Total Annihilation...
So, I have been a Total Annihilation (TA) fan for years, and years, but now that Cavedog is out of business, it has been left behind, despite being one of the BEST strategy games ever. In fact, it has ruined almost all other strategy games for me. I can't play Blizzard's Warcraft 3 or Microsoft's Age of Empire 2 because of how cluster-f$#*%ed the user interface is (and the fact that you can't zoom back out and see more of the battle scene and command a more strategic view). Anyway, I keep hoping that Chris Taylor (now at Gas Powered Games that produces the Microsoft hit Dungeon Siege I and II) will eventually turn out another master piece sequel for this great game.

But, in the mean time, I keep reinstalling the game and picking it up and playing it with new community developed AI's and maps, and just did that very thing again this week. Also, now that I have two kids, I have to be able to pause things and can only play for short periods of time, so online games are sort of out. Anyway, once again, I got pulled in and I'm still amazed at how FUN and brilliant this game is/was. Even now, almost 5 years later, this game looks and feels great.  And you can find it for under $10 most places.

Anyway, couple hints:

• Use the SHIFT key. This is your most valuable tool to queue up and plan things. Build something, walk over here, repair that thing, harvest that, then build something else, it is all very easy to do with the SHIFT key.
  
• Have construction units "patrol" an area behind your front line of immobile defenses and those units will repair damaged emplacements, as well as harvest/recover destroyed metal if you need it.
  
• Have spare construction units "guard" other construction units, and they will help them build what ever they are working on.
  
• Having factories set to "move" and/or "patrol" may not seem like it makes much sense, but it does when you consider every unit that factory makes will immediately inherit the move/patrol queue from the factory. No more units standing around out side the factory waiting for you to give them direction.
  
• Visibility is EVERYTHING (until the later game stages when you have a computerized targeting facility that allows your units to attack anything on radar). That means that your units don't shoot at it if they can't see it (even if it is in range of weapons and on radar). But if ANY unit can see the enemy, they all can shoot at it (wacky, I know). Also, the AI sort of cheats here, since they attack you forcibly at any point you show up on their radar and are in range of their weapons. So, have air support that is patrolling just in front of your forward units to provide better attack range.
  
• The base units have a very good trade off and balance and work well if used in combinations.  Like you need to develop good tactics to use air support for ground units and have ground units supported with anti-aircraft units or you will be sitting ducks for aerial attacks.

Have fun!!!
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- posted by Jeff @ 6:47 PM | 0 comments

 
Brand New Addition!
I wanted to show both of my sons on this picture, though one is now over 21 months old (Riley on the right), but Brady Cole (on the left) was just born on June 24, 2004 at 2:49AM. He weighed 7lbs 11oz and was 21" long. We barely made it into the delivery room, and our doctor wasn't even able to make it to the hospital in time for the event. Sarah had to go the route without an epideral and we didn't even have time to get the computer monitor hooked up to her to check for contractions and baby's heart beat.

Everyone is doing great!


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- posted by Jeff @ 1:54 PM | 0 comments