Total Annihilation

A strategy guide from Happypuppy / Reprinted by Saboteur (Home)


The Octopus

The Octopus takes a radically different approach to strategy than the Porcupine or the Eagle. Instead of specializing in base defense or air power, the Octopus specializes in building bases themselves. The Oct tries to spread out all over the map in order to maximize its ability to take damage and worm its way into being able to hit from different angles.

When properly done, the Oct has some real advantages, but a passel of bad points to offset them.

The major advantage of the Oct is resistance to long-range artillery fire. When you have four bases spread out over a third of a medium sized map, a particular artillery hit doesn't mean as much to you as it does to a player using more traditional base-building techniques.

Also, the Oct tends to be less vulnerable to being overrun by a wave attack. The Oct will lose a section of its base more rapidly, but needs that section less. And if they are building quickly, might have the replaced the lost sections elsewhere almost as rapidly as they fall.

The Oct can also up secret emplacements near enemy lines fairly easily. When everyone gets used to seeing you spread out all over the map, they are less likely to notice when a unit or two strays out from under your jammer cover when you are building a secret emplacement.

The biggest bad point to the Oct is that in trying to build defenses for a number of smaller bases, it is impossible to get the full advantages of overlapping weapons coverage that more traditional base-builders enjoy. By definition, splitting your base up into small units is going to require less defensive units on each base. This means attackers take less pain taking down any particular section of your base.

The other disadvantage to this strategy is just keeping everything going. As a human, you only have so much attention and a limited reaction time. The Oct is constantly jumping around the map trying to get things built and working. In most cases this time loss is what ends up doing the Oct in as much as the enemy attacks. Coordinating multiple base emplacements, particularly if you are facing threats on more than one base module at once, can stretch your time management resources past the breaking point.

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How do I Octopus?

Spread out! The first thing the Oct does is build multiple Kbots and send them off to the far-flung edges of the map. These Kbots then set up little base modules far from the main base.

There are two different Oct thinking processes at this point. The first is to make sure that all of your main base functions are happening in at least two different modules in order to provide some amount of overall safety if one module is overrun. This philosophy requires two Level 2 Kbot Labs at two different modules, two Advanced Aircraft Plants at two different modules, and so on. While this technique has its points, it also pushes the builder closer to the 200-unit limit.

The other type of Oct builder will have each module more or less specialize in a certain task. One will build vehicles, another Kbots and another ships or aircraft. One thing to keep in mind if you follow this strategy: spread your infrastructure (metal and energy production) around. If you have one camp producing 90% of your metal and it is overrun, the end is near.

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What are my main tactics as an Oct?

Other than stringing out your base so that one simple strike can't take you down, the only major tactic is to build artillery in range of your enemy's base, which is covered later under Attacking.

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