After playing Starcraft last week, I noticed that there's a point in the game where you could still have a chance of winning if only you had enough resources for a Nexus, Hatchery or Command Center.  But because you didn't have that chance of winning, you basically had to give up, even if you had all sorts of buildings left.  And this happens in a lot of RTS games.

BUT, in Supreme Commander, the game doesn't end until your commander is killed, so as long as your commander is still alive, you can still keep playing because the Commander generates its own resources, so your opponent could wipe out all your resource means and you could still catch up.  I saw a video of one player who started getting back in the game because his Commander was still alive.

In S.A.D., I've been trying to think of how to keep a player (who doesn't want to give up) in the game until all Operation Centers are destroyed (game over).  A Scouter is free for no other reason than if you're out of resources, you still have a ship you can use.  It's versatility is partly due to this goal of mine.  However, if you're out of resources, you could have cloak, air/ground attack and jet pack, but not very much you could do with it.  I'm inspired by the idea of a Scouter generating 60 crystals a minute like a refinery that can't be upgraded, but I'm wondering what other people think of the idea.  Please vote!


EDIT: We're changing the idea slightly...whatever you vote(d), the Scouter won't generate these resources "all the time", but rather it will mine them when near a resource patch.  You can still do things like attacking and building when mining these.  Also, the resource rate is fixed, you cannot upgrade a Scouter to mine more like you can a refinery

I have a progress update, but I want to start by answering ztrumpet's question:

Is it possible to have an option that would show up on calcs with xRam to "Use Ram or xRam"?

We're probably going to have two versions of S.A.D.--one for regular ti-83+, and one for Ti-83+ SE and Ti-84+.  The latter will use the extra ram, as well as 15 MHz mode unless playing against a regular ti-83+.

Now for the update:  In the process of adding objects, I did some work on the icon menu system.  My goal was to create menu code that would make it very, very easy to add the other menus, and it seems to be working so far.  Here's the work I did on adding structures.

In future versions, I'll add hotkey support, and the menu / description text will be displayed over the game, rather than on a blank screen.

and yeah what race is good for begginers X.x i have no clue X.x

I hope DJ doesn't mind me throwing in my two cent's worth, even though he's the one who should be answering this question...

Most of the time, Terran is the best starting race.  Terrans are the most versatile and have an average cost.  Most of their units have a ranged attack and can be used for more than one purpose, meaning if you have to change strategies instantly, it's easier to do so than with the other races.  It's important to note that Terran is the only race that can build anywhere...also important to note is the Terran Battlecruiser is the most powerful unit in the game if you use it correctly.  (For those of you who want to argue about the Protoss carrier, this has been proven)

However, if--if--you're finding you have tons of money to spend when you're playing because you forget to spend it, you might want to play as Protoss.  They cost a lot of money to build, but that's because their units are very beefed up.  They also play somewhat similar to Terran, with a few differences, but if you can play Terran, you can play Protoss without too much trouble.  I play as Protoss because as a noob, I always have all this money left to spend.

I personally don't recommend Zerg for beginners, because they are in no way similar to the other two races.  I'll let someone else give the details

I would like to do so. Basically I could setup a game in melee mode, where we would play each others but we would have the same race and first I would teach you how to build stuff and the like

Can I join if I promise to be nice?  

Just out of mere curosity, DJ, what race would you hope to start geekboy on?  All races are good, but I've never heard of a beginner starting as Zerg before, it's always been either Terran or Protoss...

If you're in the 3d graphing mode (like I said, for the ti-83+ application) and type in KIRK for Y1, Kirk's name will be displayed.  I don't know the one for the platypus.

It makes me wonder if there's going to be a point where it will be plain impossible to make anything smaller...that is, I wonder if, 100-200 years from now, if you want 10,000 TB Hard Drive, 100 GB RAM and a 50 GHz processor, you will have to get a computer the size of a desk

I don't have time to keep looking for who here may be online, so it would be sweet if we had some arranged matches

Beta testing *does* ruin a game's experience, so be aware of that.

Which is why we're releasing very little with the S.A.D. beta/demo, because then even testers will have something exciting to look forward to