Any good? I reloaded TA after the the disappointment of Impossible Creatures and have had some fun, but the campaigns are not very good and the skirmish AI is awful. Is Tactics fun? Is the AI improved at all?
Not good as in… what? Too easy? Can you be a little more specific than “not good”? As I recall you didn’t like TA when you originally played it, so I’m not sure why your opinion would be any different after all these yeas.
TA Tactics is basically a mission pack. It offers very short to very long missions (I think arnd 40 - 50 total). And some of them ARE prety cool. The Krogoth attack ones brought my p-166 to its knees, but with new pc’s not much in TA (except lag) can bring it down.
Its a pretty good pack. It does teach you how some units work with/against each other, like the core fat bots and how a good wall can stop attacks. Or even the Dgun commander missions show how its tactically powerful!
etc
Battle Tactics is the beginner kind of add-on isn’t it? The one you really want is Core Contingency which adds the Krogoth, new terrain sets, etc.
Either way, the best way to enjoy Total Annihilation is with friends online. One of the best multiplayer games of all-time IMO.
–Dave
it’d be f’n fabulous, just for the sake of the TA fanboys like myself, if sawyer & co. made/released an ‘unofficial’ AI fixer-upper patch for TA.
barring that, your best bet is to find someone to play vs. online. ‘hunt the wumpus’
I always liked TA quite a bit. I think you’re just remembering me saying I liked Starcraft better, which I do.
I played through some of both the Core and Arm campaigns when the game came out and didn’t like them. It’s especially hard to play them now when tech is locked. After playing with everything unlocked, it would be hard to go back to the campaigns and not have access to all the tech, the Big Bertha, etc.
Anyone still playing TA online would clean my clock. I don’t think it would be much fun for him or me. I guess I need to try some of the fan mods that have different AIs.
Well, if you’re looking for skirmish with more of a challenge, there were several pretty good unofficial fan-made AI patches… other than that, try Battle Tactics. As mtkafka points out, it’s basically a bunch of canned, standalone scenarios focusing on individual units or strategies. Good, but not a campaign or anything.