An alternate idea for resources.

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Dreamer
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An alternate idea for resources.

#1 Post by Dreamer »

I know I probably arrived too late to this project to discuss this. But frankly I find the actual resource model too unintuitive and limited, particularly the breakeven points and hard caps on meters.

It's not that I'm complaining or anything about the work already done. But I did a lot of thinking (sometime ago when thinking about doing a game like this myself) and reached a nice alternate proposal. I put all into the wiki so if anyone would like to take a look (especially the designers) I would appreciate it.

http://www.freeorion.org/index.php/User:Dreamer

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#2 Post by Dreamer »

No comments at all?

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#3 Post by drek »

Only comment is that the resource system as it stands has been hashed out to death (and back).

I personally have a different idea for how resources should work (food as a cap rather than a resource, for example), but try not to bring it up in the interest in moving forward.

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#4 Post by Dreamer »

Well. I thought so, but since I had done it already before finding out about FO I guess is not that a bad idea to share it. It has quite a lot of effort in it as it was designed for simplicity in rules and complexity in features. I addapted it to the FO design in the requirement, so it can be useful I guess...

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#5 Post by yaromir »

I apreciated it, don't feel like you are wasting your keystrokes :)

I think this basicly boils down to empire production/resources (HOI) vs local (MOO2)

I totally agree on the new colony thing, it was so silly in MOO2 that I could land a ship, and start cranking out 3 food the same turn.
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#6 Post by Dreamer »

Well thanks! For my part I guess the basic ideas behind FO resources are quite nice. The only part I didn`t like was the hard cap on meters. I liked more the Moo1 aproach were you have an actual number of buildings of each type. Also most of the new games of this kind are introducing the idea of available space for this buildings. And from my point of view it`s much more reasonable to have this natural cap than a hard cap of 100 for each resource.
This also allows for great techs: subterrean capacity, orbital building, etc allows for more space even in small planets.

I also think the "trade" resource is redundant since I don't know what the hell you are trading if not information (research), food (farming), prime materials (minerals) or refined products (industry).

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Geoff the Medio
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#7 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Don't get so hung up on the hard cap of 100 on meters. In practice, I suspect you'll rarely if ever get any meters near the cap, so it won't really matter that much; meter bonuses and penalties will use the limit as a guide for their magnitude so that it's not an issue.
I also think the "trade" resource is redundant since I don't know what the hell you are trading if not information (research), food (farming), prime materials (minerals) or refined products (industry).
Industry is the capacity to make things, not finished products.

Dispite what Aquitaine wrote in the design doc, trade can probably be thought of as the harnessable or manipulatable or controllable economic activity on a planet / in your empire. In order to do or to counteract economic attacks, you'd use up trade as a resource. These attacks would be things like flooding the market of an enemy planet to make it dependent on your for lower priced trade goods, so that if the enemy empire wanted to go to war with you and the trade would be cut off, their population would get mad... The trade goods are small trinkets that are of no military use, like toothpicks and hovercar mufflers, which are not (necessarily) built using empire minerals and production points.

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Krikkitone
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#8 Post by Krikkitone »

Also not all information is research.
I'd say Trade would include
information that is 'entertainment', or brand name goods (which is basically a 'real' good with entertainment value attached through advertising), or luxury goods (only good for making people happy ie entertainment)

So the Trade resource would be all those "Other" things that have a Purely Social use (you should still be able to trade the "physically useful" resources though).

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#9 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Krikkitone wrote:I'd say Trade would include
information that is 'entertainment', or brand name goods (which is basically a 'real' good with entertainment value attached through advertising), or luxury goods (only good for making people happy ie entertainment)
I suppose we could subsume "culture" into "trade" to some degree... or maybe think of it as "influence"... so that if you wanted to make a nearby planet like you (however we represent that), you could spend some trade/influence to export some cultural media... like the epic space opera "Don Centauri" or the latest series of "Alien Indescretion: Real Stories of Interspecies Passion", to which the planet would hopefully get addicted and thus annoyed were you to threaten to cut off production.

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#10 Post by Dreamer »

Geoff the Medio wrote: Industry is the capacity to make things, not finished products.
Ok. But if you can make ships with production you can make microwaves too. What I mean is that you should be able to obtain money directly from non-war-related-production or produce luxury goods or something. I know most of this is somehow abstracted into trade but I don't see a good reason for it. Anyway, adding trade to the resources is not really a problem for me. I don't really care since it's only a metter of adding it to my perspective.
Geoff the Medio wrote:Don't get so hung up on the hard cap of 100 on meters. In practice, I suspect you'll rarely if ever get any meters near the cap, so it won't really matter that much; meter bonuses and penalties will use the limit as a guide for their magnitude so that it's not an issue.

