Cheating in TA: Five good ways to alienate your TA friends

Total Annihilation is a game, first and foremost. Like any game, there are a great number of tricks available. Most are perfectly honest and ethical; others are not quite so nice. Cheating in multiplayer games has always been and will long remain a problem to be addressed.

Here are some of the most common boring, dishonest, dishonorable, or otherwise cheap moves I see online.

Overuse of the same unit(s) in every game

Sure, the Pelican may be a top-notch unit- perhaps even overbalancing- but you won't gain any respect with people by re-using your favorite Pel rush on Gods of War 150 times. Likewise, Flash rushing gets very tiring very swiftly. TA is unique in that it provides hundreds of unit choices; use as wide a selection as you can muster. Variety makes the game more fun anyway, providing a wider range of tactical challenges for all players involved.

Exploitation of the game engine

There are innumerable little tweaks in TA that you can use to your advantage -- such infernal devices as the Bomber bug, the LRPC bug, the infinite-capacity Transport Ship, and the Moho-Metal Maker activation bug. Using these tricks to your advantage is cheating. Very few people will complain about being ground under by a tactically sound Goliath/Diplomat/Morty attack, but to be shelled by an out-of-range artillery unit is wrong. Stay within the game's bounds, and expect others to do the same.

Commander-napping the enemy

Simply said, this involves quickly building an air transport and snatching the enemy Commander from his base, before he builds an AA unit to stop the transport in mid-flight. Now, experienced players know how to avoid being kidnapped, but the majority of TA players have never run across a Com-napper. This trick may win the game fast, but it surely doesn't win you anything more than the game.

Commander-rushing the enemy

The Com rush is perhaps the single unstoppable attack in TA, especially in the hands of a well-practiced player. But it's also the trick that will win you a black reputation as fast as possible. For variety, try a "Dead Commander, Game Ends" game from time to time, or better yet- just don't Com rush. If you find someone pulling Commander rushes to win games- especially in important tournament- or ladder-related games- complain consistently about the offender. The poor Com rusher will shortly find himself shunned from any game.

Cheating

Very simple. The use of trainers, game hacks, strategic datafile modifications, and such like, is purely unethical. Good cheaters are hard to catch, except by their near-flawless records in conjunction with unnaturally fast build rates. But they do exist, and they ruin the game quite nicely. Game designers tend to throw in cheat codes, but those are intended for single-player games only, mostly for the sake of those players who simply don't want to play the game the way it was designed. But the existence of cheat codes creates an assumption that it's permissable to cheat in multiplayer games as well. Once again- just don't do it. Cheaters exist. Don't add to the problem.

I like to compare multiplayer computer games to sports without any sort of standard rules or referees. The result is a greater degree of freedom in how you play, along with a great deal of disagreement over what's right and what's not. Think back to the Golden Rule of your childhood: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Play nice, play fair, and everyone can have fun. I would argue that it is always more fun to develop a skill at TA, and challenge and defeat other skilled players, than it would be to download the latest trainer and kill those skilled players with hacked units.

On the other hand, the discriminating TA player should also be aware that these atrocities are (relatively) few and far between. Signing onto any major online game service, you can line up an honest one-on-one game just about any time of day. There are quite a few cheesy players out there, though, and you should know what you may run across. Go forth, Commanders, and conquer thy foe.. And don't forget to do it in an honest manner!

-- Flynn

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