What is Total Mayhem? 

It's a rebalance that increases player options, and also adds a lot of high-quality Cavedog-style units including a full L3 tier of units.

*** L1 improvements:

- Jeffies and Weasels are quicker.
- Peewees and AKs are quicker too, slightly faster than Flashes and Instigators. The AK now sports the Instigator's laser, making it much more useful, and matching the Peewee which was already armed with the same EMG weapon as the Flash.
- Flashes and Instigators are about the only units in the game unchanged... Apart from Instigators having a slightly faster firing rate to more closely match the damage output of the Flash.
- Stumpies and Raiders are slightly slower but have 20% more armour. They have improved range but still fairly light firepower.
- Rockos and Storms have a bit more range and better damage output. Rockos more damage per rocket, Storms fire more rockets.
- Hammers and Thuds have much longer range, they now outrange Rockos and Storms. But they do a bit less damage, have a bit less armour and aim more slowly. They are much more useful now as actual artillery units for taking out point defences.
- AA missile units all have reduced range when firing at ground units - more or less matching the range of point defences, so they'll still be pretty useful for taking out stray Jeffies and Weasels, or for ganging up on small groups of other units - but they will no longer be able to amass fire from a larger number of missile units.
- for added diversity, the Crasher is now an AA laser kbot. It has much shorter range vs ground but does better damage vs ground than AA missile units.
- sea-wise, the PT boats Skeeter and Searcher now have much better skirmish weapons, being much longer ranged (still less damage output than Flashes and Instigators though. Useful if you build enough of them). The Skeeter now has an EMG.
- Transport boats now have teleport loading, are armed with a laser and will auto-unload all units at once instead of manually one-by-one.
- Metal Extractors can be upgraded for much more armour and a laser weapon.
- LLTs are halved in price and have better range.
- HLTs do more damage, have much more armour and have much better range.
- Guardians and Punishers do more damage and have much more armour, and are a little cheaper - although they have a much longer buildtime.
- added L1 defenses (can be built by commander): AA-only lasers (Arm Fury and Core Scythe), short range plasma cannons (Radical and Blocker), and the Sunspot, an Arm EMG tower as a counter to the Core Immolator.
- added L1 units for Arm: the Helldiver, a kind of heavy amphibious Peewee with the longer range lower damage EMG also used by the Skeeter. The Terrier, somewhere beween the Jeffy and Flash in speed and armour. The Janus, a heavy rocket tank.  The Viking, a Rocket Frigate. 
- added L1 units for Core: The Garpike, an amphibious laser tank. The Shodan, a slow-firing HLT tank. The MAK, a heavy version of the AK with AA missiles. The Jar, the Can's smaller brother. The Vanguard, a Rocket frigate.

*** L2 Improvements:

- more armour, more range and/or damage pretty much across the board, albeit in some cases with some cost increases
- Zippers and Freakers are much faster, the Zipper now has a short-burst, high-damage EMG
- Cans and Sumos move much quicker (still very slow) and have much better range
- Shooters and Penetrators have decent armour, much better range and aiming
- Spy kbots have much better line of sight range, and have become saboteurs as well - you can tell them to attack other units and they will set off a detonator next to them. It has high damage but a long reload time though, and be warned using this will decloak them and expose them to enemy fire.
- naval-wise, advanced construction subs have much smaller footprints. Missile ships get better range, higher damage, better AA missiles and better armour. Subkillers get better armour to suit their cost. Cruisers get a better depth charge. Battleships have more armour and massive salvo fire (this evens the score between the Millenium and Warlord a little).
- Annihilators get 50% more range and much more damage per shot, Doomsday Machines get better BLOD aiming and doubled range on the blue and green lasers. Both get much better damage per shot.
- Ambushers and Toasters get much cheaper, and much more damage with bigger splash damage. They get improved range but are still outranged by Guardians and Punishers.
- Added defenses: Archgun and Chainsaw, rapid cannons with battleship range (20% further than Guardians/Punishers), and the Arm Artic, a pop-up gauss cannon counter to the Core Viper - which incidentally has a much higher power but slower firing laser - more than double the damage but about half the fire rate of the HLT.
- added L2 Arm units: the Rover, a rotating gattling-style artillery cannon version of the Fido. The Shocker, a crawling all-terrain heavy artillery. The Cipher, a stealth gauss tank. The Messenger, an annihilator ship, and the Pike, a heavy battlesub.
- added L2 Core units: the Reaver, a 4-legged heavy riot kbot with aa missiles. The Gargoyle, a mobile Doomsday Machine. The Mammoth, a heavy artillery tank that is also armed with riot cannons. The Omni, a rocket ship that fires heavy tracking rockets as well as AA missiles.
- Also added for sea: Arm Thorndado bomber that drops depth charge bombs, the Sontor torpedo gunship, underwater moho mines and moho metal makers.

