Total Annihilation: The Core Contingency

Total Annihilation: The Core Contingency
Developer(s)	Cavedog Entertainment
Publisher(s)	GT Interactive
Designer(s)	Chris Taylor
Version	3.1
Platform(s)	Windows, Mac OS 9
Release date(s)	April 30, 1998
Genre(s)	Real-time strategy (RTS)
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: Teen (T)
Media/distribution	CD-ROM

The Core Contingency (abbr. TA:CC) is a 1998 expansion to the popular 1997 real-time strategy computer game Total Annihilation. It contains extra units and maps, as well as a campaign of 25 missions and a long-awaited (although glitchy) official map editor.

Story

The Core Contingency picks up where the original game finishes with the Arm ending, in which the Arm achieved final victory over the Core in its homeworld Core Prime, in their Galactic War of over 4,000 years. With the Core supposedly wiped out of existence, the Arm undergoes one-hundred years of reconstructing civilization.

However, a lone Core Commander survives, hidden away in a distant system. The Core Commander, the heart of the Core's Contingency plan in case the Core would ever be defeated, is charged with a single mission: to search for a powerful and ancient alien artifact hidden in the region. With modifications, the beacon could supposedly be converted into an Implosion Device—a single, phenomenally powerful superweapon which, when activated, would cause the entire galaxy to implode into itself, with the Core's pure intention to permanently extinguish the Arm. The Core Commander would stay inside the gigantic machine as it causes the galaxy to virtually self-destruct, then step out unscathed and rebuild the entire Core race.

Meanwhile, rumors circulate amongst the mending Arm over the said Contingency Plan, so an Arm Commander is dispatched along with sizable reinforcements to confirm or eliminate the gossip.

Features

Missions

A gameplay screenshot from Total Annihilation: The Core Contingency. Various Arm missile units encounter a Core Krogoth Kbot on Gelidus in the final mission of the Arm campaign. Among the units pictured is the Arm Swatter hovercraft, one of many new units introduced in the expansion pack.

The Core Contingency features 25 new missions following the events of the original game's Arm campaign. 12 missions pertain to each side for the Arm and the Core, and a bonus mission is included, named "Krogoth Encounter."

"Krogoth Encounter" is an Arm bonus mission, set during the time of the original game (which allows it to technically be considered a "lost mission") during the Galactic War on the metallic world of Core Prime, as the Arm was slowly making its way to domination. The level is available only in Hard difficulty, its highlight being experimental, super-powerful Krogoth Kbots which the player must overcome and whose production facilities the player must destroy. Because it chronologically occurs before The Core Contingency, new units introduced in the expansion pack are not available during the mission.

The Core Contingency missions provide new worlds with their idiosyncratic natural disasters, such as the planet Temblor, whose only habitable land lies on mountains high above clouds, which suffers frequent, unpredictable earthquakes that can damage structures and ground forces. It additionally features native, hostile alien inhabitants of various planets, such as dangerously powerful sea creatures on the campaign's opening planet, Hydross, an ocean planet.

Units

The 75 new units that the expansion pack comes with include: seaplanes capable of landing underwater, aqueous metal deposits and structures (such as the floating "Naval-Series" heavy laser turrets and missile turrets), hovercraft, amphibious Kbots, pop-up turrets, and rapid-fire plasma cannons, among many others.

Many of the Core Contingency units are included in the 3.1 patch except for some very important ones. For example:

The Core Krogoth is a heavy level-10 Experimental Kbot that is produced in the Level 3 Krogoth Gantry. Its high cost of 29489 Metal and 116664 Energy makes it difficult and slow to produce. It has a head-mounted Annihilator laser, arm-mounted gauss cannons, and a pair of starburst missile launchers on its back. It can wreak much havoc if accompanied by radar and a Targeting Facility and is heavily armored, capable of withstanding a direct nuclear strike, but like all units can be destroyed by one shot from a Commander's Disintegrator Gun.

The Arm Pelican is an amphibious level 2 Kbot produced in the Advanced Kbot Lab. It can skim the surface of water and takes little damage from missile fire. It is armed with a red laser and missiles. It costs 255 Metal and can dominate naval battles.

The ARM Maverick is a level-2 gunslinging Kbot, with two high-damage plasma weapons and a metal cost of 492. They are intended to be Kbot destroyers and can take out a Commander easily, but are weak in armor.

The Arm Vulcan and its counterpart, the Core Buzzsaw, are rapid-fire plasma cannons (abbr. LRPCs) that require huge energy supplies for their continuous fire, and are devastating when combined with advanced radar and a Targeting Facility. The Buzzsaw has a lower rate of fire but a longer range.

Maps

The expansion comes with 53 multiplayer maps, featuring all-new environments such as lush grassland/rainforest, slate, crystal, urban, and sea-coral. It also fixes various bugs and glitches from the original game. Many popular online TA maps come from the CCexpansion.

System requirements

• Minimum
  • Pentium 100 MHz
  • 32 MB RAM
  • Windows 95
  • VGA video card
  • Sound Blaster-compatible sound card
  • 4x CD-ROM drive
  • 100 MB hard-disk space
• Recommended
  • Pentium II 350 MHz
  • 128 MB RAM

Platforms

• Microsoft Windows
  • Windows 95
  • Windows 98
  • Windows Me
  • Windows NT 4.0
  • Windows 2000 and Windows XP
  • Windows XP x64 {Requires manual installation}
  • Windows Vista
  • Windows 7

• Apple Macintosh (PowerPC)

See also

• Total Annihilation
• Gas Powered Games
• Supreme Commander
• Total Annihilation: Kingdoms
• Total Annihilation: Battle Tactics

External links

• Official Web Site (Mirrored 2000-12-07)
• TAUniverse
• TA Downloads