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Total Annihilation seriesHow to Directly Edit the Unit Cap (Mac & Windows)(7 posts)(7 posts)
(7 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted April 30, 2015
Preamble

I had to scour the internet for several hours today to determine the solution this, myself, so I felt I should do the world a favor and put it all together in writing somewhere so that others could benefit from it.

There have been a number of unit cap patchers created over the past years that allow Total Annihilation to go past its default unit cap (250 retail, up to 500), up to as many as 5000 units. However, several of these patchers are not compatible with 64-bit environments, and while some can be coaxed to run under the Mac version using WINE, they're less-than-optimal and can cause other problems if they fail, requiring that you reinstall the game. This method directly edits two hex addresses in TOTALA.exe (the game executable), enabling the higher unit caps without requiring any third-party files, other than a hex editor. There's a little work involved, but the whole process is a lot cleaner than adding extra files to your game folder or fumbling around with getting incompatible 32-bit programs to run, and is also (as far as I know) the only realistic way to change the unit cap on the Mac GOG version.

Requirements

- A hex editor:
0xED (Mac)
Frhed (Windows)
- TOTALA.exe (Located in your game directory, or inside the app's "Package Contents" on the Mac)

Instructions

1. Find TOTALA.exe in your Total Annihilation program directory. On the Mac this is in "/Applications/Total Annihilation Commander Pack.app/Contents/Resources/drive_c/Program Files/GOG.com/Total Annihilation".
2. Make a copy of it somewhere else, so that you can restore it if you screw up.
3. Open TOTALA.exe in your Hex editor. If necessary, set the mode to "Little Endian" and make sure you are viewing hex values, NOT decimal values.
4. Find offsets "90A59" and "90A66", and find/change their values according to the following options:

- Default (500) --- F4 01 (Look for this address pair first, and select it to change it)
- 1500 Units --- DC 05
- 2500 Units --- C4 09
- 5000 Units --- 88 13

Note that you must change BOTH values to match. So if you change offset 90A59 to "C4 09" (2500 units), you MUST change the addresses at 90A66 to "C4 09".
5. Save your changes.
6. (Optional) If "TOTALA.INI" also exists in your game directory, edit it in your favorite text editor to reflect your new unit cap, or to optionally set any limit lower than the one you changed in the program executable, i.e. if you set your maximum limit to 1500 units, you can edit TOTALA.INI to any value equal to or less than 1500.

If you accidentally broke your game executable, drag your backup copy of TOTALA.exe back into the game directory and overwrite the broken one. If you forgot to back it up, download a new copy of the game from GOG.com.

I've tested and confirmed this with all of the unit caps listed above on the GOG.com Mac version of Total Annihilation. It may work for original retail copies, but I don't have one on hand to check and confirm. Note that if you have modified your game executable in such a way that it no longer works, GOG.com may not be able to support you. Make these changes at your own risk, but if you backed up your game executable, you should be in the clear.

If you have any questions about this, or get stuck along the way (editing hex doesn't exactly come naturally to everyone), just post in this topic and I'll try to get you pointed in the right direction.
Posted October 05, 2016
Hi there,

I've just tried it and it didn't work. I found the offsets and to get any values I had to clik on 90a66 and drag it to one side. thanks to that the values appeared on the screen. I've changed the BGR value to DC05 and some of the numbers changed to 1500 (as I thought it would be the number of units allowed). Saved the changes entered a game and built units as fast as possible but limit got stuck at 250. I hope there's something wrong I'm doing here.

Just to let you know I've upgraded my mac to OS X sierra ver 10.12

thanks
Attachments:
screen_shot_2016.png (118 Kb)
Post edited October 05, 2016 by Marek733
Posted March 26, 2017
I just signed up to post this reply. Thank you! It worked great. I'm on Windows 10 64-bit using the Steam version (I think 3.1?) of TA. I downloaded a hex editor, found the values you mentioned and edited them to DC 05. It worked great! Now I can have 1500 units.

Thank you for taking the time to write this post.
Posted July 24, 2019
Didn't work. Just prevented the game from loading altogether.

I do wish that GOG had put in the TOTALA.INI file. That was part of the official patches just so that the unit count could be easily increased and it was the first thing I looked for.
Posted June 14, 2020
I did try this right now and set it to 5000 units, but my savegame still can't build any more units. Do you have to start a new game or beat the current level to have the new unit limit recognized?
Posted December 28, 2024
Good day Meatslinger!
Excuse me for bothering,I write to you because I read your description about Total Annihilation more unit limit from 2013.
(https://www.gog.com/forum/total_annihilation_series/how_to_directly_edit_the_unit_cap_mac_windows)
I have a big problem, unfortunately I am not a computer expert, so I don't know how to find
offsets "90A59" and "90A66". I use Frhed Hex editor too.The binary mode is little endian(intel)
I typed "90A59" and "90A66" into the search engine(find) but it didn't find them(could not find data).
So I don't know what's the problem or What am I doing wrong?
I love this game so much, and I'm playing with Total Mayhem mod, but the unit limit is the default 200 unit in campaign mode,
this is the problem.I hope you can help me.



Best regards and Happy new year: Kikikirly
avatar
meatslinger: Preamble

I had to scour the internet for several hours today to determine the solution this, myself, so I felt I should do the world a favor and put it all together in writing somewhere so that others could benefit from it.

