Arm or Core..?

[soup]

So, for the many of you that are new to this game, there are the Arm and the Core. Red Vs. Blue kind of thing. Most of the units are the same, but some have different stats, and some have different units. Personally, I like the Core. What about you guys?

[Mickey]

ive always wished for a FAF-like client with automatic patching/modding etc. with extra units and better balance. i tried to get into the TA modding as a kid, and i successfully added new units a few times, but other than that it was super confusing. maybe at 24 years old now I should try again tho.

Ive always stuck with a character in fighting games or race in RTS games that I like aethsetically more than anything, regardless of balance, much like the (IMO) weakest race in supcom, the UEF

[| Stuart98 ||]

Solar.Impulse have you seen the spring engine? It's a project originally made for Total Annihilation mods and the leading game on it, Balanced Annihilation, is more or less what you describe.

[Mickey]

Originally posted by RLM Stuart98:

Solar.Impulse have you seen the spring engine? It's a project originally made for Total Annihilation mods and the leading game on it, Balanced Annihilation, is more or less what you describe.

thank you Stuart98, but i tried that in like 2004 and its still pretty difficult. granted, and im sure youll agree, im very lazy so....i probably didnt try hard enough. ill try TAspring tho on your suggestion soon and see how it works for me now. cheers!

[Missing Spartan]

ARM because they were against the move from flesh to machine. (at least to me they are)

[Pastawake]

Core for the win. Like the troops a bit more then arm's army.

[aZavar.Kul]

Never play for Arm ONLY COOOORE!

[Polysorbate]

Core gets Necros, Cans, Sumos, Krogoths, Doomsday Machine, and all their units look more badass in my opinion. Arm's buildings look fragile. What's Arm got, Flash? Minelayers? Annihilator? Pfft. Who designed their fusion reactor, some bottom-of-the-barrel... lowest-bidder... that needed to... uh... they look dumb and cheap, is my point. Fusion reactors are supposed to be green, that's how it works. Things WIth Glowing Balls > Things Without Glowing Balls.

Might've just been in my mod, I forget now since it's been so long, but I think Core also generally had a HP+damage+range bonus at the cost of lower maneuverability, higher price, lower top speed, and many of their units being a bit larger and therefore easier targets. Slow and badass, everyone knows that's best.

[theFEZ70]

Actually if it's one major thing that differs from Core and Arm. The Core can make a zombie Army with Resurrection Kbots. I revived Krogoths with those!

[| Stuart98 ||]

Competitively:

There are only three, maybe four units in the game that can win the game unless you're playing someone who knows what they're doing:

Fast Attack Tank (Flash/Instigator)
Missile Defense (Defender/Pulverizer)
Missile Truck (Samson/Slasher)
Rocket Bot (Rocko/Storm)

Of these, Flash is the most important one and is also where the Arm version is massively better than the core version. That aside, the Core commander is also significantly slower than the arm one, meaning Core will be behind economically against an equally skilled arm player.

In 90% of games, these are the only things that matter. Krogoth is absolutely useless. Necro is T2 and unless you somehow win the flash wars with inferior units, you're never going to see T2. Sumos are too slow and clumsy to see much use and are also T2. Doomsday Machine and Annihilator are both useless due to their opening animations, but Doomsday Machine is more useless.

Even if you somehow do make it to T2, consider what arm has:
FARK
Maverick

FARK lets arm mass produce advanced fighters (hawk) at a far higher rate than core can produce vamps (which are also inferior to hawks statistically).

Maverick has the second highest damage per second (d-gun aside) in the game, being beaten out by the Krogoth and Krogoth alone. Goliath can't stand up to that.

In the vanilla game, Arm hands down has the advantage easily.

That's why everyone plays mods to fix the balance.

[theFEZ70]

Does patch 3.9 fix this?

[fn198]

Nope. 3.9.2 does not balance TA. It only provides ui enhancements. Escalation is an example of a mod that balances the sides and where more than just 3-5 units matter on the battlefield. Unlike mods that add superfluous new units to the game to make TA better, TA Escalation makes each of the original units worth building much like how cave dog would have done if they were open longer.

[The_Pastmaster]

Originally posted by Bionic Bovine:

Just got it for Steam. Like a whole new game. My old CD-ROM didn't have seaplanes, hovercraft, even a minelayer. as for your question. ARM FOR THE WIN!!!

Those came with The Core Contingency expansion. :)

[THRILLHO]

I've played TA on and off for almost 15 years. At times I've been really involved in the online scene and played a lot of multiplayer 1v1.

In general, the difference between the factions boils down to this:

The Arm has advantages which tend to matter more in the early game. They have what is by far the superior raiding tank (Flash), as well as better scout and counter-raiding units (Flea and Peewee). This means that Arm players are better able to deny their opponent resource points and kill construction units in the early game. Their early game lineup is more manueverable and generally has better firepower than equivalent core units. The Arm also has the FARK which seriously increases their build speed in the late game, allowing ARM players to complete projects or mass produce aircraft swarms much faster than CORE players.

The Core has advantages which tend to matter more in the late game or on very large maps. Their dedicated raiding tank (Instigator) is garbage, forcing them to rely on missile truck spam for area control in the early game. Slasher missile trucks are superior to Samsons as the launcher is located physically higher and can fire over most wrecks (this is suprisingly significant. The Core does however have better options for breaking deadlocks in the late game. They have more 'fun' mega-engineering projects and a greater variety of super weapons. Many of their units are superior to their ARM equivalents and they have some excellent late game units (Goliath and Morty in particular).

The Arm and Core have very similar air and sea games. The units which matter the most: basic bomber (Thunder/Shadow) and stealth fighter (Hawk/Vamp) are largely interchangeable between factions. The major difference is the Arm Brawler gunship vs. the Core Rapier Gunship. The rapier is an excellent com-sniper whereas the Brawler has far less utility outside of the singleplayer game.

Overall the ARM is generally the better faction for the powergamers among you. They're objectively better in terms of economy and speed and have a number of best-in-class units to dominate ground combat with. That said, the CORE is still entirely viable and can be a fun, if more difficult challenge to master.

[darth.crevette]

ARM, cuz Peewee master race.

[Virlomi]

I loved playing the ARM for one reason: Brawlers. When I was a kid, they were probably the awesomest units I ever played with in any game at the time. And the flash tanks, too. Those were exceedingly fun just zipping them back and forth while pewing at the enemy.