Combat and Sight in Total Annihilation

Every unit in Total Annihilation has hit points, and its weapons are described by damage, reload time, range and area of effect. What your army can hit also depends on what it can find, through sight, radar and sonar. The figures below come from the game data and appear on each unit's page.

Hit Points and Repair

Hit points are the damage a unit can take before it is destroyed. A Peewee has 250, an L.L.T. light laser tower has 750 and a Commander has 3000.

The Commander and the construction units can repair other units, and a construction unit repairs damaged units it comes across. The Commander's battlesuit also repairs itself slowly.

A unit with 5 kills or more becomes a veteran and fights slightly better. Every further 5 kills gives another small improvement, up to 25 kills. Hold the cursor over a unit to see its kills. The veterancy page gives the exact figures.

Weapons and Damage per Second

Each weapon has four main values. Damage is the hit points one hit removes. Reload is the time between shots, which the unit pages give in seconds. Range is how far the weapon can fire, and area is how wide an area each hit damages.

The unit pages also show damage per second, calculated as damage × burst ÷ reload. Burst is the number of shots fired each time: the Peewee's gun fires 3, and the Pyro's flamethrower fires 17.

This is a simple figure. It uses the weapon's default damage, assumes that every shot hits and ignores the area of effect. Some weapons also cost energy for each shot: 10 for the L.L.T., 1500 for the Big Bertha and 400 for the Commander's D-gun.

Artillery and Direct Fire

The data marks artillery weapons as ballistic. They fire shells in an arc, so they can hit targets behind ridges and hills. The Hammer's plasma cannon and the Guardian plasma battery are examples. Direct-fire weapons, such as the Fido's gauss cannon, shoot in a flat line. The Zeus's lightning gun needs a clear line of sight to its target.

Long-range guns can fire further than the units carrying them can see. The Luger has a range of 620 but a sight distance of 220. Such units work best when radar or other units spot targets for them.

The map editor's notes say gravity changes how far artillery shells fly: lower gravity carries them further. Most original campaign missions use a gravity of 112, but Dump uses 8.

Missiles and Anti-Air

Homing missiles steer towards their target, and the unit pages mark them as "homing". The Defender missile tower and the Jethro KBot fire homing missiles made for aircraft, and their damage tables show it. The Defender's missile does 46 damage by default, but 97 to each of the 20 aircraft named in its table. The Jethro's missile does 31, or 83 to aircraft.

Not every rocket steers. The 1997 manual describes the Merl's rockets as unguided, so they are best against buildings and units that stand still. The expansions added flak guns such as the Flakker, which the data marks as anti-air weapons.

Nuclear Missiles and Anti-Missile Defence

A few weapons are stockpiled: each missile has its own price in metal and energy. The Retaliator (Arm) and Silencer (Core) nuclear launchers fire only when you order them to. Each missile costs 2000 metal and 180,000 energy and has a range of 32,000. It does 5500 damage across an area of 512, but only 2900 to a Commander, which has 3000 hit points.

The Protector and Fortitude Missile Defense shoot these missiles down. The data marks nuclear missiles as targetable and the defence rockets as interceptors, with a coverage value of 2000. The interceptors are stockpiled too, at 200 metal and 10,000 energy each.

Wrecks and Explosions

Most ground units and structures leave a wreck when they are destroyed. No aircraft, Commander, crawling bomb or mine has a wreck in the data. The Commander and construction units can reclaim wrecks for metal. Matter hit by the D-gun is disintegrated, so it leaves no metal to reclaim.

Units also explode when they die. Each unit page lists the blast when the unit is destroyed and when you self-destruct it (Ctrl+D). A Commander's blast does 9999 damage across an area of 950. The Invader crawling bomb does 1200 damage across 275 if it is destroyed, but 2500 across 556 if you self-destruct it. Blasts hurt your own side too: the 1997 manual warns you to keep the Core Roach away from your other units.

Line of Sight

Units see only what lies within their sight distance. The Peewee sees 280, the Commander 290 and the Peeper air scout 350. Unexplored ground is black. Ground you explored but no longer watch is grey: you still see the terrain there, but not the enemy's movements.

When you set up a skirmish or host a multiplayer game, you choose one of three line-of-sight settings:

• True: hills and other terrain block a unit's view.
• Circular: a unit sees everything within its sight distance, whatever the terrain.
• Permanent: as circular, but with no fog of war.

Radar, Sonar and Jamming

Radar finds enemy units at long range but does not identify them. They appear as coloured dots on the mini-map. A Radar Tower has a radar range of 1440 and an Advanced Radar Tower has 2880. Submarines stay hidden unless they are within sonar range, such as the 1180 of a Sonar Station.

Radar jammers hide your units from enemy radar within their jamming range. The Eraser KBot jams 500, the Jammer vehicle 400 and The Core Contingency's Escort ship 700. Jamming does not stop enemy units seeing you: the 1997 manual notes that the Fink scout can still report enemies that use jammers. The Hawk and Vamp stealth fighters do not appear on enemy radar at all.

Cloaking

A cloaked unit is invisible to the enemy, but cloaking uses energy and costs more while the unit moves. The data gives the Commander a cloak cost of 200 standing still and 1000 moving. The Core Contingency's Infiltrator spy KBot costs 210 and 800, and the Cloakable Fusion Reactor costs 450.

An enemy unit that comes close enough reveals a cloaked unit. The data sets this distance at 40 for the Commander and 80 for the Infiltrator. In version 3.1, holding Shift over a cloaked unit shows this distance as a white circle.

Sources

• Total Annihilation manual (1997): health bars, veterans, orders, line-of-sight settings and unit descriptions.
• Total Annihilation manual (2000 re-release): unit descriptions, radar, sonar, cloaking and the glossary.
• The Core Contingency readme (taccread.txt) and v3.1 patch readme (readme.txt): cloaking radius.
• Total Annihilation Map and Mission Editor readme (taeread.txt): gravity and artillery.
• Game data from the GOG release of version 3.1c: unit and weapon values and mission settings, as shown on the unit pages.