There have been a number of unit cap patchers created over the past years that allow Total Annihilation to go past its default unit cap (250 retail, up to 500), up to as many as 5000 units. However, several of these patchers are not compatible with 64-bit environments, and while some can be coaxed to run under the Mac version using WINE, they're less-than-optimal and can cause other problems if they fail, requiring that you reinstall the game. This method directly edits two hex addresses in TOTALA.exe (the game executable), enabling the higher unit caps without requiring any third-party files, other than a hex editor. There's a little work involved, but the whole process is a lot cleaner than adding extra files to your game folder or fumbling around with getting incompatible 32-bit programs to run, and is also (as far as I know) the only realistic way to change the unit cap on the Mac GOG version.

Requirements

- A hex editor:
0xED (Mac)
Frhed (Windows)
- TOTALA.exe (Located in your game directory, or inside the app's "Package Contents" on the Mac)

Instructions

1. Find TOTALA.exe in your Total Annihilation program directory. On the Mac this is in "/Applications/Total Annihilation Commander Pack.app/Contents/Resources/drive_c/Program Files/GOG.com/Total Annihilation".
2. Make a copy of it somewhere else, so that you can restore it if you screw up.
3. Open TOTALA.exe in your Hex editor. If necessary, set the mode to "Little Endian" and make sure you are viewing hex values, NOT decimal values.
4. Find offsets "90A59" and "90A66", and find/change their values according to the following options:

- Default (500) --- F4 01 (Look for this address pair first, and select it to change it)
- 1500 Units --- DC 05
- 2500 Units --- C4 09
- 5000 Units --- 88 13

Note that you must change BOTH values to match. So if you change offset 90A59 to "C4 09" (2500 units), you MUST change the addresses at 90A66 to "C4 09".
5. Save your changes.
6. (Optional) If "TOTALA.INI" also exists in your game directory, edit it in your favorite text editor to reflect your new unit cap, or to optionally set any limit lower than the one you changed in the program executable, i.e. if you set your maximum limit to 1500 units, you can edit TOTALA.INI to any value equal to or less than 1500.

If you accidentally broke your game executable, drag your backup copy of TOTALA.exe back into the game directory and overwrite the broken one. If you forgot to back it up, download a new copy of the game from GOG.com.

I've tested and confirmed this with all of the unit caps listed above on the GOG.com Mac version of Total Annihilation. It may work for original retail copies, but I don't have one on hand to check and confirm. Note that if you have modified your game executable in such a way that it no longer works, GOG.com may not be able to support you. Make these changes at your own risk, but if you backed up your game executable, you should be in the clear.

If you have any questions about this, or get stuck along the way (editing hex doesn't exactly come naturally to everyone), just post in this topic and I'll try to get you pointed in the right direction.
Posted July 15, 2025
Total Annihilation: Commander Pack v3.1

These are the steps taken for a GOG Total Annihilation install on Windows 11, but it may work similarly on Linux and Mac as well.

Game version: Total Annihilation: Commander Pack, v3.1
TACP v3.1 has a max unit cap of 500, but the game defaults to the Max Unit Cap of 250 unless the TotalA.ini file is used.

1. Open a Hex Editor
I used the hex editor located at: hexed. it
Not only does Hexed make editing easier, it is browser based and private because it runs locally on your device, which means there is no installation other than cache files. You can read more about it here: hexed. it/help/features.html

2. Locate the run file "TotalA.exe"
The location for the file on my system was:
C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Total Annihilation
Linux and Mac will be slightly different, but look for your GOG install location.

3. Make a backup copy of the Total Annihilation run file "TotalA.exe"
Make a duplicate of the original file and rename it to "TotalA.exe-(original)".
This is very important! If something goes wrong with the Hex Editing process and renders the game inoperable, you can restore by simply copying back the original file.

4. Use Hexed to open "TotalA.exe"
Use the "Open File" toolbar button in Hexed to open the TotalA.exe file. For me, the opened file defaulted to "little endian" in "Hexadecimal" format. This is what you want.

5. Search for lines "90A50" and "90A60"
In the hex editor, locate line number 90A50 and look for the hex code "F4 01". Click on the "F4" half of the code to select it. Then look at the top of the left-hand panel. You will see a number of entries that say "500". These are your max units. Change one of those entries to "5000" or another number of your choice, and the other entries will automatically change to match. The hex code will automatically update to reflect the change. It is unnecessary for you to know which hex code to enter. (see screenshots # 1, 2, 3)

Repeat this process for line 90A60. BOTH lines 90A50 and 90A60 must use identical unit numbers.

6. Export the hex edited exe file
Hexed may complain about not being able to save the edited file to the TA game folder. Simply save the file to your downloads, and then move it to your TA game install folder. If necessary, overwrite the existing TotalA.exe file. You did back it up first, right?

7. Create the "TotalA.ini" file
TACP v3.1 will default to a Max Unit Cap of 250 unless you use the "TotalA.ini" file.
In the same folder as the TotalA.exe file, make a new text file and rename it to "TotalA.ini". Then open the file and paste the following two lines of text:

[Preferences]
UnitLimit = 5000;

If you use a different Max Unit Cap number, then change the "5000" to the number you used.

8. Windows File Security
Windows may complain about the file being from another computer, and block it until you give the "OK" to use it. To avoid this hiccup when running the game, first right-click on the file to bring up the context menu. Then select "Properties". At the bottom of the little window that opens up, check the box that says "Unblock". (see screenshot #4)

Done. Enjoy the extra units!

PS: remove domain space from source links to make them work.
Attachments:
tacpv31-maxunith.png (168 Kb)
tacpv31-maxunith.png (8 Kb)
tacpv31-maxunith.png (169 Kb)
tacpv31-maxunith.png (50 Kb)
Post edited July 15, 2025 by mehtuus
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Total Annihilation seriesHow to Directly Edit the Unit Cap (Mac & Windows)(7 posts)(7 posts)
(7 posts)