In Total Annihilation, there are many glitches and tricks which you can use to your advantage in an online game, this guide will list them below and perhaps show you how to execute these tricks.
Contents
1. Line bombing
2. Flying roach
3. How to get around the pelican bug
4. Sparking
5. Faster reclaiming
6. Factory blockading
7. Shoreline bug
8. Useful factory guarding positions
9. Offscreening
10. Quad-geo bug
11. Multi-Reclaiming
12. How to D-gun subs
13. Nanoshielding
14. Ballistic Weapon over-ranging
15. Rocko/Storm thingy
16. Hawk Dancing
17. Dark side gravity glitch
18. Making flak units shoot ground units
19. Land Torpedo
1. Line Bombing
One of the most popular used trick is line bombing. Line bombing is often used to bomb multiple mexxes in the early stages of the game or to bomb multiple plants and other valuable buildings in later stages.The thing about line bombing, is that the bombers reload time is 0. Since the reload is 0 you can bomb as much as you want in one run (e.g me showing off an almost endless line in the pic)
To do this, you have to leave a small gap from your bomber and the target otherwise it will try to turn around for another run. Select your bomber and press 'a' which is for 'attack'. Click anywhere within reasonable distance from the bomber and then as soon as you start to hear bombs being dropped, set the next target with 'a' again (remember, not too close), it should then go drop bombs at your second target, then you should be able to do it again, and again... and so on... words are inefficient to help you get good at this, practice this lots and soon you should be able to get to the grips of it and soon you will manage an endless line.
BTW, making that animated gif is a bitch! :( ---->
2. Flying Roach
Flying Roach bombs are probably one of the most useful tricks in the later stages of an island map game such as GOW. Roaches explosion do damage just about the same damage as an annihilator laser but with an AOE (area of effect) that is only just slightly smaller than a nuke. These can be use full for taking about packs of defenders, a pack of resources, subs with a fibber and ultimately, to destroy those damn pels so you can outnumber your opponents with your own :)To perform a Flying roach bomb properly, you cannot let the transport die, or it will give off a pathetic explosion that will hardly damage anything. You have to master the self+d timing with the atlas/valkyire speed and the target(s). This is very hard to do but once you get used to it, it can do wonders :). Another tip is to distract any units that could potentially shoot down the transport with units such as skeeters or peepers before the flying roach comes in.
List of things that 1 roach can take out that you probably don't care about:-Big bertha, Yes, it can take out a bb in one go.
-Intimidator too, but it leaves a heap wreckage
-Arm lvl 1Airplant
-Arm lvl 2 Airplant (Yes, it seems to be weak enough)
-Core lvl 1 Airplant (Take note the Core lvl 2 airplant wont die from 1 roach)
-Annihilator
-Sentintel
-Gaat Gun
Other useful/useless statistics:
-2 roaches can take out a commy, the first will leave it's health at red.
-You need 16 or more roaches to take out a Krogoth.
-2 roaches can take out any plant apart from hoverplatorms (which seem to have ALOT of health)
-Roaches do the same damage on land aswell as underwater. So you can blow up those underwater commys with 2 go's aswell as blowing up an area with lots of subs and fibbers :)
3. How to get around the pelican bug
Missile units cannot hit pelicans that are hovering in the water, because they are trying to hit the 'base' of the unit, and the base of the pelican is too low while in water, the missile ends up short and splashes into the water, causing no damage. However, pelicans that are on land can be hit by missile units like normal.
The trick to hitting pelicans that are hovering in water with missile units is to aim a little bit further ahead of the pelican using manual targetting, so when the unit fires it's missile attempting to hit where you targetted, the pelican will be in the way and it will hit the pelican instead of where you targetted to shoot, see the picture below:
As you can see, because you aimed further ahead of the pelican, in the path of the weapon thats fired, the missile will hit the pelican because it is in its in the way; this is useful for taking them out in desperate measures, because you would have to keep manually re-targetting (ugh micromanagement) as it moves along.4. Sparking
Sparking is activating an on/offable structure before it's even fully built, this is mostly done on Moho Metal makers.
