[11-2-8] Hulks of death

Learn how to turn sea transports into devastating floating bombs in Total Annihilation. Discover the power of exploding crawling bombs and how to obliterate enemy battleships with the Hulk of Death strategy.

Alright, let's talk about one of the most brutal and satisfying tactics in Total Annihilation: the 'Hulk of Death'. You know how those little crawling bombs are annoying? Well, we're going to make them *way* more useful, especially against those big, tough battleships.

The core idea here is to leverage the self-destruct capability of crawling bombs, specifically the Invader, and combine it with the carrying capacity of a sea transport, like the Hulk. Sea transports can carry a good number of units – 20, or even 24 depending on your faction. When a unit self-destructs, it creates a massive explosion. An Invader, when it blows itself up, packs a punch almost equivalent to half a nuke!

Now, imagine loading up a Hulk with these exploding Invaders. From what I've seen, if you load about 6 Invaders onto a Hulk and then tell that Hulk to self-destruct right next to an enemy Battleship, it's usually game over for the ship. Just drive your Hulk right up to its side and hit that self-destruct command – BAM! No more Battleship. Even the super-tough Warlord can't survive this blast, though its heavy laser might make it tricky to get your Hulk close enough without it getting blasted first.

The best part? Crawling bombs are incredibly cheap in terms of metal. Metal is almost always the limiting factor in Total Annihilation, not energy. So, while the total energy cost of this floating bomb might exceed that of a single battleship, the metal cost is a fraction – we're talking maybe a quarter of the metal needed for a battleship. That's a huge economic advantage.

Here's a crucial detail: the damage from the crawling bombs detonating *while they're still inside the Hulk* stacks up. This means the explosion is even more devastating. Anything caught near the center of this massive blast is going to be obliterated. And even if the enemy manages to destroy your floating bomb before it fully self-destructs, the Hulk itself will still deal significant damage – about 7,500 points of damage from 6 Invaders, which is still a massive hit!