Max Annihilation and NOTA

[polaris_silvertree]

Hey guys,

I'm a very old TA and TA-mods player from the 90s. I've been following TA-Spring for several years now -- but I guess I'm considering trying a couple of the mods that may potentially suite my style of gameplay.

The two that come to mind our NOTA and Max Annihilation. Can someone point me in the right direction of a contrasts/comparison between the two games? I've read the briefs on each one -- but I guess some of the details are not readily discerned from it.

I really appreciate it.

Regards,
Polaris

[Neddie]

First, I would like to say that it is Spring, rather than TA-Spring. We've rather outgrown the explicit derivation.

If I recall correctly, Maximum Annihilation does not break with the OTA play structure as much. While there is a scale difference, it is not as severe as that in NOTA, where many things may at least appear, if not always function, as strategic and epic. It is worth noting that Maximum has very few players while NOTA should have games running every day. I would simply try them both, personally!

Welcome, and good luck!

[smokingwreckage]

If you're looking for some real fun co-op or solo, NOTA plus Spacebugs is totally awesome. It takes a bit of time to figure it all out, because NOTA feels a lot like OTA in play, but is also at the same time not really anything like it, due to a kind of "grand strategy" game layered over the top that effects when and where you can build, and how you tech.

NOTA is great for making the initial starting build-order very quick, too.

If you are into co-op or solo play, CA plus Chickens is NOT to be missed. It's quite different from OTA in feel, but attacking giant aliens getting bounced off your base by grav-turrets is hugely entertaining.

[[Krogoth86]]

NOTA most certainly is the most unique one of the two and kinda makes a total different approach towards TA. With that said the gameplay is quite different. First of all you don't start with a commander but with a Central Command Building with high build radius. The gameplay itself then is more "slow" than what you had in OTA or most TA mods for that manner: The units are rather small and travel slow. At the same time you have much more things like different "armor classes" you have to think about (not too many though so it's not THAT complicated) and aircrafts that have limited amounts of fuel that have to refill at landing pads (dropping bombs also drains the fuel amount so bombers usually have just one bombing run or two). There also is a whole "buttload" of other things that differ like bombers only being targetable by eihter your fighters or flaks (rocket AA doesn't work on them) or the 100% different navy which now consists of just a couple of huge and really powerful (yet expensive) ships...

So in the end you definitely should give it a try as it's really one of the more strategic and slow mods while being not so dependant on fast clicking & stuff like that...

Maximum Annihilation (= MA) is sort of a next step after Balanced Annihilation (=BA) which is a derivate of Absolute Annihilation you still might now from the original TA. It offers an entire third tech tree, adds units that I found missing in BA (so yeah - I created it), adds more strategic options (e.g. All-Terrain-Transports) and also "fixes" certain balance aspects that were graved into stone in BA and simply weren't good imo. The last part isn't as badly as it was once since BA now has a new guy updating it and fixing stuff who at least made some long overdue changes...

So in the end the actual gameplay is pretty much the same as for BA in the big picture. To be true that only means though that when you know BA you will have a basic idea of how the units will behave. The added units and strategies plus things like less effective one unit spams then add lots of differences though and the different factory / economy system also makes you need to reexplore certain things. In the end it plays rather fast - although "fast" is hard to describe. It definitely needs you playing aggressive and maybe that's one of the reason why you might experience it as fast: Playing the sitting duck pretty much fails as you'll want to conquer metal spots and ground. While the defenses itself are a bit stronger than in BA (so just building Flashes & Stumpies which will then do their job against anything you might encounter) they are weak to artillery. Together with an air tech tree that's way more comfortable to start with now (or having around as secondary lab type you built) you are going to need unit combos in order to win. Things like buidling Flashes / Stumpies as main ground force and some Samsons which work as anti-air and artillery like it's the case in BA simply won't work in MA. You'll also want to use T1 K-Bots now which aren't good a choice in BA in most situations and usually only have disadvantages when comparing to going vehicles instead of K-Bots...

In the end it's up to you to exploring it for yourself as it's impossible to really describe everything - I think I gave you a rough idea. I alsohave to add that my last release of it was quite some time ago and things like morphing & T3 Artillery deployment should be broken. That probably is an additional reason why it's getting played rarely. I sure have a version with all the fixes needed and even more improvements here on my hard-disk but haven't released it yet because ... well there simply was no huge need for it and I wanted to finish certain things first before releasing the next version in order to make it more attractive and get some new players to try it out (it's quite hard to get people to play anythings besides BA in a regular manner which has many reasons). The most important thing certainly is the I try to make my new units / models in the s3o format which means the units can actually have a nice geometry and nice textures. Especially the latter takes quite some time to learn and well I only progress slowly. For those who tracked my Wind Generator model - after lots of playing around I've started to redo the areas which outcome I like. I right now can't show much more than this were I didn't copie the "X"ses yet (plus giving the surface its final touch) plus the things on the sides still are some doodles although the yellow "energy window" probably will stay...