Custom mods in Total Annihilation are generally homemade custom units and AI's added to the existing line of default units. TA quite comfortably outstrips any RTS game you care to name when it comes to custom modifications - unless you consider the endless campaigns and "RPGs" churned out in by the StarCraft and WarCraft fans, but these are more expressions of Blizzard's excellent map editors, not a complete reworking of the game itself. You could easily spend months, or even a few years just playing through all the possibilities offered by thousands of diverse maps, units, custom AI's and dozens of game tweaks. TA's solid gameplay, its modular nature and the extraordinary output from the TA community itself has produced something that's going to be around for years to come. The engine might be old and buggy by today's standards, but it still offers more fun than most newer and flashier strategy titles out there.

Most Total Annihilation mods rely on the Core Contingency expansion being present. If you can, try and buy the Core Contingency or better still, the Commander Pack that bundles everything together. Unfortunately, I've yet to see any signs of these extras being available commercially and there's no longer any TA presence at Atari, other than some old support pages that are several years and several owners old. I think technically its abandonware, although you'd probably get into trouble so as a stopgap you may want to download the CC features and units at the TA Fansite or at TA Designers.

Here's a quick list of some of the custom unit packs that are currently available for downloading for TA. (Its not completely comprehensive, and you may want to chase up the list of custom mods and extra races at Planet Annihilation.) One of the major problems with downloading lots of different custom units is that conflicts between them can occur. To fix this problem, make use of the TA Conflict Crusher. Or take advantage of the custom mod/unit/map/AI switching utilities TA:Mutation or TA Commander, which not only lets you install as many mods, maps and units to your game as you like, but also "conflict crushes" any potential clashes between them as well.

You'll also find a lot of "classic" old units shared amongst many mega mods, made many moons ago by units groups long since gone but still much loved. I kinda miss TAMMO, the original Core Prime, the TAWF, SkunkWorks, TARAD and a few others... anyway, their work lives on.

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