Total Annihilation: Battle Tactics/Core Very Short Missions

The following are the missions in the Core Very Short campaign.

Lightning Recon
Mission Briefing: Intelligence reports indicate that the ARM have established a base in our vicinity. Scout the area and find their base before they locate ours.

Suggestions: Scout aggressively, and destroy any ARM scouts you encounter.

Battle Tactics: It is handy to instantly jump back to your base. Center the base on your screen and hit CTRL (F5 through F8) to mark the location. Later you can hit (F5 through F8) and instantly jump back to the marked location.

A Gentle Time
Mission Briefing: Like the gentler times before aircraft, Kbots and anti-matter weapons, this will be a straightforward tank battle.

Start your attack to the northwest and destroy all ARM forces.

Suggestions: Concentrate your firepower on especially troubling enemy units. Protect your long-range units from direct fire whenever possible.

Battle Tactics: Sometimes during a battle a fast enemy unit may burst past a line of defending units in an effort to reach the more vulnerable parts of the base. If you can manage to obstruct the path of these charging units, it may slow them down long enough to destroy them.

Disintegrator Alley
Mission Briefing: Emergency! The persistent ARM forces have hammered the area with a series of nuclear strikes. Naval reinforcements were destroyed by Lancet torpedo bombers before they could reach your location and assist. Now an ARM column is moving in to finish off your army.

Use the D-gun to destroy any enemy unit within range. You must destroy all enemy units to win this mission.

Suggestions: Be aware of your energy resources. You need a steady source of energy to fire your D-gun. Frequent attacks may require rebuilding energy resources to power the D-gun.

Battle Tactics: Sometimes it takes a long time for the Commander to precisely aim at an enemy unit targeted with the D-gun. In order to take faster shots, try firing the D-gun at the ground just in front of the enemy units.

Two Ore Coast
Mission Briefing: This stretch of coastline features only two outcroppings of metal ore. The ARM have built Moho Mines on both. These Moho Mines have been providing metal for their Advanced Shipyards and the rest of their economy.

You are ordered to destroy both Moho Mines at any cost. The nearest mine is just north of your starting location.

Suggestions: The enemy will likely be building battleships or cruisers, so do not waste time. Explore the map, find the targets, and destroy them.

Battle Tactics: You can select several units at a time by left-clicking on the map and dragging a rectangle that includes your units. When you let go of the mouse button all of the units within the rectangle will be selected.

Thrashing a Rear Guard
Mission Briefing: Our advance through the ARM homeworld of Empyrrean is almost complete. Their forces are fleeing from our invincible army, desperately trying to regroup. They have left behind a "band of heroes" to delay our advance.

Crush all ARM units as quickly as possible. Time is of the essence.

Suggestions: There is little metal ore in this region of Empyrrean. You may wish to forego building anything. However, building one or two Solar Collectors will give you extra energy for repeated D-gun blasts.

Battle Tactics: Your Commander's D-gun is the most powerful weapon in the game. Often you can destroy several enemies with a single shot if they're clustered together. The D-gun requires 400 Energy to fire and will not leave behind wreckage. To quickly bring up the D-gun's cursor, use D.

Emerald Seamount
Mission Briefing: Intel Feed suggests that the ARM are constructing a naval base due north of the Emerald Seamount.

You are ordered to take the Eighth Fleet north and destroy any enemy you encounter.

Suggestions: Keep your Searchers well away from the enemy's heavy ships. You will need them to shoot down enemy torpedo bombers recently sighted in the area.

Battle Tactics: The radar map in the top left corner of the screen gives you an overall view of the battlefield. Red dots on the radar map indicate an enemy presence in the area. If you see blue dots flashing, it means that your units are under attack.

Clicking the right mouse button on the radar map will center the main screen on that location. For right-click interface use the left mouse button.

Taking Island 445
Mission Briefing: Bombing runs have destroyed enemy construction units but the stubborn ARM have still managed to establish a temporary base on Island 445 to the north. This island is the only locale where metal ores are common.

Capture the Moho Mine on Island 445. Your Envoy transport ship holds a portion of your ground troops. These units will be helpful in accomplishing your mission.

Suggestions: Be cautious of targeting via the radar map. If the Moho Mine is accidentally destroyed, your mission will be impossible to accomplish.

Protect your transport.

Battle Tactics: Your Commander is on your transport ship; notice it has both radar and sonar. Protect it at all costs.

The Retorb Floodplain
Mission Briefing: Priority One Our energy requirements in the region are critical.

Build a Geothermal Powerplant in the Retorb Floodplain. Expect the ARM to harass and delay you with small attacks. You have nine minutes to succeed in this mission.

Suggestions: You may need to build some defenses before starting on the Geothermal Powerplant. Keep your long-range Slashers in the center of your base, with the tanks along the perimeter.

Battle Tactics: Use the following cheat code to keep track of the game time. Hit ENTER to activate the message bar at the bottom of the screen. Then type '+clock' to bring up the game clock in the bottom left corner of your main map.

Firebase
Mission Briefing: The ARM have built a firebase on a low hill directly west of our current position. Already three Big Bertha cannons have been built as well as a formidable maze of Dragon's Teeth.

