Number of Resources

[CygnusX]

What is the advantage and disadvantage of having multiple resource types in a game? 

Most board games (Monopoly, etc) use ultilize one resource (money). 

However, there are several games that utilize 2 or more resources:

Starcraft - Minerals, Gas
Diablo / Warcraft / MapleStory / Most RPG's - Health, Mana
Warcraft - Wood, Gold
Lords - Gold, Diamonds
Dominion - Wood, Gold, Mana, Jewels, Ore.
Settlers of Catan - Roads, Bricks, Sheep, etc.
Card Games (such as Spades or Hearts)

With the exception of spells in RPGs that convert Mana to HP or vice versa,  there are very few systems I've seen that allow you to convert one resource type to another.  I'm sure this is because if resource trading were easy (and/or free), there would be no need for multiple resources types in game.

So how many different resources types will a user be ok in dealing with?  2 seems like a pretty common number (see the first 4 examples), but 4-5 seems like it would be reasonable and yet provide more challenge to the player. 

How many resources does your game have and why?

[JGadrow]

I can answer "why" in a single word: diversity. It is the spice of life after all.

[Chris]

In Lords there is only gold as a traditional resource, diamonds are nearly perfectly covertable into gold and vice versa, so this is the same resource in a slightly different form. On the other hand Starcraft has true 2 resources since you can not convert minerals to gas and you can not infinitely change mining volume (gas miners can accept max 3 drones per exploration site, while minerals miners are almost infinite, so you can not trivially redirect your resource gathering capabilities from minerals to gas).

Unique resource is something that can not be perfectly and/or infinitely converted to another resource and where resource gathering capabilities can not be perfectly transfered to another resource gathering. Without these conditions being met you don't have a new resource but just another name for the same resource.

Another thing, you look at it from player's perspective. In reality there are plenty hidden resources, with time being the most obvious one. Actually, in most games you will be converting time into other resources/assets/units/buildings/score. Sure, player would said it is not a resource, but for designer it is basicly the same thing.

In Starcraft you have "attention" resource which determine on how many things you can concentrate at the same time, will you spend it on finetuning your economy or moving units (for best players this resource might be almost infinite, but for casuals it might be much more important than minerals). Or percentage of map uncovered (you spend your minerals plus a bit of attention (send scouts) to convert it into map uncovering and temporary detection of enemy "resource"), or limit of 200 units, or supply limits (if you build 10 units and let them die and then build next 10 it is cheaper than building 20 since you need less investment in supply). These still are resources from designer's point of view.


So, the question of this topic might be: how many visible (or traditional) resources and how many hidden resources should there be?
I'm not sure, but I lean toward low traditional resources and many hidden. Like in Lords you listed 2 resources while there are like 10 or 20... You simply did not acknowledge them, these are half hidden, not put on the display and these do not confuse you as a player. It makes players think "it is a simple game, I can learn it fast". If there were like 10 traditional resources (wood, stone, iron, bronze, silver, etc) it would make player feel the game is complex and hard to grasp (maybe, not sure about it...).
On the other hand... I'm really excited about making a game with dozens of visible resources There is something mesmerizing in having detailed similar resources available. Like in Deadlock or Emperor of The Fading Sun, these had soooo cute resource displays I could not resist. After telling all these smart things above, as a player I still want more resources, even if the designer in me say it sux

So in the end I have no clue how to answer your question

[CygnusX]

@Chris.  Excellent thoughts.

Concerning resource exchange (swapping), I think the key here is to make the cost of such exchange very significant (upwards of 40% with techs to reduce).  Concerning hidden resources, I like your view on this.  I guess the key isn't really in number of visible resources, but in the number of all resources (hidden + visible).  I'm confident that advanced players can handle 100's of total resources....   but its new players that concern me.  How many different total resources / options do you think a new player can handle before being completely overwhelmed?

[Chris]

How to make mining of resources?

Mines: coal,iron,copper,tin (all have 1 unit of corresponding resource output)

Dependences:
coal+iron=steel
coal+copper+tin=brass

We have X acres of land (just a number, no map), each "land" can hold one building (like mine).  Now, if we make it possible to build any mine type in any quantity (limited by total land only) we will end up with 2 land for 1 steel production and 3 land for 1 brass production. In short, not much strategy here, we just make all these mine types appear different for mood only, for strategic purposes we could just make one mine type...
Typically this is solved in games by a map with resources found on a specific rare tile only. But how to make it in a more abstract form, without a map?

