S.A.D.--Staying alive until the game is officially over

[Hot_Dog]

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

[DJ Omnimaga]

Well in SC, in very tight games, Sometimes, I noticed that I'll be attacked nearly to death, but some less experienced players may leave my Nexus intact (or one of my hatcheries as Zerg) because for example one of his teamate will be attacked or he'll just move to another opponent that could be potentially dangerous (he'll say "well he has 1 command center left, he's harmless). At far points into the game, I may have a lot of ressources left, though, and most upgrades done, so I don,t need to build a lot of workers right away and can immediately rebuild my tech tree again, and if they doN't bother about me for a while again, I may be able to come back strong enough to help my teamates winning. I won some games this way. Evensometimes I got rushed almost to death and could barely do anything anymore until the end, but while my teamates took care of the enemies I tried to build as many upgraded zerglings as I could  and then I sent them with their army.

But again SAD is 1vs1 so that might not be possible to come back this strong.

I think the scouter should be able to generate ressources from the start, but at a very low rate, so it won't be too easy

[ztrumpet]

Excellent idea!  I just don't know how it should work.  I don't know weather it should have this ability for forever, or not.  Hmm.

[Hot_Dog]

But again SAD is 1vs1 so that might not be possible to come back this strong.

And up to 2 AIs, unless for some reason we can't get AI to work

[Hot_Dog]

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

[DJ Omnimaga]

aaah ok I like the idea ^^

[ztrumpet]

That's an even better idea!  I vote for that way.