Strategic and Luxury Resorces in SMAC?

[Impaler[WrG]]

I was wonding what kind of Resorces would be used in a Sci-Fi game like SMAC, obviously horses can't be a resorces. I started thinking what would they use? Of the resorces in Civ3 only Iron, Uranium and Aluminum would even exist on Chiron. But if ya read the info on Chiron is says the soil is full of aluminum, infact I bet aluminum is what most of thouse minerals your mining is Rolling and Rocky squares represents. So that leaves Iron and Uranium, both would be good resorces but would logicaly not need to be "discoverd" so would be visable at the start of the game.

Then as I was watching the SP movie of the Merchent Exchange I noticed the stock ticker at the bottom listing metals, WOW I though thouse would be great strategic resorces. Here is a list of them.

Paladium, Rubiduim, Magnesium, Scandium, Ceasium, Vinadium, Cobalt, Iridium, Cromium, Titanium, Nickel add in Uranium and thats 13 resorces more then enough.

I figure Titanium is for aircrafts and maybe missles/space flight (SR-71 Black Bird is made of Titanium)
Cobalt for Mag-Tubes
Ceasium for Lasers
Iron for Rovers? (maybe they need steel frames like SUV's)
Uranium for ships (like and aircraft carrier), also once you discover fusion Uranium should become obselete for your faction
Anyone else have ideas for resorces usage?

Luxury resorces would be a much harder thing to think up. I would think they have to be something naturaly occuring. Perhaps some kind of drug like substance (Spice from Dune) would be a good luxury, maybe their are some cute cuddly creatures that people can use as pets and they are ofcorse rare and indigiounous to a few places on the planet. Something that apears only in the water would be good too. I still can't think up as many luxurys as Civ3 has, dose anyone else have some good luxurys?

[Maniac]

Fungal gin of course!

Though I would like such a system in the early game, it rather becomes obsolete in the end game, when you have discovered Matter Editation, when you can "create gold out of plumb". So I wonder, can there still be strategic resources in that time? Probably no raw materials, but perhaps stuff necessary to create your energy.

[Method]

i didn't really like all that resource crap in civ3. sure they had good intentions when they thought of it, but the AI wouldn't go to war to get resources they needed because they couldn't make the new units they needed to use to get the resources! i wouldn't mind luxuries though. at least there'd be something to trade.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Humm from what I have heard special resorces can not to stock-piled in Civ3 and they are completly unlimited, 1 unit is enough for an entire civilization to make an unlimited number of units. That sertanly dosen't seam very realistic to me. Strategic resorce use should be linear so haveing twice as much lets you actualy make twice as mutch stuff. Luxurys would have a diminsihing rate of return. Scientist have found that as people use any luxury each sucessive unit produces less pleashure then the last. Just try eating chocolate all day eventualy it will stop feeling good. Any realistic system of Luxury resorces should take that into effect.

[jimbob]

I like the simplicity of smax. Energy, Minerals and Food. That's it. Having no gold, iron, oil, wines or chicken ranches in the game is fine with me.

[Sikander]

Resources were a decent idea, very poorly implemented in Civ 3. The inability of the designers to get beyond an almost binary accounting for resources, and the complete lack of a realistic market model doomed the feature to being more pia than anything else. It ends up being much more unrealistic than not having it in the game. And what's the big deal with Iron anyway, isn't it one of the most common elements?

[Capt Dizle]

LOL...

Okay lets see if we can think of a real life civ that never had swords because they didn't have iron.

umm.....

[Capt Dizle]

LOL...

Okay lets see if we can think of a real life civ that never had swords because they didn't have iron.

umm.....


LMAO! Found this in Encarta.

Metallic iron occurs in the free state in only a few localities, notably western Greenland. It is found in meteorites, usually alloyed with nickel. In chemical compounds the metal is widely distributed and ranks fourth in abundance among all the elements in the earth's crust; next to aluminum it is the most abundant of all metals.

I guess Greenland should have ruled the earth. And the bit about aluminum had me about to fall out of my chair.

[Capt Dizle]

I guess the Incas should have ruled the world, or the Sri Lankans:

In its natural state, rubber exists as a colloidal suspension in the latex of rubber-producing plants (see Colloid). The most important of these plants are the tree Hevea brasiliensis of the spurge family, and other species in the same genus, which were the sources of the original South American rubber, the commercially important Para rubber. The term Para rubber was then also applied to the product of H. brasiliensis trees cultivated in the rubber plantations of Indonesia, the Malay Peninsula, and Sri Lanka. These trees produce about 90 percent of all the new natural rubber consumed.

[Mr. President]

You can't make tanks and airplanes out of rubber. You can't make cars and trucks out of rubber. You can't make computers and telephone wires out of rubber.

