FreeOrion

Strategic Resources, as in Civ3. It might be fun to include them, modified a little from Civ3's model.

I was thinking they'd be planet specials. They are never required--you don't need a strategic resource to use a technology--instead they improve a technology.

If you own a planet and devote a facility on that world to gathering/refining the resource, the resource provides an empire-wide bonus of some sort. For example, Foobar Crystals might improve laser technology. If you build a Foobar Crystal Refinery on a planet with the appropriate special, all of your ships do an extra point of damage when using lasers.

If you waste facility slots building extra crystal refinery, rather than giving you an additional bonus it gives you a resource token that you can trade with other empires.

The idea is to facilitate interempire trade (and therefore politics--dare you go to war with the galaxy's only known suppliers of Warp Spice?) and adds texture to the technology decisions of each empire.

(hrm, certain resources might also be destroyed by terraforming, like Dune-ish Warp Spice. Gives you a strong late game incentive not to terraform these key worlds.)

For example, if you've got Trilithdroofol that makes better missle warheads, you'd be more incline to research missle tech. Once you've made a significant investment in missle tech, the planet containing Trilithdroofol becomes a natural target for your enemies. The list of obvious targets for a fleet to drive for expands beyond just the enemy homeworld.

I'm not sure how I stand on this one, but I'm sure about one thing: I want an option to turn this stuff off at game start. Not because I dislike the concept, I'm on the fence about that. More because I sometimes prefer to play without gaining a significant advantage or disadvantage because of my starting point in the galaxy.

They'd be planet specials, so presumably you'd be able to turn them off by selecting an option for "no random specials."

Sounds like a cool idea, as you don't have to choose from too many strategic resource buildings, to activate the strategic resource.

You could have cool things like certain resources improve research in a certain field or reduce mainranance costs or can be sold and traded.

I second this diea as well. Always nice to have such thingies, and if we can toggle them off at game start, the better.

I like the idea of strategic resources. Other aspects of gameplay could be affected by them, too. Resources could for example accelerate research in one branch of science, give boni to diplomacy (empathic drugs), increase population growth, luck concerning random events or attract spacemonsters...
Besides giving incentives to expand and to trade, special resources also help to distinguish the different empires since they support certain technologies or strategies. Therefore strategic resources should be quite rare and unique. Not more than one or two sources of each resource in the whole galaxy.

We need to be careful not to make this sort of thing too common. If every other planet has some sort of special resource those things aren't really very special anymore.

So I'd suggest not more then maybe 12 different resources, and not more then 24 planets with special ressources.

For example we could have 4 extremely rare special ressources (1 source each), 4 very rare special ressources (2 sources each), and 4 rare special ressources (3 sources each).

This way we can use those ressources even better to steer the gameplay.

Actually I was thinking it something like 1 of these things for every 2 empires. Those fine points are probably subject to playtesting.

Or maybe every homeworld has one of these specials, or every homworld as a planet in its system having those specials, or every player has a planet next to him, so its evenly contributed.

The idea should not to give one player, that has most of these strategic resources a big advantage, but to give every player a little of those nice stuff, to encourage trade between the empires.

What are these "slots" you speak of. I don't really like having a limited amount of space on my planet. Particularly if its a HUGE planet. I want to be able to build all the structures that my planet classification will allow. Not have to choose between an automated factory and a robo-miner plant. Too much micro no real benefit.

Oh and strategic resources in that sense would be neat. But DO NOT go overboard with them.

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Aquitaine is my Hero....

I don't think it would be a problem, because their will not be 5 different versions of automated factory. Buildings will be more unique, meaning you will have to decide between specialising or having a balance of buildings.

This could work, but its definatly not a v0.2 issue so we have plenty of time to brainstorm it.

First off I belive the resorces should not be done as was the case in Civ 3, a single occurrance of the resorces was all that was needed. Basicaly your either had it or you didn't. I propose that the resoreces be quantified so theirs 5 warp spice on this planet and 2 on that planet. This will help create a market for the resorce as I can trade away any amount I wish.

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Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

Yes one valuable resource would be a whole lot easier to manage and you would not have to worry about whether this is better than that because nothing is more valuable than warp spice and if you have 2 and your neighbour has 5, then it's war, take their warp spice, yeah!