This section is intended for players of SWTA who have little or no experience playing Total Annihilation. SWTA follows TA's basic resource and gameplay structure, which will be explained in detail in the following section.

To play Star Wars: Total Annihilation, you will need to launch SWTA.exe, not Totala.exe or the regular "Play TA" button that appears when placing your TA CD in its drive.

Once SWTA has started, you will be presented with the SWTA Main Screen. You can choose three destinations from this screen: Single, Multi, and Exit. Multi will allow you to play SWTA against other players via IP games. For more information on doing that, see Section VI, Online/Multiplayer Gaming. For now, select the Single menu.

From the Single Player screen, you can choose four options: Campaign (disabled in SWTA; see Section VII, Frequently Asked Questions for details why), Skirmish, Options, and Load Game. It is highly recommended that you changed your Game Options via the Options menu before starting SWTA. Use the Interface menu to change your Interface to Right-Click, if you prefer StarCraft-style moving/attacking via the right mouse button; Total Annihilation default is set to Left-Click, similar to the Command & Conquer series' style of gameplay. Also recommended is changing your Screen Size via the Visuals menu to the resolution you run your Windows Desktop at.

To play SWTA, select Skirmish from the Single Player screen. This will take you to the Skirmish Setup screen. The upper-right portion of the screen is a list of Players; Player should be the only one listed originally. Under Player should be three slots, available for computer players (Note: to enable up to 9 computer players, press *X at the Skirmish Setup screen).

Next to each player's name are several options, customizable for each player: Side, Color, Ally, and Starting Resources. You can choose either IMP or REB for your Side, and any Color you want for unit identification. The Ally menu is used to ally two players to one side, including AI characters. Simply give two players the same Ally shape. Once a match is made, the "break" in the shape will mend, signifying a team has been made. You can also adjust the amount of Minerals and Energy each player starts with. You may be tempted to give yourself the largest amount possible, but keep in mind that most online games are played with at most 5000 starting Minerals/Energy. If you plan on playing against other humans in the future, now is the best time to start training yourself!

Once you've added a Computer player and customized your sides and resources, you can review the other Miscellaneous options:

For now, add one Computer and set him to REB. Set your Side to IMP, and put Starting Resources for both of you to 5000 for both Minerals and Energy. Put the game on Permanent LOS, Mapped mapping, and Continues for TMB/MCV. Choose the map Lava Highground, and put the AI to Easy. Then start the game.

When the game loads, you'll be looking at your TMB, your "commander." The TMB is a construction unit, meaning it is responsible for building structures. If the game is not already paused, press the Pause key on your keyboard to do so. Now look at the top of the screen, towards the words Minerals and Energy. The blue/yellow bars represent your current stores of resources, with 0 stores being represented by an absent bar, and full resources (currently 5000) represented by a full bar. These bars will rise and fall depending on your resource input.

Next to each bar are two numbers, one in green and one in red. These are your resource intake/outtake meters. The green represents how much of that resource you produce every "tick," a tick being one second at Game Speed Normal. Similarly, the red number is how much of that resource you are spending per tick. At the start, you should be producing +1.0 minerals and +25 energy, and using -0.0 minerals and -1 energy.

The two resources differ in the following way: the cost of a unit in Minerals is proportional to that unit's armoring and firepower. More advanced units cost more minerals than less advanced ones. Minerals is not used for anything other than unit/building construction. You acquire minerals by placing Mineral Extractors on Mineral Patches, which show up in-game as silvery veins of metal. On a large mineral patch, an Imperial Mineral Extractor should produce around 2.5 minerals/tick.

Energy is more abundant than minerals, and thus the cost in energy of constructing a unit is typically several times larger than the mineral cost of that unit. Energy is produced by power plants, which will produce about 25 energy/tick. In addition to unit/structure construction, Energy also powers the functions of your units. Units take energy to move and fire laser-based weapons. Although it is a small amount, it can quickly add up, so be sure that you have ample energy supplies for your army.

Now for the "big picture" of the SWTA resource system:

Now that you understand the resource system, let's get into gameplay. Select your TMB. When you select a unit or structure than can build other units/structures, their build menu will appear to the left of your screen. Simply click on the structure you wish to build, and click where on the map you wish to place it. For now, click on the Fusion Generator in the upper-right build spot. While holding Shift, click twice on the terrain near your commander where the outline of the box is green. This signifies that the terrain is suitable to place that structure on. Holding Shift while you click allows you to "queue" up many structures at a time, rather than clicking on the build-pictures for that building each time.

After your TMB starts building the first of the Generators, click on the Mineral Extractor build-picture. While again holding Shift, click on the two Mineral Patches closest to your TMB. Once the TMB is done constructing the second Generator, it will begin to construct your Extractors. As you queue up more buildings, the TMB will process those commands in the same order they were given. The same process is used for Move, Patrol, Repair, Reclaim, and Attack commands.

Now have your TMB build a Barracks. To build a Barracks, click on the small right-arrow above the Stop command. This will let you access the next page of the TMB's build menu, on which the Barracks is located. Click on the Barracks, then place it on the battlefield (holding Shift if you TMB is still building the Extractors).

As soon as the Barracks is completed, select it. While holding Shift, click once on the top-most Stormtrooper picture. Holding shift will let you queue 5 units at a time. Then click on the Construction Droid picture. Units are naturally queued when built from a lab; you do not need to hold Shift like you do with structures. As soon as the Stormtroopers are finished, select one of them and press Control+Z. Doing so selects all of your units of the same type. Then press Control+1, which will group your units into Group 1. To select these troops at a later time, press Alt+1. (Note: If you dislike having to press Alt-1, press Enter and type "+switchalt". You will then only have to press 1 to select that group). If you want to assign all units built by a specific lab to the same Group, simply assign that lab to a Group. All units afterwards built by that lab will be automatically added to the Group.

Select your Stormtroopers and tell them to move away from your base, towards your enemy's, using the Mini-Map in the upper-left corner as a guide. As soon as your units get in-range of a unit they consider a "threat," they will open fire while still moving. Maneuver your units so that they continually fire, while still making them hard-to-hit targets. Eventually you will either kill all enemy units, or have all your units killed. In either case, you've just seen how battles in SWTA take place. (Note: If you want your units to fire at non-threats automatically, press Enter and type "+shootall")

And those are the basics.