But you can't make them with only iron either. Which is why Greenland and the Incas do not rule the world.

[Jethro83]

Why ruin a nearly perfect game with the flawed systems from Civ III? There isn't really any need for strategic/luxury resources in SMAC.

[bondetamp]

Well, I think the resource management was one of the more interesting inovations of Civ3, and one that kept me playing for far longer than the game really deserved.

I had to start a major World War once so that I could get uranium to build space ships. I knew I outproduced everybody, but the AI nations had all their Uranium tied up trading to eachothers.

It was the most intense end game I've ever played in any game.

[Jethro83]

Yeah, it does belong in Civ III.

What I am saying is that it really doesn't have any place in SMAC. The game is nearly perfect as it is. But then again, the game gets intense when there is a clash of ideologies, and social engineering choices, not to mention landmarks like the Uranium Flats, Geothermal Shallows, Garland Crater, etc. But I think that's enough to maintain intensity.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Humm it seams that many people are oposed to the Civ3 IMPLEMENTATION of resorces, as I have stated I have never played Civ3, from what I have heard of Civ3 a good idea was implemented badly. Ofcorse I wasn't sugjesting that that strategic or luxury resorces be impelmented the same as in Civ3, I propose perfect and harmonios resorce implementation that everyone would love, nothing less would be worthy of being in SMAC.

Here is how I imagine it could be done. First off the little resorse icons would have different values ranging from 1-8, harvesting that square adds that amount to your faction each turn. The resorce goes into your central stock pile from witch your can trade them in lump sums with other factions. Or you could negotiate a continus trade says 5 Uranium in exchange for 12 Energy credits every turn. Each building or unit that requires resorces would require 1 unit of resoses per mineral row (so having a high industry ratig would not effect resorce requirments). Each turn that a mineral row is filled 1 unit is consumed so bases that produce a lot will use more strategic resorces. If you run out of resorces then production is halted and the minerals your base is putting into that unit are converted to energy (like stockpile energy but the particular unit stays in the build Box), once you reaquire a supply of the particualr strategic resorce the building will continue. Some units might also require resorce units each turn in maintanince. Or some might even have a higher Resoces cost per mineral row possibly up to 3 or 4. Changing production would return 50% of the resorces used so far in the units production.

As for luxury resorces I don't realy have any idea how they could be made to work realisticaly, any ideas on that?

[RedFred]

When I was young, my first pair of skis were made out of wood. That was it; you couldn't get anything else. As the technology improved, my next pair of skis were metal. Then they came out with decent fiberglass skis. Nowdays most skis are a composite of many materials.

In the future one would expect materials to become more interchangable as the technology improves. Most products could be made out of a variety of materials in a variety of ways. So if minerals are substitutable it makes no sense to specify different ones.

IIn the past it was much more important to have access to strategic materials. In WW2 the Germans faced critical shortages. Oil and rubber to name but two. Nowdays synthetic rubber is widely available and other organic materials such as coal can provide the same products as oil does. So even in the last sixty years these products have become much more substitutable.

The other factor is that Planet hasn't been subjected to thousands of years of human mining. One would expect a relative abundance of minerals of various types.

I agree with the others that suggested that either Civ3's strategic materials concept was either idiotic or poorly implemented. But I also feel that it would be less realistic in the future in any case.

[Blake]

Heres my thoughts on an implementation of special resources...

A resource (say Uranium) appears on the map, when worked (or crawled) it allows the city working it to build and use a 'unique' facility (say Nuclear Reactor). These facilities would be much like the ordinary ones, like +50% production, +50% energy etc. The other thing working a special resource could do is just give you a bonus outright. (in cash, research, production, happiness etc)
Note that a 'unique' terraform which can only be built on the resource tile would often make as much sense as a facility...

The main use of special resources would be building 'super cities'.

They wouldn't *reduce* strategic options like strategic resources in Civ3, because not having the resource would only deprive you of one +50% facility, rather than an entire class of military hardware.

Thoughts on which special resources would make sense (effect applies *only* to base working/crawling resource):

Uranium: Nuclear Powerplant - +50% production
Oil: Refinery - units 1 row cheaper
Xenospices: +2 Talents
Geothermal: Geothermal Pipeline - Halve all facility upkeep costs, rounded down.
Alien Ruins: Alien Research Lab - +50% labs.

[Patashu]

Originally posted by Blake
Oil: Refinery - units 1 row cheaper

Does that mean Scout Patrols are free?
I think +1 industry at the base instead would balance it.

[Blake]

Does that mean Scout Patrols are free?

Heh. Ofcourse not, the bonus would only apply to mobile units, ie those which require fuel.

