Paralysers

Two weapons in Total Annihilation paralyse instead of doing damage: the Spider's Paralyzer and the Stunner's missile from Battle Tactics. A paralysed unit stops what it was doing, but it loses no hit points.

The Rule

Each point of a paralyser's damage stuns the target for one tick, a thirtieth of a second.

• The damage is worked out as for any weapon, with splash falloff, the attacker's and the target's veterancy, and a closed building's armour. The result is turned into stun time instead of lost hit points.
• Stuns add up: a hit on a unit that is already stunned makes the stun longer.
• A stun lasts at most 60 seconds at a time.
• A paralysed unit's orders wait, and its weapons drop their targets.
• The stun ends all at once when its time is up, not gradually.
• The two Commanders are immune.

A paralyser picks its own targets only among units that are not already stunned, so a group of Spiders spreads its fire over several enemies.

Worked Example

The Spider's Paralyzer does 900, so each hit stuns for 30 seconds, and two hits on the same unit make a full minute. Once its target is stunned, a Spider left to choose for itself moves on to an enemy that is not.

The Stunner's missile does only 1 damage by default, but its data lists 1800 against almost every Core unit, enough for the full 60 seconds. Its area is 512 and its edge effectiveness 0.8, so even a Core unit at the edge of the blast is stunned for 48 seconds.