SE6 idea: Unique Resources

Sounds great, but think how long it would take to get the AI to understand whats going on. "So this coal turns to a diamond or oil, Now which comp need what again..."

He ponders the dangers inherent in the advantages, and advantages inherent in the dangers. - Ts'ao Ts'ao

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Implementing (stock) Civ-style resources into SE is a terrible idea IMO. The implementation in most Civ games/mods is horrible, serving to ruin the game when you don't find those few critical resources that are absolutely required to even try to compete. No iron? You lose in war during the entire middle of the game. No oil? You lose in the mid/late game. This is not fun, it is destructive to good gameplay. The only way such special resources are handled well is if they either make it cheaper to build the unit (eg: Axemen cost 80 shields, or 50 shields with copper), or give some sort of bonus to it (eg: Axemen built with copper get +1 strength). Every resource-requiring unit should have a (slightly) weaker alternative that does not require the unit. Requiring them to build entire tech eras worth of units in the first place was one of the worst features added to Civ3... It boggles my mind that it was perpetuated into Civ4 stock.

Of course, in SE terms, things get muddled by the deeper level of design available. Certainly, it would be bad game design to prevent the construction of shields without a special resource. Instead, having the resource should make your shields have 10% more points or so. Thus, the resources are still strategically valuable, but you avoid the ruination of the game as occurs all too frequently in Civ.

What would be a better idea than magical Civ-style "have or have not" resources would be built-in support for more than 3 basic resource types (there are ways to create pseudo-resources with the events scripts as discussed in a recent thread, but first class support would be preferable). This way, they can be treated the same as minerals/organics/radioactives in terms of scalable, limited production amounts.

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Racial tech is good, it possibly should be tradeable/travel with populations but maybe have a tech that can be researched to give access to a racial tree though (it'd have to be expensive)

Definitely something that should be considered for the next game. The scenario Fyron mentions can easily be avoided in Space Empires since you've so many components; where in Civilization lack of copper might completely prevent building a specific unit, in Space Empires that would only go for some weapon, engine or shield type components among many others. And since the whole thing would be moddable, there's no problem going back to the old system for those that would like to do so.

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Yes, we wouldn't want to ruin the high quality stock game by putting in imbalanced features.

Anyway, I see what you mean though, but it could probably be worked into becoming a mostly-balanced system; at least as balanced as the already existing 'random generation of planets' thing where one empire can end up with lots of breathables and another can have none.

Hmm, new resources could be also incorporated in another way. Let's think about supply (and ordnance) - the resource is loaded onto our ships, which use them to fuel their engines. Now what if we have a more efficient fuel ? The same amount can propel us much farther ( maybe some bonus movement points ? ), but the engine will be able to work on the 'basic' resource, in this case on supplies.
That one shouldn't be very hard to code too - "check if we have resource X; false = use basic resource; true = use resource X and have more movement points". The same thing could be applied to weapons or even shields. ( In fact a trio would present itself quite nice ) Hopefully that wouldn't unbalance the game and allow us to have a try at somewhat different tactics.

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I think that Civ is not the model to look at with regard to these special resource ideas.

Master of Magic is a better source of inspiration. In MoM, a city that both has access to mithril and has access to a certain building builds units that are just a little stronger than the regular units are. Swordsmen have 4 swords instead of 3, and 3 shields instead of 2, for example. Cities with access to Adamantium build units with +2 to those stats, rather than +1. This does not make for super units; this makes for somewhat tougher units.

A space-faring analogy would be a resource material that cannot travel from one planet to another in its raw form; but can be used as a substitute material making engines 10% more efficient (use 10% fewer supplies per move), or make shields 5% stronger, or weapons 15% more powerful, or guns 20% more accurate. However, because the material does not travel well, only ships/units built on worlds with the material recieve these bonuses.

