Resource Brainstorming

Belguim! Nick beated me to it again. Well, my opinion is still the same.

I dont like that resources.

Nanotubes have to be created specifically for each aplication, so it would make more sense to produce the finished product instead of storing one of the middle products.

Antimater is a really highly advanced substance, which can only be used for weapons (and maybe for studies). Other than creating it, storing it is really really hard, as any container we can build has to be created out of matter, and on contact it anhihilates with antimatter. Some kind of "forcefield" has to be used, on complete vacuum. Really really hard and expensive. And as bombs is the only* final product, it would be better to just create the finished product directly.

* Producing energy is the only other plausible thing. However, in order to create the antimatter, you have to put in more energy that the total energy you will get out. Not worth it.

Has anyone made a header containing the outline for resources yet?(strength, energy, etc) I know most of the code is being dedicated to cells right now but this seems relatively easy.

Not really, no, mostly just listing what will be included in the first place.

EDIT: Now that I look at my notes, I see that I planned a future episode in the Crash Course Economics on Compound Properties. If you want, I could revive that to get the discussion going again. I had suspended it while Microbe was being developed, but I could start doing a little of the RTS stuff again.

Will we include explosive matters in this? (Not bombs, things like rubidium and nitrogen,...)
(if someone doesn't know what rubidum is,just look for it on wikipedia.)

[quote] wikipedia says:
Rubidium is a chemical element with the symbol Rb and atomic number 37. Rubidium is a soft, silvery-white metallic element of the alkali metal group, with an atomic mass of 85.4678. Elemental rubidium is highly reactive, with properties similar to those of other elements in Group 1, such as very rapid oxidation in air. Rubidium has only one stable isotope, 85Rb, with the isotope 87Rb, which composes almost 28% of naturally occurring rubidium, being slightly radioactive with a half-life of 49 billion years—more than three times longer than the estimated age of the universe.Rubidium reacts violently with water and can cause fires. To ensure safety and purity, this metal is usually kept under a dry mineral oil or sealed in glass ampoules in an inert atmosphere. Rubidium forms peroxides on exposure even to small amount of air diffusing into oil, and is thus subject to similar peroxide precautions as storage of metallic potassium.

EDIT:everyone probaly knows what nitrogen is.

I dont think exploding substances are important enough. Nitrogen, on the other hand is important for life. On earth it is not important at all because the atmosfere is roughly 80% nitrogen, but maybe if it were more scarce on other places it might be important. I'll let someone else answer that.

One question, how are we supposed to tell what's a spice and what's not...? Well, problem is, we can't. The point of spices in real life is to change or add up to the flavor of a meal. It would be really hard, if not impossible, to make a difference between a spice and an ordinary food item. I was thinking about a possible way we could do this, and here's the only thing we can do, which is, impossible. We would first take a plant up to small (plants up to small would be treated as potential food items), or a leaf or a fruit of anything bigger than a plant up to small and check if is edible to the players creature. Then comes the first obstacle: making a difference between a food item and a spice. We would somehow have to check if this plant/leaf/fruit is a part of the creature's regular diet. We could maybe do this with arrays, but I have no clue how. If we somehow managed to get passed this obstacle, than the most important one comes along. If a plant/leaf/fruit does not have taste (as do many plants on Earth) than it technically won't be a spice. How are we supposed to give a certain object a taste? I have no idea how. When you think about it actually, we could give every plant/leaf/fruit a large chance of not having a taste and a small chance of having one. If it has one, it would be sour,sweet etc. But there is another problem:
Spice, when you look at it, is a very minor resource, since only a handful of creatures can actually use it, since not every creature has a sense of taste. That's why I think spices aren't that important- we shouldn't make a whole mess because of something that isn't even that important.

It may not be important pre-sapience, but it was an integral resource in the exchange of goods in post-sapient history for humanity. Silk and spices are what drove Europeans to venture west to discover a route to China and India. There will be some compounds in the game that will serve little other purpose than just consumption by your population, but they are still important because such is an integral role of any leader, to supply their people with the resources they demand.

The way I was intending to implement it is to make it a tag that is arbitrarily assigned to certain plants if they meet some basic requirements. Then, it determines that those plants contain the compound "Spice". We would just assume that sapient species with a sense of taste all have similar appreciation of the compound "Spice". Species without a sense of taste would automatically have no demand for the compound.

Also, spice will not affect gameplay before intelligence, and it probable wont even show up or be generated by that point. It will only be upon and after reaching Society Stage that it will start to play a role in the compound system.