How to do it you say? Well you have to use a unit with a low-damage weapon, such as a MT and simply fire at the unbuilt structure. However please make sure the building has been nanolathed enough to provide that little bit of health to survive the shot or it will die and you probably waste time. After a few seconds the structure will activate.
If sparking is used on a Moho metal maker, it will generate it's metal as if it were actually built (but it will also drain the energy too). Another example of a unit that can be sparked is a Solar collector, but that would be pointless since its quick to build. The only downside with sparking is that you can't turn it off untill it's built, so if your short on Energy and sparked a Moho metal maker, then you're in big shit with an energy crisis. Start asking your allies to share E in an aggressive manner. :P
As you can see, I used a flea (which is weak as hell) to spark the moho, it then activated it. Later on I left a con air finish it off so that it didn't have to take alot of resources building it with a unit with stronger nanolathe power.
Other buildings that can be Sparked:
-Solar Collector
-Advanced radar tower
I'm sure there are many more, but if you know any unit that turns off when it's hit, tell me asap! (contact details at bottom)
5. Faster Reclaiming
Because people reclaim their plants often on island maps, to reclaim faster, you can attack it with your own units (make sure you don't kill or overkill it). Damage it until it has a tiny bit of health left, stop it and let the construction unit/commander finish reclaiming, this will save some precious seconds on island maps when you reclaim your no-longer needed plants. This helps a lot when reclaiming with a con unit that has low reclaim power. This can be done on any unit. Another tip is when your unit is about to die, reclaim it instead of letting it die, as the reclaiming will give you back all your metal instead of the wreckage which will reduce the metal value.
Above I have recorded the time it takes to reclaim a vehicle plant with or without using the MT and my results show that using the MT will reduce the time by 4 seconds, which may not seem like much but it can save your ass at some point. The commander already has fast reclaim power, but just imagine the time it would save when a construction unit is reclaiming the vehicle plant.
6. Factory blockading
Factory Blocking is one of the most nastiest tricks in the game, it causes your opponent to waste lots of time trying to undo it if theres no construction units nearby. Even worse, if the player is inexperienced, they might end up destroying/reclaiming the whole factory and rebuild it again.
To do this nasty trick, get any unit, then click on 'move' in the menu (or 'm' on the keyboard), then move the unit into the factory entrance (shown in the 2nd pic) and let it die there. If it leaves a wreckage, then units can't get out until a unit reclaims the wreckage. Very annoying because units that are built can't get out because of the wreckage and because that unit blocking the build-plate of the factory, the factory cannot create any more units until the unit that is stuck moves off. This makes the player have to get a construction unit reclaim the wreckage to unblock the factory.
If the unit dies and leaves no wreckage or a heap (because of a powerful shot e.g Annihilator laser) then it wont block the factory because units can move over these as normal.
To recover from a blocked factory, select a construction unit, click on 'reclaim' (or 'e' on the keyboard) and click the wreckage, it will say 'Vehicle plant' or whatever factory at the bottom, but just ignore it, it will still reclaim the wreckage, not the factory. Don't reclaim/destroy the plant and rebuild it as most inexperienced players would do.
7. Shoreline Bug
Amphibious units on the shoreline can be near-invincible against packs of MT's and sometimes lasers, because similar to the pelican bug, the enemy units will try to shoot the 'base' of the amphibious unit, but it's submerged underwater, so the weapon projectiles come up short and end up hitting the ground/water instead, giving little to no damage to the amphibious unit. This is all happening whilst the amphibious unit is attacking and blowing them to bits.