Certain metals might offer anywhere from 5 to 25% boosts to armor and structure of a ship. Another planet might have a rare form of crystal that makes energy use more efficient, resulting in a 5% across the board boost in engine efficiency, shield and energy weapon strength. Another crystal on another planet might work as a superlative focus for beam weapons, increasing the range by 50%. But, building a ship with those long range beams precludes building that ship with a 5% energy efficiency boost, or some kind of armor and structure enhancement. Or some rare planets might have two types of resources. I don't see it really possible to balance having one planet with more than 1 or rarely 2 special materials though.

Naturally, congealed planets from asteroid fields would only have these resources if they were found in the asteroid belt - and some might be destroyed (the crystals shattered when all the asteroids collided, and are gone, for example - or the material was so dense it all puddled into the planet's core, out of reach) when the planet is put together. Constructed planets (namely, Ring and Wphere Worlds) would be completely barren of these special resources (they're not used in making the various plates and cables).

Oil sucks! Steampunk ftw!

Sigh... why can't people stop using that adjective everywhere - "that marriage is so gay"... it's silly!

Trade a slight bonus? I often get as much from trade as from my empire!

BTW, a rare (=!exclusive) ressource system does not need SEVI (or SEX) to happen (sorry for the gay pun), only some modding efforts. And look at Heroes of Might and Magic for instance : you have 7 ressources : gold - very common; ore and wood - less common; sulfur, mercury, gems, crystal - 2x more rare than wood and ore.
And a (highly inefficient) marketplace system to trade from one ressource to another.
And this system works pretty well!

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I was thinking about this today - having only read the OP - and came to a similar conclusion as Fyron. On/Off resources that are required for any sort of progress only hurts gameplay.

However, special resources that allow access to improved construction or even entirely separate, unique components is far less destructive to gameplay, and even creates additional strategic targets. I'd say that these resources also shouldn't be On/Off. Mining at 1000 units/turn should let you build units that use that material at 1000 units/turn, and no more. In this manner, rare resources could be made less rare, and finding a small deposit - although useful - wouldn't be overpowering, but still valuable enough to fight over (I imagine the effort to defend these deposits would be comparable to their usefulness, so smaller deposits would be rather easily contested).

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A project a day keeps the deadline away.

How do you gain or lose "deeply religious" aspects from a resource? How do you gain or lose telepathy/telekinesis/psionics from a resource? These are things that are deeply ingrained into a species, not something you just randomly pick up or lose by finding quantum 40 on a planet.

Even Crystalline and Organic tech are not really things that could just be turned on or off. Ideally they should go farther than they do, defining fundamentally different sets of basic components and such, with varying (but balanced) properties. Granted, you could develop some such technologies at any time, but the traits are supposed to represent thousands/millions of years of evolution and societal development. An Organic ship is supposed to be a living organism, with resulting properties. Its not just a completely regular ship with regenerative armor grafted on (otherwise it wouldn't need to require a racial trait at all).

"Temporal" technology is not so clear...

There is room for both racial traits and map-based special resources; they'd simply cover different aspects.

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I agree with fyron. The freeorion.org project's planning phase included a rather long discussion concerning this. The general concensus was that the Civ style SUCKED. special resources should give bonuses, preferably only if you use the resource when building. IE capturing asteroid gamma 20 will give you a supply of Xentronium. BUT you can only mine 10 units per turn, and the asteroid's supply is finite. (maybe around 1000) also to use the resource you have to specify that you're using it for a ship's construction/retrofit.

Maybe they should add wonders in SE6 too O.o
For example:
Spaceport Headquarters (acts as a spaceport, but effects Quadrant Wide)

You can mod wonders in now with the available scopes and requirements.

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I gave that as an example. It was obvious to me that the numbers would need to be hammered out.

The main difference here is that you have paid for this advantage in the terms of racial points, of which the other players have used their points for other advantages to balance things out. It's not by random chance.

That said, I think there is some room for a similar concept, but I'm not sure what the best way to go about is.