My goal would be to make copper and tin the rare resource, iron quite common and coal plentiful. This way the player will never face coal to be the bottleneck, iron could be problematic sometimes and copper+tin would be available in low quantities only. At the beginning of a game the ore deposits would be irrelevant sicne the industry would be not sufficient to make use of them all anyway. Later brass would be more and more scarce and steel had to be used more often.

So, how to make it?

I thought about percentage of minable land cap. If we have 100 acres of land: we can build 20 coal mines, 5 iron mines, 2 copper mines, 1 tin mine. It is how many "deposits" are available on the land, if you try to build more mines of a specific type you get an error. If we hire expensive prospectors we can adjust the percentage in our favour a bit.

Is this good? How can this be done different way?

[CygnusX]

Trade wars, and oldie but goodie, let you do this by exploring and finding new planets.  As you found new planets, they'd be rich in one resource, and scare or barren in others.  

I'm certain you can do something similar such as explore swamp (coal), explore mountains (iron), explore valleys (copper), explore hills (tin), explore plains (wheat)... etc.  Exploring for these areas could either have different % chances to find a resource deposit, or it could simply be more costly to explore mountains compared to land.  As you grow in level, you can search new areas as you discover new resources (such as rivers to pan for gold)

For swapping resources, I'm going to experiment with a system that looks at all user resources swaps each day, and modifies the exchange rate based on user activity.  If many users sell their gold one day for iron.... then the following day, gold will be worth less, and iron worth more.  This, I hope, will set up interesting strategies for players trying to specialize in the resources they acquire.

[Chris]

If land was obtained from exploration only then it would be no problem. But it can be obtained via conquest too. Also you can lose it. I'm not a big fan of making a certain player "hill" while other "plains" for the purpose of land grab...

For exchange of resources I would say, you can buy no more than 25-50% of your daily production of that resource, so you can't relay on others completely for your needs. You can sell without limits (always for gold). The buyer provide shipping (1 ship allows 10 resources to be shipped, +5 if big cargo hold technology invented, +5 if merchants guild built). The price is fixed and set by global market. Maybe an embargo option? But I doubt it would make much difference considering the aboundance of neutral players...
Some resources (spice, silk, jewelery) can be bought from NPCs only (unless you have a colony, then you have it for free/cheap),  there is no trade limits for such luxury goods.

[CygnusX]

I wasn't implying that you should make each player a land type.  Rather, let land be accumulated like a resource.  That way, I could have 10 plains, 5 mountains, 3 rivers.... etc.  And each would produce a unique resource.

Or, perhaps another solution is that you keep all land the same (such as plains), but users cannot just start gathering another resource.  They have to intentionally search for it, with some resources being more difficult to locate than others.  And if a resource is found, a building is automatically built to extract said resource.

Hopefully this makes sense.

[Chris]

I wasn't implying that you should make each player a land type.  Rather, let land be accumulated like a resource.  That way, I could have 10 plains, 5 mountains, 3 rivers.... etc.  And each would produce a unique resource.

Or, perhaps another solution is that you keep all land the same (such as plains), but users cannot just start gathering another resource.  They have to intentionally search for it, with some resources being more difficult to locate than others.  And if a resource is found, a building is automatically built to extract said resource.

If a player can "select" the resource type land with high probability, then we are back to only one type of mine/resource since the player can always get what he needs, so the whole resource thing is for mood only. Multiple resource works only if the player can not (or it is very difficult) decide what resource he gets next. There must be an unoptimised, semi random resource desposits given to the player and then he has to deal with what he has. Only then these differences between resources matter.
Ideally, if among these deposits the player would have to discard a few (but not too many)...


Building auto constructed is not an option, too much messing with other parts of gameplay... Too restricting to me as a designer If I had to "marry" a certain mechanic it must privide me someting more solid and valuable (you know, mechanics are jealous you can't mary too many at the some time or they will fight among themselves and wreak havoc )