TORRENT / Guides / Getting started

Getting started

TORRENT is a large-scale RTS in the Total Annihilation lineage. If you've played an RTS before, you already know how to move and attack. What's different here is that everything — economy, construction, combat — is a continuous stream, not a series of discrete purchases. This page gets you from a cold start to a functioning war machine.

Running the prototype

There's no hosted build yet. From the repository root:

npm install
npm run dev

The dev server prints a local URL (for example http://localhost:5173/). Open it in a current WebGL2 browser — Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari — with a keyboard and mouse. Strategic zoom lives on the mouse wheel; you'll want it constantly. See the Play section for full requirements.

The Commander

You start every match with exactly one Commander: a powerful builder-combat unit with the best build power of any early unit, a strong short-range weapon, radar, and cloak. It is also your walking loss condition — in the default rules, if your Commander dies, you lose.

That dual nature is the whole opening drama. The Commander has a catastrophic death explosion that devastates everything nearby, which makes a Commander push a genuine, dramatic tactic — and a Commander snipe a genuine, dramatic threat. Every early decision is really one question: how far forward do you dare risk the most important unit in the game?

Rule option

The default mode is "Commander death = defeat." A lobby option flips this to "army remnant" mode, where losing the Commander only costs you its build power, not the match. Unless you've changed it, assume your Commander must survive.

Your opening build

The Commander gives the first minutes a fixed grammar. You will do roughly this every game, adjusting only where:

  1. Send the Commander to a metal spot and build a Metal Extractor. Metal spots are the finite, fixed locations that produce metal — they are the strategic skeleton of the map. Place a couple more extractors on nearby spots.
  2. Build energy. Extractors and everything else run on energy. Drop a few Solar Collectors (cheap, safe) or Wind Turbines. If your energy stalls, your metal income stalls with it.
  3. Build your first factory — a Bot Lab or Vehicle Plant. This is your tech gate; it decides which units you can make.
  4. Queue constructors from the factory and set a rally point. Constructors expand your economy, assist builds, and reclaim wreckage. More build power = faster everything, if the economy can fund it.
  5. Expand outward toward contested metal spots with raiders, deciding all the while how far forward the Commander goes.

The one habit that matters

Keep both resource bars moving. Idle build power is wasted income; empty storage is a stalled army. The economy guide is the single most valuable thing to read next — economy is the highest-leverage skill in TORRENT.

Factories & tech tiers

There is no research lab and no upgrade tree. Tech is infrastructure you can see, scout, and destroy. Tiers are gated by factories, not by research points:

  • Tier 1 — cheap, fast factories (Bot Lab, Vehicle Plant, Aircraft Plant, Shipyard on water maps). T1 units are your infantry: raiders, all-purpose assault units, basic AA, and constructors.
  • Tier 2 — advanced factories built by T1 constructors at significant cost. Specialists and heavies: real artillery, amphibians, stealth, mobile shields, and advanced constructors that unlock the T2 economy.
  • Tier 3 / Experimental — built by T2 constructors via a dedicated Experimental Gantry. A handful of enormous units that each cost as much as an army and can fight one.

Because tech is physical, scouting the enemy's factories tells you exactly what they can field, and destroying a factory sets that whole line back. Intel — radar, jammers, scout planes over the enemy economy — is a real layer of play.

How you win

By default: destroy every enemy Commander. Optional victory modes are annihilation (destroy everything) and timed score. Matches target 20–40 minutes. You'll spend that time doing three things at once — growing throughput, building the right army composition, and positioning it where physics favors you (range, elevation, avoiding splash).

Where to go next

  • The streaming economy — learn to read the two bars, avoid stall and overflow, and turn the battlefield into income. Read this next.
  • Unit roster — the Tier-1 land units for both factions and what each role is for.
  • Controls & commands — shift-queueing, line-move, area commands, control groups, and strategic zoom.
← Guides overview The streaming economy →