Income, Spending and Stalls
Total Annihilation does not add your income a little at a time. Once a second it settles your economy: it adds up what your units produced and what they asked to spend, pays what it can, and keeps the rest in your stores. Knowing how this settle works explains what you see in a stall.
The Settle
Every income value in the game data is the amount added at each settle, so it is an amount per second. This covers a unit's own output, such as the Commander's 25 energy and 1 metal, the 20 energy of a Solar Collector and the yield of a Metal Extractor.
Builders and other consumers run up their spending tick by tick, and the settle pays for it. At each settle, the game:
- adds the second's production to what you have stored;
- pays any spending still owed from earlier seconds;
- pays the spending of the second just ended;
- keeps what is left as your new store. Anything above your maximum storage is lost.
Two things do not wait for the settle. A weapon that costs energy or metal takes the cost from your store when it fires. Resources you send to an ally also leave your store at once.
What Happens in a Stall
When the settle cannot pay all the spending, every consumer is paid the same share. There is no priority between a factory, a builder and a metal extractor. If the settle can pay 30% of what was asked, each of them gets 30%, and the unpaid 70% stays with each unit as a debt.
A unit with a debt cannot spend anything new. A builder or factory stops completely and its job makes no progress until later settles have paid the debt from new income. Then it starts again. In a stall your builders do not slow down; they stop and start, and over time they build only as fast as your income can pay.
A unit always gets one second of work before its bill arrives. This is why a stall shows a second after a store reaches zero.
What Stops When a Store Is Empty
| Consumer | With an empty store |
|---|---|
| Weapons with a cost per shot | Fire only when the whole cost of one shot is in store. The Big Bertha needs 1500 energy in store for each shot. |
| Builders, factories and repair | Stop until their debt is paid. |
| Missile stockpiles | The Retaliator and anti-missile defences stop building missiles and try again every third of a second. |
| Cloaking | The unit decloaks at the first settle that cannot pay its full cloaking cost. |
| Metal makers | Make no metal in a second that follows an energy stall. |
| Metal extractors | The same: an extractor whose energy was not paid makes no metal. |
| Radar, sonar and jammers | Keep working. Their energy use is simply not paid. |
An energy shortage therefore costs you metal as well. When energy runs out, your extractors and metal makers stop too.
Base Storage
You can store resources before you build any storage. At the start of a game, the game sets your base storage of each resource to your starting amount, or to 200 if you start with less. With the usual 1000 metal and 1000 energy, you can store 1000 of each; start with 5000 and you can store 5000 of each. The Commander itself adds no storage. Metal Storage and Energy Storage add to this base.
Sharing With Allies
In multiplayer, sharing is checked every 2 seconds. When metal sharing is on and your stored metal is above your sharing level, one third of the metal above that level goes to the allied player with the least stored metal, up to the space in their storage. Energy works the same way, but half of the energy above the level is sent. The ally receives it at their next settle.
Worked Example: A Commander Without Energy
Your energy store is empty, nothing else uses energy, and your only income is the Commander's own 25 energy a second. The Commander starts a Metal Extractor. With full stores this takes 6 seconds and uses 86.8 energy a second (see build power).
| Second | The Commander | Energy owed after the settle |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Builds | 61.8 |
| 2 | Waits | 36.8 |
| 3 | Waits | 11.8 |
| 4 | Waits | 0, with 13.2 left in store |
| 5 | Builds | 48.7 |
| 6 | Waits | 23.7 |
| 7 | Waits | 0, with 1.3 left in store |
| 8 | Builds | 60.5 |
The Commander builds for one second in every three or four. The sixth second of work, which finishes the extractor, comes in second 19 instead of second 6. The energy is still paid in full: 521 energy, at 25 a second.