1.1  Purpose. This manual collects what I've learned about Total Annihilation in two years of playing it, most of that on Cavedog's Boneyards. It is written for the player who has finished the campaigns, has played the computer on skirmish until it stopped being a challenge, and has just gotten taken apart in eleven minutes by a stranger online and wants to know what happened. I've been that guy. I was that guy for about six months.

1.2  The author. I'm 32, I fix heat pumps and air conditioners for a living in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I've played TA since it came out in September of 1997. I bought it because the box said the units were really 3-D and the battles were huge, and both of those things were true. Then I bought The Core Contingency, then Battle Tactics, and somewhere in there I found the Boneyards and started playing ranked games after my daughter Megan goes to bed. My wife Julie calls it "going to work the night shift." Megan is four and calls it "Daddy's robots."

1.3  Limitations. I'm a good player. I'm not a great one. I win more than I lose on the Boneyards, and every so often I run into somebody who is so far ahead of me that I learn more in fifteen minutes of losing than I did in a month of winning. Everything in here works for me at my level. Some of it the top players would laugh at. Where I know that, I say so. Take what's useful.

1.4  Changes. This is Change 6. New this time: Annex C, after-action reports on five of my own games, including two I lost and am still annoyed about. Section 3 got a rewrite because my old advice on wind was wrong. Updates have been slow this month. We've been slammed at work ever since Hurricane Floyd came through, and I've spent more nights driving to service calls than playing.

2.1  General. Most games between two players of about the same skill are decided in the first five minutes. Nobody wins in the first five minutes. But somebody gets a better economy, and the better economy builds more of everything for the rest of the game. If you take only one thing from this manual, take this one: the opening is about building things that build things, as fast as you can, without stopping.

2.2  The Commander. You start with one unit, and it's the best builder you'll have for a long time. It also carries the D-Gun, which wipes out almost anything it hits, and when the Commander dies it goes up in a blast that takes everything near it along. In most ranked games the setting is "Commander dies, game ends," so treat him like what he is: your whole army, your whole economy and your king, all in one slow walker. Keep him home and keep him building. A new player walks his Commander to the front and D-Guns a few tanks and feels great about it right up until the moment he loses the game.

2.3  First buildings. The Commander's first orders should go out before you've even finished looking at the map. Shift-queue the whole opening so he never stands around. What I build almost every game, in order:

Some good players put the factory first and the extractors after. You get units out sooner and your economy comes up later. Against somebody who rushes, factory first can save you. Against everybody else, I like having my income going before I start spending it. Try both and see which one you lose less with. Annex B has my build orders for the different kinds of maps.

2.4  Kbots or vehicles. Your first factory decides a lot. Kbots are cheaper, build quick, and walk up hills and over rough ground that stops a tank cold. Vehicles are tougher and faster on open, flat ground. On a hilly map, Kbot Lab. On a wide-open map, I usually go Vehicle Plant. If you can't decide, Kbot Lab, because there's hardly any map where Kbots are useless.

2.5  Construction units early. The first thing out of your factory should be a construction unit, and probably the second thing too. Every construction unit is another set of hands. Two Construction Kbots putting up extractors and power while the Commander assists the factory will put you ahead of the man who built six Peewees first. Not always. Usually.

2.6  Scout. Send one cheap fast unit across the map early. You want to know three things: where he is, which factory he built, and whether he's coming at you right now. A scout that dies having seen all three paid for itself.

3.1  Metal. Everything in TA costs metal and energy, and you never have enough metal. Extractors on the metal patches are your main supply. Grab every patch you can safely hold, and a few you can't. Your construction units can also reclaim: wreckage, rocks and old battlefields all turn back into metal. After a big fight in the middle of the map, there is a fortune lying on the ground, and the player who sends a builder out to pick it up has more to spend than the one who doesn't.

3.2  Energy. You have four ways to make it early, and the map decides which one is best.

• Solar Collectors give a steady, modest amount everywhere. Never a bad choice, never a great one.
• Wind Generators are cheap and can be very good, but what they put out depends on the map's wind, and the wind changes during the game. Check the wind range on the map before you commit. (In earlier versions of this manual I told people to always build wind on any map with decent wind. Then I lost three games in a row on a windy map when the wind dropped off at the worst moment. Now I build a mix, so a lull doesn't stall me.)
• Tidal Generators go in the water and are steady. On a water map they're the obvious choice.
• Geothermal Plants sit on the steam vents. If there's a vent near your base, take it.

Later you'll have the Fusion Reactor, which makes a pile of energy from one building, but you need advanced construction units to build one, and you have to protect it, because a fusion going up takes a good piece of your base with it.

3.3  Stalling. When you're spending metal or energy faster than you're making it, your storage runs down, and when it hits empty, everything slows down: every factory, every builder, all at once. That's a stall. Watch the two bars at the top of the screen like a hawk.

3.4  Never stall metal. An energy stall is bad. A metal stall is worse, because energy is easy to fix (throw down three solars and you're out of it), and metal isn't. If you're stalling metal, stop building things, get more extractors, reclaim something, and don't start another factory until you're back in the green. A man with two factories running full time beats a man with four factories running half time.

3.5  Don't float, either. The opposite problem: your storage is full and the extra is being wasted. If your bars are full, you're not building enough. Put up another factory, start a second construction unit on something, or at least build storage.

3.6  Metal Makers. They turn extra energy into a little bit of metal. They're how you use a big energy surplus, and on a map with very few metal patches they're how you stay in the game. They're useless when you're short on energy, and they shut off then anyway.

3.7  Going to the next tech. Once your economy is steady, build an advanced factory and get advanced construction units out of it. They're the ones that can put Moho Mines on your best metal patches and build Fusion Reactors, and that's where the big economy comes from. Don't go up too early. A man who spends everything on his first advanced lab at minute six is a man with one advanced lab and no army when I show up at minute eight.

4.1  Every factory is always building something. Set it on repeat if you have to.

4.2  Every builder is always building something. An idle Construction Vehicle is metal you paid for and aren't using.

4.3  Radar early. You can't fight what you can't see.

4.4  Mix your army. A blob of one kind of unit has one weakness and he will find it.

4.5  Build anti-air before you need it. By the time you see bombers it's too late.

4.6  Don't chase into his base. Kill what comes out and take the middle.

4.7  Keep a builder near the front to repair and reclaim.

4.8  Say "gg" when it's over, whether you won or not. The Boneyards are a small town.