Glitches

Structures

Toggle during construction

During construction, if a unit takes damage from any source (except reclaim), the unit will activate as though it were already constructed.

Applies to units that automatically turn off when attacked or receive damage:

• Solar Collectors
• Moho Metal Makers
• ARM Adv Radar Tower
• ARM Adv Sonar Station

Exceptions (automatically turn OFF then ON when attacked or receive damage when fully constructed, but not during construction):

• Targeting Facilities

Increased projectile range

Artillery (i.e. Guardians, Punishers, Berthas, Intimidators, etc) can all have their range slightly increased. Simply aim very close to the unit itself. Depending on how close you aim, you can get most of these buildings to aim "up" and perform longer arc shots than their max distance will allow.

Aircraft

Infinite Bomber Bombs

Bombers in TotalA have Zero reload time. This means that with precise control, you can have them stream bombs constantly. Depending on the resolution you are playing at, with a bomber moving at reasonable speed, click attack about 1/2 and in to an inch outside of it's line of site. It should immediately start dropping bombs. Continue Attack clicking this spot in front of the bomber to get a constant stream. This can be angled a little but not a huge amount.

Fly seaplanes under water

to fly seaplanes under water land them in water, then give them a move or attack command. as they start lifting up, hit stop, then give them more move commands. With a bit of micro you can get almost top speed while staying under the water by just alternating between stop and moving.

Construction Air multi reclaim glitch

Build mass construction air, and order them to reclaim a map asset like a rock or building from town and country, even trees when u have mass con air, click a few times on the rock to bunch them up and get them all reclaiming at exactly the same time once they finish reclaiming the rock or what ever will be reclaimed for a multiple of it's value = to the number of aircraft you use

Ground Units

increased projectile range

The same concept for increased projectile distance can also be applied to many K-bot and vehicle units. Units such as

• K-bots*

Thud Hammer Morty (can get huge distances) Gimp Warrior(3.1 only unit)

• Vehicles*

Stumpy Raider Leveler Bulldog Reaper Goliath Triton Luger

Copperhead and Phalanx attack ground units

While these units are AA only, they have very powerful and bugged weapons set them to guard any ground unit in a battle, if that unit is hit, these AA units will turn their cannons on the attacker

Ships

Pelican/hovercraft Targeting

most ships have two weapons on board, but in the case of Pelicans and hovercraft they will either not use both, or not hit at all. Attack ground right in front of pelicans (or just behind) to have all weapons be used, and connect with these bugged units.

Attack land targets with Subs

Subs in TA shoot short range torpedoes. What many people don't know is that they can be used to fire short distances onto land. Move the sub directly next to the coast, and aim almost on top of the sub itself. The torpedoes will fire "up" and arc out of the water, landing on land.

misc

Nano Blocking

This is generally useful when up against a Big Bertha or bombers. A Building in construction state will still block projectiles. Because of this, building a 'tall' structure in front of what you want to defend even with a construction aircraft or what ever, no matter how built it is, it will soak up an entire bertha shot and let you live a little longer.

D-gun Clipping

What could end up being the biggest speed running glitch if it can be made consistent is a small glitch relating to D-Gun

Very careful and very precise clipping of friendly units with D-gun blasts can cause their HP to glitch, giving them upwards of 20 times the HP they should have.

Cannot confirm how to achieve the glitch precisely. *more information needed, may need to study video footage of the glitch in action

Target Locking (Unit Distraction)

Target locking is a bug in which a unit will only fire upon the first enemy unit that it encounters provided that:

1. the enemy unit moves within attack range and LOS

2. the enemy unit does not die

3. the target locking unit is not attacked

4. the target locking unit is patrolling while on Hold Position orders

5. the enemy unit's Category tag is not in the target locking unit's BadTargetCategory, WPri_BadTargetCategory, WSec_BadTargetCategory, and WSpe_BadTargetCategory tags

In the campaign, this works most effectively for mobile units that are on "Waiting" or "Waiting for Attack" status. This will NOT work for any tower/fortification (ex: Defenders, laser towers, Punishers). Target locking is the stopping of the "waiting" unit from firing - very useful for capture only missions, and flying commanders into hostile areas.

To do this, send a unit into attack range of enemy "waiting" unit to be distracted and get it out of attack range of enemy unit ASAP. Make sure that the unit used is seen by the enemy and does not die, and do not attack the locked enemy unit (unless you want to D-gun it).

As long as the unit used to distract survives, the enemy unit stays locked on to that unit. Any other units that roam past the distracted enemy unit do not get fired upon as long as they don't fire on the unit itself.

Also, there are target preferences for each unit which complicate matters:

Units will not target lock on other units which are in the target locking unit's BadTargetCategory, WPri_BadTargetCategory, WSec_BadTargetCategory, and WSpe_BadTargetCategory tags.

