreme Commander is the success story that Total Annihilation deserved to have in the modern gaming community. With an expansive single player aspect and high potential and reliability in multiplayer it caters to any level of RTS preference. The game features a rather high management learning curve for new gamers but its single player campaign and skirmish customization options allow players to become accustomed to the game at their own pace. Supreme Commander isn’t perfect and suffers from unit-pathing issues, particularly among naval units, as well as a weakness for large slow operations. Yet it is a welcome addition to the modern RTS community and a necessary experience for any dedicated RTS player.