To do this, just get any amphibious unit (The Gimp is probably the most efficient because of it's maneuverability, the laser and weapon range) and place them on the shoreline. Just make sure only their Gun is popping out of the water and they'll fire, the enemies will fire back but they can't hit it because it's too low. (again similar to how MT's try to hit a pelican on water but they can't). Beware though, if the enemy units are really close to the shoreline, they have a better chance of hitting. Ballistic weapons such as guardians plasma cannons can hit shorelined units however, because of the trajectory.
However, gimps still suck and this trick is not used very much, simply because it takes a decade for an amphibious unit to cross the water.
8. Useful factory guarding positions
Guarding Factories with construction units (not commander) is one of the best ways to use up idle cons to make unit production faster! You can also build DT or other structures around the construction unit to stop making the construction unit move around all over the place and block the entrance and stuff. Below are a few useful ways of doing so:
9. Offscreening
Offscreening is the best way of avoiding damage to your planes from AA. Some say this is not fair but its part of the game, get over it. You can offscreen bomb with a bomber plane to destroy structures without getting any damage (at the top part of the screen only), offscreen build (at the top only) to build without getting damage and most of all, you can go offscreen to avoid that/those Freedom fighter(s)/hawk(s) or prevent damage from those MT's.
This is often used to get bombers around without being seen and making fighter units escape from death. You can also make atlases go offscreen to transport without being seen.
To offscreen, just simply attack at the edge of the screen, so when the plane fires, it will keep moving in that direction and eventually go offscreen, while offscreen it will try to turn around and make another run whilst offscreened, but you can move the unit by the edges to stop it coming back onscreen and make it go wherever you want. Press 'T' on the unit to follow it so you know where off-screen it is.
To offscreen an atlas, just move it towards the end of the screen, and tell it to make a sharp turn when it is at the end of the screen, since the atlas/valkyrie's turn rate is crud, it will go offscreen when turning. Alot of speed needs to be built up however.
10. Quad-Geo Bug
There is a bug with certain thermal vents where you can build 4 Geothermal power plants if you place them in the corners of the vent patch, which can give you +1000 Energy, the same as of a fusion but much cheaper and quicker. This is obviously a bug that wasn't supposed to be, but everyone will do it, so why don't you when you get the chance :)
The places where you can do Quad geo's are on: Metal world, Urban and Slate.
11. Multi-Reclaiming
Multi reclaiming is a really cheap way of getting metal, people even claim this as unfair and cheating. Mutli-reclaming is where tons of air cons all reclaim one single rock, and each air con gets the same amount of metal reclaimed as only 1 air con would. I.e you just get TONS of metal. Note that this only works on rocks, not wreckages.
To do this you need lots of air cons, tell them to reclaim 1 rock, now don't just let it reclaim, keep clicking on the rock (whilst all the air cons are selected) untill ALL air cons are hovering above the rock, trying to reclaim it, since you're clicking on it all the time, they will never reclaim it because they are restarting the reclaiming process each time you click. Until ALL air cons are hovering above it trying to reclaim it, just click once and let them reclaim, and they will all start to reclaim at the SAME time, the results are staggering, depending on rock and amount of aircons.
A rock of 50 metal multi reclaimed by 100 air cons would make 5000+ metal for a tick, which will most likely make you overflow/excess (playing at 1k).
12. How to D-gun subs
D-gunning is one of the most efficient ways of getting rid of subs when they are nearby the shore, to do this you just have to arm your d-gun ('d' on the keyboard), aim somewhere near the commanders feet in the direction they're in. This will cause the dgun to go down lower heights and be able to hit the subs underwater. Simple.
13. Nanoshielding
Nanoshielding is excellent way of protecting your commander or any other unit from damage or death, this is done by starting construction of a (preferebly tall/large) building in front of itself in the direction of the incoming weapon. This will cause the weapon to hit the wire frame of the building instead of the unit. Very useful when a sub is after your commy.
Here are scenarios of where nanoshielding is most useful in:
Picture 1 - Commy nanoshields with a metal storage to block missiles from samsons
Picture 2 - Block the bb hits with that nanoshield!