For example: Anti-air units (e.g. Samson) have BadTargetCategory=NOTAIR, which means that they will not target lock on a ground unit. They will target lock on aircraft, so if you want it to not attack an aircraft, you MUST use another aircraft. You cannot use a ground unit to prevent an AA unit from attacking aircraft.

This also applies the other way around: For units that preferentially attack ground units (e.g. Goliaths, Peewees, Rockos), using aircraft to distract them will not work to save your ground units. You must use another ground unit. However, loading up a ground unit onto an air transport will still work provided you get in range. This is especially useful to stop things like Warlords and other surface ships from attacking - very handy on the ARM mission "Fortress at Brooban's Isle."

Further discussion at http://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20678, http://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showpost.php?p=707466&postcount=287

AI Underwater Unit Lock

When ground units (including hovercraft) and ships under AI control (which act as the AI in a skirmish) attack, they will stall when their target is underwater. In essence, they try to attack the unit, but since they can't, they stall indefinitely until another target which they can attack moves closer. This exploit is exemplified here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDOqqb3KWxM

Stalls all units except those with depth charges and/or torpedoes.

Tips

Useful Keyboard Shortcuts

Although a list of controls can be found in the game and on several sites online, here is a list of the most useful commands in more detail than usual:

• ~: Toggles on/off the HP bars for all units (default is off).
• CTRL+W: Select all mobile units with weapons (excluding the commander; includes aircraft)
• CTRL+C: Select and track the Commander.
• CTRL+D: Starts a 5 second countdown to self-destruct all selected units. At the instant the command is given, the countdown starts at "five" and ticks at every in-game second down to "zero." The selected units self-destruct immediately or shortly after (within a second) when the countdown reaches "zero."
• CTRL+V: Select all aircraft (including construction aircraft).
• CTRL+P: Select all aircraft with weapons.
• CTRL+Z: Select all units of the same type. Example: If you select one or a few of your Peewees, CTRL+Z will select all of your Peewees.
• CTRL+F: Select all factories. Useful for quickly accessing the build menu for the first factory that you finish constructing/capturing. Note you must let go of the CTRL key to issue any build orders. Using this command when you have more than one factory will only give you access to the orders menu for all selected factories.
• CTRL+B: Select all construction units (excluding the commander).
• O: Switch to "Orders" menu for selected units. Required to use the reclaim, capture and repair commands with the commander and all construction units. Press B to switch back to the build menu.
• C: Capture
• E: Reclaim
• R: Repair
• T: Track selected unit.
• D: D-gun. Fires only one shot at the cost of 400 energy. The D-gun is more easily used by clicking on the ground near the target unit rather than clicking on the target directly.
• S: Stops unit and cancels all given orders.
• CTRL+(F5-F8): Bookmarks the current screen location on the map, which can be later returned to by pressing the respective (F5-F8) key. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM7-b8cWm-A

Viewing the Enemy in Campaign

A very useful cheat to help plan strategies is "+view 1" or "+control 1" which allows you to see the positions of the enemy units and their status. It requires typing in "+now Film Chris Include Reload Assert" (case-sensitive) in order to allow the +view or +control cheats to work in campaign. To switch back to the player's units, type in "+view" or "+control".

Viewing the enemy status is very helpful:

• Waiting

Nearly all campaign enemies have at least one unit on this status. These units remain fixed and won't move until a certain amount of game time has elapsed. If the unit has weapons, they will still open fire on anything the comes into their LOS if their attack orders are set to "fire at will." The time is not indicated anywhere, so the only way to figure out (in-game at least) when it starts to move is to wait for it.

• Waiting for Attack

Some units will be on this status, which is the same as "Waiting," except they will start moving if a certain unit is attacked. This can be the unit itself or another unit on the map, and that unit is indicated in the space next to its status. In the example above, a Rapier will respond to an attack on a certain Energy Storage. To figure out which Energy storage this is requires experimenting. The quickest way to do this is to spawn a unit (typing in +armcom will spawn an Arm Commander at the location of the mouse cursor) and attack each Energy Storage until the Rapier responds.

Speeding Up the Capturing Process

The time it takes for the commander to capture a unit depends on the target unit's HP. The lower the HP, the faster a unit will be captured.

Speeding up Unit Reclaim Process

Reclaiming a unit at any health does not change the amount of metal received, so intentionally damaging a unit to low health can speed up the process. This is useful to quickly get back metal from obsolete friendly units that would otherwise take some time to reclaim, such as an aircraft plant.

Additionally, the commander's reclaim speed on units depends on his veterancy, so the more kills, the faster he can reclaim units - somewhat useful when there is not enough energy to D-gun. A 70 kill veteran commander can reclaim a full health battleship in 10 seconds.

Build orders