Metals and Materials

Okay, so this may already have been covered but:

I was thinking that different planets come with randomly generated metals that affect items and economy in the tribal stage (or equivalent) onwards, and have minor effects on the gameplay, and these elements are:

Inorganic:
Iron: colours items made with it a light grey
Cobalt: colours items made with it a deep blue
Copper: colours items made with it a nice orange
Chromium: colours items made with it a shiny chrome
Niobium: colours items made with it a matte purple
Uranium: colours items made with it a glowing green
Gold: colours items made with it a metallic yellow

Organic has the gimmick of varying according to the planet's species:
Wood: varies with earthy colours but keeps a signature grain effect
Hide: also greatly varies but takes the effect of the creature skinned for such hide
Earth: adopts soil colour of planet

So far I am only thinking that this gives minor effects such as aesthetics but it could create an economy based around it and depending on the species you sell it to.

This is already covered with the compound system. Our current list of compounds is pretty fleshed out, but they are not just for aesthetic effect. They do directly affect gameplay in how they are processed and used.

Check out these threads:

First two episodes of this thread:
https://thrivegame.canadaboard.net/t1010-crash-course-economics

Lots of brainstorming that led to that thread and several others:
https://thrivegame.canadaboard.net/t911-resource-brainstorming

One of the original posts by Seregon outlining this system, and how it could apply to all stages:
https://thrivegame.canadaboard.net/t871-applying-the-resource-system-to-each-stage?highlight=resource

Another thread, by Seregon, to compliment the one above:
https://thrivegame.canadaboard.net/t870-compound-system

EDIT:

Also, a thread for deciding the tags and properties of the compounds, something I should revive soon:
https://thrivegame.canadaboard.net/t1165-compound-tags-and-properties

Thanks, if you need any ideas I can think of a LOT of compounds and the like

Sure thing, but I think we've got a pretty satisfactory list as it is.