Picture 3 - Tons of bombers after your buildings, nanoshield it whilst it's bombing and it'll block the bombs. Also works against single bombers that are after your mexxes!
Picture 4 - These are often long and tiring, nanoshield your guardian from enemy guardians to block their hits.
Picture 5 - the best way of getting your commy away from a sub, the wire frame is faint, but you should just about see a UW metal storage there, blocking the torpedoes.
Picture 6 - Crus wars! People often have 1 con to nanoshield their crus and one to repair. Nanoshielding with floating MT.
14. Ballistic Weapon over-ranging
There is a way of giving your Big bertha or intimidator extra range, or any other unit with a ballistic weapon. To do this you have to force fire / manual aim at the BASE of the unit, for example, this will make a BB move it's turret all the way up and then fire with range just under double it's normal range. Though this can be inaccurate and annoying to get it right, it can to justice sometimes when randomly firing into an enemy base. I would recommend only doing this if theres nothing in range of your bb/guard.
15. Rocko/Storm thingy
The Rocko/storm long range flying rocket thing (I don't even know what this trick is properly called) is one of the most unused and unpopular tricks in the game. The requirements for this trick is a large mountain with hopefully an enemy on the other side and a couple of Rockos/Storms. The rocko/storms then fire just at the tip of the high edge of a mountain, this way the rocket will not hit the mountain, but it will continue fly across the mountain with similar range as a guardian and hit the ground, anywhere. The problem is, is not knowing where it will hit and having to adjust the aim/move the Rocko around to make it hit something.
<--- Example of the Rockos doing this trick on a mountain in Great Divide 2.
16. Hawk Dancing
Hawk dancing requires alot of micromanagement. To make a plane hawk dance, move them left to right, really quickly, so that they look like they're dancing, moving themselves left to right sorta like they're hovering whilst firing their missiles, this makes them kill quicker but are more vulnerable to AA. Another method, is to bring them forwards and back. This ones slightly easier and they will be less easier to get hit by AA. This is not hawk dancing but another efficient method is to set them to hold position and have them partol an area and they will shoot their missiles while not spreading out/flying off somewhere random.
Just because it's called 'hawk' dancing, it does not mean it cannot be done with other planes; it can be done with vamps, freedom fighters, avengers and even phoenixes!, but that would be pointless since their laser would hardly damage anything, unless you're fighting jeffies.
17. Dark Side gravity glitch
On the map Dark Side, the gravity is set low, so units with ballistic weapons such as bulldogs, hammers, thuds, goliaths and levellers could potentially shoot across the map! Similar to ballistic weapon overranging, but dark side's gravity allows nearly 10x more range! (not exact)
Just make your unit shoot at their base in the direction you want them to fire, and you'll be shocked at how far a stumpy's weapon can go!
18. Making flak units shoot ground units
Flak units don't shoot at ground units, only air units. However this is an easy but limited trick to make them shoot ground units, just simply have your flak units guard any unit, and if that guarded unit gets hit by a ground unit, the flak units will shoot their flak cannons at the ground unit, dealing alot of damage at a fast rate. However, this is slightly buggy and the flak units may randomly stop, so this is not a very efficient trick but it's still cool to see.
19. Land Torpedo
This trick sounds ridiciulous and looks bizzare, but using similar technique to overranging, subs can hit ground units nearby the shore. Simply aim at the base of the sub in the direction you want, or aim at a slightly high area of the coast and the torpedo will fly over ground a little bit and hit land units.
That's all I have for now, check back for updates, I may have added some more info or more tricks that I forgot about or never found out before. Thanks for checking it out!
Contact: Warl0rd - warlord_killer74 (at) msn (dot) com - email and MSN. Contact me if you know a trick/tip that I have not listed here, add any additional info or if you've spotted errors.
Last updated: 15th May 2009