Well, we did have a teammate leave, but luckily it didn't kill the project. However, ever since, I'm worked on creating "Plan Bs" in case a vital teammate has to leave.  So far, I've made absolutely sure that if I'm the only one left (heaven forbid) the game will be delayed but not destroyed.  So you all have yet to fear cancellation because of a team collapse.

But what am I saying?  If you talk about the boogie man, the boogie man comes.

Coming back to your question about refineries, DJ, we're going to allow a player to build 2 refineries at the beginning of the game.  We have to actually test this to see if it will end up being too much or too little.

I apologize to those of you who checked out #seekanddestroy and found nothing going on.  My busy college/work schedule means I can have few one-on-one converstations (usually 7:00-8:00 PM Pacific Time is the best, and even that's not all the time) if it's not team-releated business.

Actually, when I said

However, if you want the most information possible, visit http://www.unitedti.org/forum/index.php?showforum=65 or use an IRC and join #seekanddestroy

, I meant that I'll be on that channel even if away from the computer, so you can type a question there about amost anything about S.A.D. , and I will answer as soon as I can.  (I WILL NOT answer any questions about the storyline itself, but that is the only exception)  Of course, if you catch me at 7:00 PM-8:00 PM and I'm at my computer, I'll happily have a long conversation.

Sorry for any inconviences 

I posted some new information about a change to the Reclauda to make Argos more appealing in some situations...that is, now sometimes Reclaudas are the obvious choice for anti-air, other times Argos are.

The change is that Reclaudas now have a weapons range of 2.  I made this change on UnitedTi (what's the big deal, you're asking) so I just wanted to remind everyone that the best way to get maximum information on this project is UnitedTi.  There is a lot of minor information I posted there that I can't always post here.

Now that said, I was wondering something for a while: will there be more races in future game versions?

If I decided to work on a stand-alone expansion, that's one of my biggest goals, having at least one additional race.  I don't want to directly copy a strategy from another RTS game, so coming up with a unique strategy that will be balanced is something that is a little more difficult in this kind of game, if only because you can use only one unit at a time.  I think I have a couple of rough ideas.  But for right now, there's only going to be the one race in the vanilla SAD.

Now, of course, for the campaign, you can design your own race...graphics, abilities, etc.  The sky's the limit, though, and these races are only for the AI.  I include an example of this for two of the missions in the provided campaign.

We've added automatic attacking to S.A.D.  If you need to focus on base construction, you can let the program take over the firing of your vessel as long as you direct where it attacks.  This is exactly the method other RTS games use.

However, you gain an advantage if you use manual attack at some points of the game and your opponent uses automatic attack the whole time.  Needless to say, the key to winning is using automatic and manual attack at the right times

I assume this is when the attack is close to the vessel, right? Else if while building the vessel goes and attack all bases in the directions you specified maybe it might make it too easy

Part of strategy is sometimes this is correct, sometimes not.  What I will say are there are at least two factors in making your decision:

1. With manual attacking, you can fire while moving.  You cannot move while firing in auto-attack mode.
2. Refillable and Deteriorating upgrades can only be used manually

EDIT: By the way, during automatic movement, you can ask your vessel to automatically fire at close targets if it travels past them.  But since firing uses fuel, it's not always the best choice.