*** Level 3 Tier:

- L3 Kbots: The Krogoth is much bigger, much meaner and amphibous. Arm gets the Drake, a faster but less well-armoured multi-weapon amphibious monster. In addition, there are less insane battle kbots, anti-air kbots, rapid-firing long-range walking artillery, and walking energy weapons.
- L3 Vehicles: big big tanks for siege, assault, amphibious attacks, mobile mininukes and mobile fortresses for each side.
- L3 Ships: In addition to massive capital ships with huge long-range, short-range and anti-air firepower, there are huge battlecruisers, heavy artillery battleships and 4-pad floating fusion antinuke aircraft carriers.
- L3 Aircraft: Flying nuclear missile bombers anyone? ;) Or super-fast devastating air interceptors? How about some super-massive gunships for erasing your enemy off the map. With armed air command cruisers to provide air reconnaisance and specialist strike capabilities.
- L3 Hovercraft: Hovercraft dreadnaughts are handy for both antisub and anti-everything-else with multiple weapons systems. Long-range heavy artillery on a hovercraft? Heavy guided rockets? How about a hovercraft Annihilator. Might come in handy. 
- In addition, there are experimental Level 3 constructors that can build a variety of massive and fabulously palatial structures to hugely boost your resource income to fuel your war machine, heavy defences to protect it, and nuclear cannons to end the game. There are also extra-long range radar towers, and the Buzzsaw and Vulcan are also moved to L3.

*** Other notable changes

- metal extractors cost 50% more metal, are about 30% tougher and produce 25% more metal. This makes early economy startups shorter and games faster paced, and makes expanding to seek metal patches much more important. Mohos are unchanged in cost but produce 60% more metal (!!) for an increased energy operating cost.
- Solars are much cheaper and will be more worthwhile as an alternative to the less reliable (where wind is variable) but still potentially better value wind generators.
- Pop-up advanced solar collectors are available for both sides built by L1 construction units (but not the commander). They produce triple the energy of regular solar collectors, the same amount of energy used by a metal maker. 
- Construction Kbots move much more quickly - still slower than Construction vehicles, but faster than the Commander, and they are cheaper than the vehicle counterparts, offering better value nanolathing rate for the cost.
- factories have mostly had their nanolathe rates doubled, making games more faster paced but also meaning assisting a lab with a construction unit yields less reward.
- Single airpads are shifted to L1 construction units. Quad air repair stations are now available for L2.
- Targeting facilities are halved in cost.
- Nukes cost 7 times the metal! But can be built in less time. Antinukes cost roughly double the metal.
- Cloakable fusions are just under double the cost and produce double the energy of their non-cloakable versions. They also cloak for much less. Underwater fusions have also been boosted.

*** Huge thanks goes out to:

- all the people who have contributed directly...

either with content: models, scripts, concepts, imagination, graphics - M1G, Doombowser, PlasmoidThunder, Flame599596, Zippo, Sarwajagat, Archdragon, Warlord, Hamb0, Kamikaze, Warlord_285, Rampage, Xubor, Stealth870

- or have helped with bug-spotting, opinions and contribution to discussion: SnakeInTheMirror (aka Keeper), psycros, GLUFETZ, Rage, Microman, Skirmisher, legion, Stchurdak, Krogoth22, begtus, stuartpierce, ruhtraeel, RelentlessOrdeal... Even if your idea doesn't make it or I don't agree with your opinion. 

Feedback, critical though, analytical thought and creative thought is always valued.

- special mention to Darkvamp for creating a few cool videos of Total Mayhem on youtube a couple years back :)

- thanks to the original 3rd-party unit developers that started the modding community back at the end of the last millenium. Many units of theirs still exist in some form in Total Mayhem, and inspired me to start this project back in 1999:

	AfterMath Design (AMD), Bedlam Design, Central Consciousness, Conrad Units (CUKEN), Core Prime, DCS, Draconious, Immer, ITA, KTAU, M3G/MAGMA, Marcosoft, GKX/Mongolian Battleworks, MAD-TA, PeeWee Division, SkunkWorks, TA Arsenal Network (TAAN), TA Biohazard Design, TA Design Division (TADD), TAEC, TA Fans, TA Forever, TAMMO, TARAD, TAWF, TA-Designers, TA-Power, TaskForce, Tonic Ragers, Total Obliteration, Unlimited Units, Wormhole Productions, Xubor... This is by no means a comprehensive list.

- thanks to the original 3rd-party utility developers and hackers that made 3rd-party unitmaking possible and mostly still in use to this day: 

	JoeD (all the HPI editing, packing and unpacking tools are based on his work), Kinboat (GAFBuilder and 3dobuilder), Quantum Design (newer version of 3dobuilder), Khalv Kalash (Scriptor, the decompiler/editor/compiler), Dark Rain, R1CH, Benito and Silencer, and many more.

- other hackers and programmers that have made literally dozens of enhancements to the original game of TA possible: Swedish Yankspankers, Xon, Xpoy, Rahsennor and many many more.

- the past and present admins and builders of TA Universe, the #1 resource, modding and fan site for Total Annihilation for nearly 15 years (has it been that long?) most especially to BlueWolf who keeps the engine running and N72, who has turned out to be a stellar project manager for the massive TA 4.0 Patch project.

Hope you enjoy this as much as I do. 


-- gamma@mayhem.tauniverse.com
http://mayhem.tauniverse.com
------------------------------------