Destroy all centrally-located enemy Berthas.

Suggestions: Your first goal is blasting a path through the Dragon's Teeth. They can be destroyed by heavy fire or you can reclaim them with your Construction Vehicles.

Unit wreckage will block your path and should also be blown apart or reclaimed to clear the way.

Battle Tactics: To blow apart Dragon's Teeth, select a few Goliaths or other units with heavy guns and press A to bring up the Attack cursor. Several heavily-armed units firing at once should quickly destroy enemy fortifications.

To reclaim these fortifications, select a Construction Vehicle and place the cursor over the Dragon's Teeth. The arrow will automatically change to the reclaim cursor. Click on the fortification to reclaim its metal.

Holding down SHIFT allows you to queue up multiple reclaim orders.

Battle of Chimo Island
Mission Briefing: The misguided ARM have built a Shipyard near Chimo Island. As this does not appear to be a vital point, strategic reasons for the newly-constructed Shipyard are unknown.

Rather than allowing an enemy build up in the region, you are ordered to destroy the ARM Shipyard and any Construction Ships it may build.

Suggestions: Guardian plasma cannons may prove destructive to your force.

Attempt to reduce or eliminate anti-submarine warfare ships and then use your own subs against the Shipyard. These anti-sub units are the Crusader destroyers, their Conqueror cruisers and all submarines.

Battle Tactics: Holding your cursor over the enemy unit allows you to see the unit's name. Hitting F1 will give you more details on the unit.

Learn what the strengths and weaknesses of each unit are. For example, if you see that the enemy has weaker anti-aircraft units, then try to launch an air strike.

Advanced players will create weaknesses in their opponents forces and then exploit them.

Laser Plain
Mission Briefing: The enemy ARM Commander tends to rush our positions with large numbers of small units. We are expecting an attack with Flash tanks. It is likely that enemy forces will try to distract you with a number of small attacks before this final rush.

Fight off the enemy attacks and build at least one L.L.T. to help you deal with the smaller units.

Suggestions: Scout the map to find metal deposits. L.L.T.s require 2608 units of energy to build and twenty units per shot to fire. Therefore, you will want to build four or five Solar Collectors before building your first laser weapon.

Battle Tactics: You can speed up your gameplay by learning how to stack commands using SHIFT. This allows you to give virtually any unit multiple orders. When the unit completes the first command it will automatically go on to the next one.

For example, you may ask your Commander to build a Solar Collector. Hold down SHIFT and give additional orders. Notice a green rectangle appears denoting the location of the Solar Collector. Viewing these rectangles will keep you from placing units on top of one another when queuing up multiple build orders.

Using SHIFT to queue commands, you can very quickly give a unit enough orders to keep it busy, allowing you to shift your attention elsewhere.

Rotrey Stream
Mission Briefing: Along the Rotrey Stream our unimaginative opponents have dropped off a number of construction units in order to build up their economy in the region.

We have launched a bombing run knocking out most of their Metal Extractors, although at great cost.

Your orders are to move in and finish them off before they can recover.

Suggestions: You will have to capture a defendable area with some metal, and build up a base as quickly as possible.

Battle Tactics: You can adjust the amount of unit chat that appears on the main screen. Hit F2 to bring up the Options Menu, then click on the INTERFACE button. Use the UNIT CHAT button to toggle through OFF, MEDIUM and FULL options.

When a unit reports a message, you can hit F3 to center the screen on the last unit that reported information.

Rainforest Construction
Mission Briefing: Not expecting your arrival, the ARM have moved only a light screen of units into the area. Build up our energy supply and destroy all enemy forces you come across.

Your orders are to find the steam vent somewhere to the south of the Snake's Spine River and build a Geothermal Powerplant.

Suggestions: You will have to build a factory in order to create a construction unit to build the Geothermal Powerplant. Also use the factory to build anti-aircraft units as enemy aircraft have been sighted in the area.

Battle Tactics: Select all aircraft using CTRL V (for select all VToLs).

Yollets Rain Forest
Mission Briefing: Deep in the Yollets Rain Forest the enemy is attacking in an effort to control the nearby ore deposits.

You are to destroy the ARM's attack force.

Note: Your Kbot Lab is damaged and unable to build Construction Kbots. You must successfully protect the lab to complete your mission.

Suggestions: You will be under almost constant attacks, so build as many units as possible. Keep a few scouts ahead of your main force to meet ARM attacks wherever they may occur.

Battle Tactics: Holding down SHIFT while clicking on a factory's build menu queues up five units at a time.

The Phase Array Radar
Mission Briefing: Attention! The construction of the phase array radar is almost complete. This uses hundreds of Radar Towers electronically linked together to act as a single giant radar with immense sensitivity.

The ARM have discovered our plans and have launched an attack to destroy our radar field.

Neutralize the ARM attack. Keep the loss of Radar Towers to a minimum.

Suggestions: Spread out your troops to keep faster enemy units from circling around them.

Battle Tactics: You may wish to make a squad out of a central force that will counter each attack. To do this, select the units you wish to group and then use CTRL (1 through 9). Later you can select all these units instantly by pressing ALT (1 through 9).