Total Annihilation came out approximately 6 months before and is infinitely better than StarCrapt. There are a ton of features in TA that make it THE best RTS of all time: - Swappable AIs. - Thousands of downloadable units and unit packs. - Aerial nanoconstruction. - Unlimited unit following and command execution. - Up to 10,000 constructed units on a single map. - Unlimited unit selections. - Decent pathfinding algorithm. Units don't get stuck on walls. - Unlimited resources at any location. - No annoying "we require more of [resource goes here]" messages. - Unlimited queues. - Just two factions: Arm or Core. - Up to 300 unit types for each faction. Way better than Supreme Commander I/II, the supposed "spiritual successors" to TA. The reason you haven't heard of Total Annihilation before is because Cavedog's marketing team was not very good, the storyline of the campaign was quite weak, and the game lacks variety without the Core Contingency expansion. That combination led to a lot of people prematurely dismissing the game. Simply put, a properly modded TA (Core Contingency + TAUCP + a decent AI + all unlocks) should be the *bare minimum* baseline for measuring RTS games made today.