[RedFred]

Just a brief note to those talking so blithely about oil and oil refineries: according to the storyline the initial survey was optimistic of many discoveries of various hydrocarbons. These did not materialise. Planet is carbon deficient compared to Earth. As a result the native life forms are highly efficient at recycling carbon long before it before it forms oil or coal deposits.

The one exception is the fossil ridge landmark in SMACX, presumably because it is too deep for native life to grow and utilize any free hydrocarbons.

Also note various game references such as the importance of synthetic fossil fuels. The huge focus on energy in SMAC is because of the lack of easy energy such as oil deposits.

[Blake]

Which is why oil would be a special resource giving considerable bonuses (just to be anal, I'll point out that I didn't specify that the resource had to appear on land.)

Btw, I also wasn't reffering to chiron specifically, rather the broader topic of "if men were to colonise other planets, what resources might be of extraordinary value to them", or another way of putting it, in the future, what 'unique' resources will still hold special value.

You'll also note that 3 out of 5 special resources I proposed are energy based, Uranium, Geothermal and Oil. Easily harnassable energy would be highly valuable.

Because of the "substitue" effect mentioned (earlier) by redfred the scope of the benefit of any bonus resource would be quite limited (ie to one base), while it's true that one material can generally be subsituted for another, it's also true that some materials are just better or cheaper to use, especially when these materials are in an easily accessable form.

This is why special resources should give an economy/industry bonus rather than a military bonus, you don't need iron for a tank but it might be cheaper to build tanks if you have a ready source of usable iron. If you dont have the exceptional source of iron, you'll either need to utilise a source of less pure iron (which costs more to refine) or synthesise an alternative to steel.

For the record I hated the Civ3 strategic resources, while they did give a need for war I found on the whole they more limited strategy (by reducing your arsenal). Besides, there shouldn't be any good reasons to go to war. War should be declared on the whim of a crazy leader

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

First off let me go on record that I think strat resources in SMAC is generally a questionable idea. Matter of fact i'm generally not for inclusion of any of the CIV so called improvements as they now stand for inclusion into any current or future version of SMAC.

Thing I have 'gainst strat resources is the all or nothing implementation (making the game more dependient on good luck thanit needs to be. Resource x say coal is located only on continent C and you won't be able to mass aninvasion for at least 100 years putting the game out of reach as a consequence) Strat resources are not all or nothing if you won them it should make builds of facs or units easier and/or allow maintenance costs easier (the better approach). If you don't all costs should be something like 2X. Trade always happens even if on the black market so a 2X approach would simulate the balck market approach to gaining the appropriate resource (in the event you couldn't arrange an conventional market trade).

[Blake]

I also think that the Civ3 resource model, particullary with iron, neglects that often it is the know-how, or industrial infrastructure that is much more valuable in the construction of tanks (or nukes) than access to the raw materials (ie the materials are much easier to come across than the specialist knowledge and equipment). While the Civ3 model may be semi-accurate in the ancient ages it is pretty much bollucks in the modern age.

Another example is horses, while in ancient times only tribes with access and know how of dealing with the wild horses might have been able to use horses in military, by nearly-modern times the horses would all be bred in captivity, totally eliminating the need for the *original* source of horses.

Really, the Civ3 strategic resources model fails on both counts of realism and adding gameplay value.
The luxury resources are slightly more tolerable, but again market forces are much more likely to distribute the luxuries than the goverment (atleast, since international market forces have been around, which hasn't nessecarly been that long).

In sum, the resource model works okay in the ancient age, but is somewhat contrived, unrealistic and frustrating in the modern age. (which is why serious consideration would have to be given to it's implementation in a futuretech game)

[Sandman]

Why not give each faction a luxury item based on their ideology, which they and only they could make?

Gaians: Ornamental complete biospheres

Morgans: Designer Drugs

PKs: Traditional paper books

Spartans: Violent video games

Miriam: Religious music, books etc

University: Mathmatical puzzles...maybe.

Hive: Umm...

The luxuries are a way to either cement an alliance, or aggressively attack the enemy leaders support by his own people. They can try to ban the luxuries, but their people may rebel or smuggle them in under their nose.

You can either churn out cheap trash, or go for extreme quality. Quality costs more, but has a greater effect.

So the luxuries would work as both propaganda and happiness-makers.

[Gregurabi]

Gaians: Xenofungus brandy. Also herbal medicines.

Morgans: High-budget movies (some of them with very attractive actors and actresses) "It's only porn if you're in Godwinson's faction. Everywhere else, it's art!".

Peacekeepers: mail-order brides. Slav^H^H^H^H Servants.

Spartans: antique and custom weaponry. Firearms, swords and knives, etc.

Believers: have to go with the religious paraphernalia.

University: software.

Hive: um... martial arts courses. Yoga and Tai Chi video tapes (or whatever technology they use).