This is the part that troubles me. If planets shouldn't reach 100 then why is the cap there at all? I thing the idea more confusing than anything else. And also stuff like 20 as a breakeven point for some (mind, not all) meters, etc. I think limiting all by available space makes a lot more sence and allow for planet specialization easier, etc.

Also I liked the idea of handling all that stuff from a more empire level. Something that has not been taken into account much (as far as I saw, I read a LOT of posts, but of course not all). My aproach gives a fairly simple way to handle empire (or sector) administration of resources and construction, hurry up building, trade with other empires and several other discussions out there.

Actually... has anyone taken the time to read the link? Sincerely?

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#11 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Dreamer wrote:Ok. But if you can make ships with production you can make microwaves too.
Not necessarily. How many shipbuilders and construction workers know how to make a microwave?
What I mean is that you should be able to obtain money directly from non-war-related-production or produce luxury goods or something. I know most of this is somehow abstracted into trade but I don't see a good reason for it.
If you have a high industry meter, then you've specifically chosen focus settings and building to achieve that, instead of chosing settings or buildings in order to have a high trade meter. If you chose not to use your production on a given turn, it doesn't instantly turn into increased trade... you have to set the focus of your planet long-term to achieve that. So really, you can use "non-war-related-production" to make luxury goods, among other things, but you do so by setting your planet's focus to trade.
This is the part that troubles me. If planets shouldn't reach 100 then why is the cap there at all?
Just so we have an established set limit on meters that they won't go over, so we don't have to worry about UI issues or the scale of numbers going out of ranges we can handle. It's really not that big of a deal...
And also stuff like 20 as a breakeven point for some (mind, not all) meters, etc.
For some meters it doesn't make sense to talk about a breakeven point, but for food production it does, since the population eats some food in addition to producing it, and thus is makes sense that the breakeven point is above 0. We picked 20 so it would have a good range of values below that, and a larger range above to grow above breakeven. Then we wanted the breakeven number, when applicable, to be consistent between meters, so made it the same for other less obvious cases, like health. It's not perfect, but it's not completely arbitrary.
Also I liked the idea of handling all that stuff from a more empire level. Something that has not been taken into account much (as far as I saw, I read a LOT of posts, but of course not all).
Planets are the basic unit of population / production for your empire, so are the basic unit you can control the focus / production of. There will probably be some larger-scale decisions to be made, such as which of a particular few non-stacking buildings to make that will have larger-scale implications, and what brances of the tech tree to reserach and thus which buildings you can make. Resources are pooled empire-wide, as well.

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#12 Post by Dreamer »

Geoff: Ok about trade.

I did knew most of what you mentioned in other aspects. I know that eventually every aspect of the game will be solved one way or another (that is the idea after all), but I think that designing a resource model thinking only about a planet is a bad idea, the huge scope of a galactic empire should be taken into (deep) account in this design. That's why I proposed a version (very similar to the actual system but with some changes) more usefull for galactic management, inter-species trade, etc.

For example: You recently builded a base on the moon. Now you want to expand it. Most of the resources/effort for this would come from earth and not from the moon as a separate entity.

What Im proposing is to asign each planet to a category to determine growth (and some other considerations) and resources are stockpiled/used in a centralices macro level. I also mantained the idea of focus as a long term choice for growth but arranged for a more short term method to handle resources (for dire needs but without the need to remake all long-term considerations).

All in all. A more intuitive and simple aproach to resources and future management of those. Want more production for military? Change only a lever, spend less and get more money, another single lever, etc. My idea is to mix in a single, simple way the resource aproach in FO with the funcionality in global administration visible in galciv.

(about trade, just add it to the resource list and that is all, nothing changes. But I do think that if you can use production to build space ships, terraforming, buldings and who knows what other specials you can also make microwaves :-)

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#13 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Dreamer wrote:For example: You recently builded a base on the moon. Now you want to expand it. Most of the resources/effort for this would come from earth and not from the moon as a separate entity.
This already happens. Production and minenrals are pooled empire-wide.

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recources and production

#14 Post by Wolverinus »

Recources: If FreeOrion RBS, you could design a dozen or so Resources, which each has a diffrent use or uses (like Civ, Civ II aso)
for example: low minerals: easy to mine (high mine number), could only use for light products, infantery and low tech consumer goods
heavy minerals : difficult to mine, but very value for heavy industry und and high tech items.
gems: rare to mine, but very useful for trade.

Production:
no use of productions queue, but productions slots.
for example: a planet with 3 industry, may be have 3 slots, which work at the same time, but the capacity of the industry could be divided be the player between the slots.
And some item could be consumer goods, low tech, high tech, or some thing else
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#15 Post by Dreamer »

Well, sorry to say but I'm aiming at the contrary. A very simple resource system. Anyway since you are new here I would recomend you to read the 3.0 requirements in the wiki. To get a point to start, after all, I arrived yust 2 months ago :wink:

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