You're actually right. I've been trying to think of a way of making a difference between spices and ordinary plants, and yet the answer wasn't as complex I thought it would be. So by what I understood, a random set of plants in the player's world would get their "Spice" boolean = true (every plant would have a small chance to become a spice) after you reach society stage. Also, I think that maybe you should add a special section in the description of a compound saying what effects does the compound give per, I dunno, 100 tons? e.g.
Dye- Increases happines, gives a very small ( up to 5%) boost to research until the discovery of printing press, increases chance of an art spawning every minute, 5 minutes or whatever. Enables multiple colors in the building/tech editor.
Ivory- Can be used in the tech/building editor, increases chance of an art spawning every minute, 5 minutes or whatever.

What do you think?

I think the modifiers for the compounds would be too much. They already give bonuses to the player in terms of happiness based off of the Pop Demand system. However, the first part of what you said is basically what I was thinking.

I have an idea, I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned before:

Bronze

Spoiler:

I had to delete my original post because I accidentally said that it is found in underground and surface deposits.
lol

Oh, wow, I don't know how that wasn't there. Thanks for pointing that out. Also, on a quick aside, are you an RTS/Strategy game fan? If you are, I recommend you check out this thread. It may not be your cup of tea, but if it is, it would be great if you could contribute, as it seems you like developing concept for the Strategy Mode. Basically, the current topic we are discussing is that of the Tech Editor, and classifying and creating a new list of Function Parts, something that will actually be quite pivotal for the Society Stage's release.

No problem, and yes, I am an RTS fan. I will go and check out the discussion about function parts. It seems interesting.

Resource:Platinum
Uses: Used as a catalyst in many chemical reactions, in jewlery as a precious metal, and as a electrode.
Sources:Underground or in Surface Deposits.
Notes:It is rare as it is only about 0.005ppm on earth, although this may be different on other planets.
Is usually found with nickel, palladium, or copper.

Platinum is good, but I'll have to put in on hold for now since I'm not sure to what extent it would be useful in game.

Being a catalyst means it doesent get used, so once you get a bit of it you dont need more of it. In that aspect it isn't usefull as resource.

As jewlery it might be, but in my opinion it is too rare to care about. In other planets you could find more of it, but probably not much more than on earth. It is because of how elements are formed, anything over iron is very rare.

Over iron as in higher atomic number?

Yep.

I alredy posted something like it somewhere else.
Stars get their energy by fusionating atoms. This process gives off energy (a lot of it), so the process can still occur.However, once you get to 26 protons (iron), it no longer gives energy to fuse atoms. They take energy. That means that normal stars only produce elements up to iron.

Heavier elements are produced at supernovas. when a supernova occurs, it produces so much energy that is able to create higher elements, even though they are drawing energy.

At the end, it turns out that the abundance is:

Spoiler:

An element an unit higher than another means that it is 10 times more abundant.

My point is that althrough elements can be found in diferent proportions, that proportions won't vary too much.

Deoxyribonucleic acid....

kidding.
So I was thinking of some tech our aliens should require for tools, in the later eras... I thought of batteries/energy cells. I was think alkali metals. As they are crucial in many things. Fertilizer, vitamins, food, propellants, and explosives.

Spoiler:

I just placed some ideas there. Again you can simply call the group Alkali metals, and say they come from salt.

I know you mentioned shying away from gases and particularly inert gases as they don't have obvious uses, but remember propane is a valuable resource here. So here are my suggestions, as they don't always occur with oil and don't occur just anywhere like hidrogen or even nitrogen. 2 gases.

Spoiler:

Are you going to make every planet the same. Or, are the resources going to vary some. I.e. it might be better to use brass more than iron in some places for example. Or, some places might have different fuels because oil is impossible or hard to find.

In that case how about another.

Spoiler:

Resource: Silicon(e)
Uses: Uses in electronics due to it's low conductivity, bricks, many other objects and possible forms of life. Combined with carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, aswell as other elements to create sillicone.
Sources: Rocks for sillica, and in underground deposits.

Note: Silicon is the element, while silicone is the useful polymer.

Both are interesting suggestions, but don't particularly strike as significant in the scope of the game. However, that is not final, since after our discussion on the Economics and FP threads we will have a better picture.

Resource: Gemstone
Uses: Used as currency, or jewery, some are hard to scratch, but are easy to shatter. Wanted for luster and color.
Sources: Underground
Note: This is a generic resource for all gemstones except diamond.

Aka gems, which are already covered.

how about a classification similar to that of EVE's planet interaction?. for example:

-base metals
-heavy metals
-noble metals
-noble gases
-etc

basically based in the periodic table and in general type of classifications like:

-autotrophs
-complex organisms
-microorganisms

The list of compounds is not relatable to our periodic table. Such classification couldn't apply.

Resource: Zinc
A blueish-grey metal
Uses:Galvanization, solder, brasses
Sources: Underground deposits, mined from sphalerite.

Resource: Brass
An alloy of copper and zinc
Uses: Decorations, bulletshells, firearm barrels.