




In a large, technologically advanced society, the armed forces decided the to make their weapons, vehicles, 'k-bots' (units, in general) more effective, by reducing the need for controls & life support and reaction times, they would integrate the consciousness of their pilots into the machines themselves.Ī rebel group started a violent rebellion to stop this practice, preferring traditional methods of piloting their various machines, and cloning their best pilots to make up for the lost advantages from consciousness-transfer. This is mostly covered in the instruction manual, so it will only be briskly covered here. Unfortunately, most of the experienced players either had small-scale tactics organised already, or had perfected the brute force method and didn't really need them. It was mostly aimed at more experienced players as it assumed proficiency in actually playing Total Annihilation. The second expansion pack was called "Battle Tactics" and rather than featuring new content like traditional expansion packs & The Core Contingency it contained extensive single player missions to try to teach tactics to the player, as opposed to the more crude 'throw more units at the enemy than they throw at you' approach. Two expansion packs were released for Total Annihilation, "The Core Contingency" which was much like an expansion pack in the traditional sense, in that it provided new: maps, tilesets and units. Which basically means that Total Annihilation is now the property of Atari, although they aren't actually doing anything with it, other than providing a forum. In 1999 Cavedog folded and Total Annihilation was acquired by Infogrames, who, at some point (which may have been before Cavedog folded) renamed themselves Atari after buying the trademark. At the time that it was released it's engine and gameplay concepts were revolutionary, although it never gained the popularity of other games released at the same time, such as Starcraft, because it was not extensively advertised. Total Annihilation was released in 1997 by Cavedog, with most of the inspiration for the game having come from Chris Taylor.
