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Overview
BA has three basic principles:
- Refined Original Total Annihilation: BA's lineage traces back to fan mods of the original Total Annihilation. It feels similar, and play is more balanced for diverse multiplayer strategies.
- Stable gameplay: BA has [i]matured[/i] through several years of playtesting. New versions don't drastically alter gameplay.
- Balance: Every unit has a role, and no unit has every role. Very few units get truly obsolete as a game progresses.
Cooperative play
BA includes a cooperative play mode for players to work as an even closer team. When the cooperative mod option is enabled, players who take the same team id will form a co-op. Players who are part of the same co-op completely share everything - all resources are pooled, and any unit within the co-op can be commanded by anyone within the co-op.
Each player within the co-op starts with their own commander, and must select their own start point before clicking ready - if the co-op readies before a player has selected a start location, then two commanders will spawn on the same spot.
Once the game has started, it is especially important for co-oping players to communicate their overall strategy so that units don't receive conflicting orders. It's also somewhat easier to overspend - in a co-op of three, players might feel like they have triple the normal amount of resources.
In practice, co-op mode tends to work best when done with friends, clanmates, or other (willing) strangers. However, even among voluntary participants experience has shown that large co-ops of 5 or more players tend to have at least one person getting upset due to their orders being canceled or similar (often unintentional) issues. Unless communication can be improved through mumble, it is recommended to split large co-oping teams into multiple, smaller co-ops.
If cooperative mode is disabled, then players who share the same team id will instead share control of the same commander. This is called "comm-sharing" and is available in every mod.
Chicken Defense
Balanced Annihilation features a chicken defense subversion, designed as a BA version of tower defense.
BA Experimental
Upcoming mutator maintained by YokoZar for experimental changes to BA. This includes primarily new, prettier models, as well as a few options for small gameplay experiments that are too drastic to just dump into a stable version of BA without serious testing.
Strategy
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Starting out
Try to pick a start position near a good amount of metal patches. Most maps are designed to have 3 patches near designated starting points. You should build a few metal extractors ("mexes") and some energy (2 or 3 solar plants) before starting a factory. Afterwards, most players build a light laser tower or two to prevent early scouts from running behind the base and destroying the economy.
Tier 1
Vehicle lab
K-bot lab
Aircraft Plant
Shipyard
Com Pushing
Com pushing is the strategy of moving your commander towards the front lines after building your initial base. The advantage is that you can claim territory and metal patches early (by building light laser towers). Small groups of enemies can also be destroyed with the commander's D-gun. The commander also functions as an excellent repairman for damaged units and reclaimer of wrecks.
Teching ("Going T2")
Managing units ("Micro")
While BA is a largely strategic game, there is considerable value to managing your units tactics. Some things to consider:
- Repair damaged units: Repairing is virtually free compared with building a new unit from scratch, so if you can keep a unit alive by moving it off the front line a bit once it becomes damaged you can get far more on the field.
- Surround the enemy: Units in BA suffer extra damage if they are being attacked from multiple directions at once. At the extreme, two units standing opposite a tank will do 50% more damage than two units standing next to eachother.
- Use your range ("kiting"): If you outrange the enemy and have some territory to maneuver in, you can gain a significant advantage by moving away while shooting.
- Cross the T: One of the best positions to be in is where your units are all firing and only one of the enemies is. If you're enemy has lined up their units, for instance, you can attack one edge of the line at a time rather than hitting them all at once.
- Attack in waves: One of the worst positions to be in is where the enemy is crossing your T. Implicitly, this can happen when you order units that are far apart into enemy territory and they arrive at different times. Similarly, setting a rally point of a factory into the enemy's defensive line will often result in your units dying one at a time. Instead, set a rally point a safe distance away, and once you have sufficient units attack in mass.
Economy
If you have more economy than the enemy, you can get more or better units. This is how, ultimately, you win.
- Reclaim wreckage and map features: Unit wrecks are an excellent source of metal, and map-provided rocks and trees are free resources. In many cases it can be worth sacrificing a builder to claim wreckage in hostile territory - usually they pay for their own cost as well as deny the wreck to the enemy.
- Use (or share) your resources: Resources kept in storage are essentially being wasted. They are a symptom of not having enough build-power, or construction units. If you're not building more units, extra resources can instead be invested into even more economy. Many times your allies will have extra buildpower that you don't - in such cases it is often very efficient to simply give them your resources away by lowering the share threshold (click in the middle of your metal or energy bar).
- Take advantage of metal patches and geothermal vents: Metal extractors are much, much cheaper than powering metal makers. This remains true at tier 2, where moho mines become vastly cheaper than fusion plants and moho metal makers. Geothermal spots are similarly the cheapest source of energy in the game - a moho geo, for instance, produces energy at less than half the cost of a fusion plant. This means that, in most cases, it's worth walking a considerable distance to take advantage of metal/geo spots you control rather than building economy in your base.
- Use nano-turrets sparingly: Nano-turrets can provide extra build power, however they themselves cost a considerable amount of metal and energy, especially in the early game. If you are already metal or energy stalling there is no point to building more of them - doing so will only slow down production of the units or economy you're ultimately trying to make with them.
Main differences from Original Total Annihilation
BA is similar to the Original Total Annihilation, and if you've played the original you should feel quite at home, however there are some important differences for OTA players to note:
- The guardian (tier 1 plasma turret) isn't a very useful defense unit for its cost; it's more of a forward artillery piece. It also has a high trajectory mode.
- Most of the AA units in the game shoot only at planes rather than both planes and ground.
Links
- Balanced Annihilation Forum
- (todo): latest download
- (todo): latest chicken download
- (todo): latest experimental download
History
Balanced Annihilation started as a fork of Absolute Annihilation. It is currently maintained by TheFatController, and was previously maintained by Noize. (this is a very incomplete history)