i remember playing a tiny bit for Total Annihilation long ago and this was $6 on steam over the weekend, did anyone else pick it up? Anything i should know going in? Has it gotten better over time?

Titans? (big expansion, not sure if that's what was on sale - Kickstarters got a free upgrade when they released that).

When PA first came out then it was a mess. Obviously rushed for a retail deal (which wasn't even a final version, they did an Early Access box deal!), not finished in so many way, nowhere near balanced from the limited community testing/alpha/betas. It wasn't a good first impression.

But it's kinda an ok rate-based (as in TA lineage - you get resources at X per second and spend them building as -Y per second, you can build storage but fundamentally you can tell it to build everything and it just slows down if you can't afford to run it full speed/run out of stored resources) RTS. They got enough fixed that it's not a bad one of those games. No campaign (there's a rogue-a-like thing that's a bit FTL which chains some skirmish missions and slowly builds out your tech tree) but if you're happy for MP or skirmishes/comp-stomp then there's a lot to be enjoyed here. Some of the interface choices (area select and build, smart patrolling) make it very hard to go back to games like this where you can't just draw chains of buildings and have them sensibly place with the gap you'd want or just tell the builder to chain up every spot where something can be built to saturate a new planet with metal extractors.

The multiple planets thing is cool and sometimes works but sometimes doesn't. It's building a really hard choke-point into the design so sometimes it's more of a pain than you think it should be (especially if you're early into the rogue-a-like and don't have doomsday tech unlocked so you don't have good tools to just vaporise a planet if you're ahead in the resources race).

There was some balancing that eventually got ironed out as the game was developed and it felt kinda ok by the time Titans came out but I'd played a decent number of hours (70-80 total) by the time that happened and haven't really been back recently. I don't get the impression this is a SC2 tier of game balance and evolving meta. But it sure beats loading up TA (kinda unplayable with that interface nowadays) or SupComm (still an ok game but it's showing that age). SupComm 2 isn't a rate-based RTS so I don't even count it in the same sub-genre.

It's very much what you expect from a modern version of TA. All the building tiers are here, the different unit type strengths and weaknesses. The big thing to learn is the new UI and orbital tier. That's really important for getting everything going. Then get used to working several planets and jumping focus (picture-in-picture is good). It's not a direct clone of TA but you should be able to jump in and get most of the way to competent based on remembering how to play TA or SupComm. The rogue-a-like isn't a bad way to learn the tech trees as you slowly unlock them during play.