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Plus what Kwok said about the racial point tradeoffs being a completely different ballgame than randomly distributed resources on a map.

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Indeed, my example was showing IMO a GOOD way to do this. IE you mine the crap and use it to enhance your stuff. It's not a requirement for building the weapons in the first place.

Like your shard cannon example, essentially you have a special mineral you use to augment a regular weapon to give it special properties. The Key here is that your empire has a finite supply. You could in theory even stockpile the stuff for later use if you don't need it immediately. The biggest issue was the yes/no way of deciding if you have it.

Do I control a Planet with Ice9 available? Yes. Have I built an extractor facility? Yes. Does that automatically make my ground assaults more deadly? no. I still need to equip my forces with the stuff to use it.

I agree with Fyron.

But there are some good ideas here which could work with some fine-tuning.

So I've read all the arguments, and have come up with the following conclusions, assuming this will be included in a future SE game:

1) Some racial techs should be maintained. The racial techs should be based on physiological (organic manipulation), societal (Religious tech), or otherwise based on the race (Psychic, or the Arcana mod I'm working on).

2) Resources should provide access to unique tech trees that require access to the resource to research, and are required to utilize the resource.

3) The benefit provided by the resource should be small: Crystal armor heals your shields when hit (up to 10% of damage taken); mythril armor ignores attacks below a certain damage amount; and protonite engines give .2 point of free movement each turn.

4) Amounts should be restricted: each tech tree gives a facility/module to extract the resource from it's location (crystal is found on planets and in asteroids; shock orbs are found in some storms).

5) The current tech tree should be maintained as much as possible: lacking every special resource should not constrain one's success. In other words, the game should be able to be played to completion in a galaxy that has no special resources.

Perhaps one game to call on for inspiration would be Shogun: total War. In that game, certain provinces have Iron deposits. In (only) those provinces, you can build Armories, which are required for Heavy Calvary. Heavy Calvary are some of the best units in the game, but are expensive, and require a substantial investment to develop the infrastructure to build them. Even if you have them, an informed opponent can counter them with Yari Samurai, one of the cheaper units in the game, and cost for cost, the Yari Samurai win.

Planets are huge and have lots of different resources.
But not all resources are usable by low tech societies...
Different tech levels make new resources available...
IE: 2000 BC, Uranium is not usable
1000 AD, Uranium is still not usable
2000 AD, Uranium is usable but dangerous
2200 AD, Uranium is usable, and now safe.
2300 AD, Uranium is usable, but when combined with new discovered crystals, it creates 100 times the power as before.
2400 AD, Who uses Uranium? Hydrogen fusion is safer and every house has its own reactor...
Some resources are needed by one tech level, and not needed at another.
OR: Some races may have bypassed the need for the black tar and would there not understand why Terans are killing for the stuff... but water, now that is a resource to kill for!...

the problem with implementing that model in a game is that it assumes you have the resources available. If you some how don't, it fails miserably.

STOP!!

Before debating this, consider how hard it would be for poor old Aaron to code all this...

A: With a game the size of SE5, something like this would take weeks to find and replace every aspect of the code that assumed there were 3 resources and change them to be dynamic.
B: How would you adjust the UI?
C: How would you adjust the AI?
D: With these changes, most mods would need to be rereleased to compensate for the massive text-file changes.

Considering this, do you still think adding new resources is a good idea?

Maybe if you ask Aaron nicely he will do it for SE6 (Much easier to code something like this if you know when you start)

Could break down the ship supplies to fuel and food...
Run out of fuel and the ship stops (move=0), harsh...
Run out of food and the crew dies, ship becomes derelict....
If a ship does not move, no fuel is used, but the food is still used...
And a ship with out resources or ammo to defend itself in battle would surrender...

A random chance of not getting special stuff is a bit different. Sure there's good planets and bad planets, but you can still live on all of them.

Honestly I think that special resources are a bad idea unless they aren't needed to build an empire. As long as you NEED to have them they'll make gameplay too limiting.