Just some wishes about strategic resources

[zgrssd]

When hearing about DW2. I started playing DWU again/seriously for the first time. And I do have some wishes regarding the resources:

1. Things should tell me how much of any given resource they still need/need in total. That is both planets doing a construction and ships in the designer.
All DWU tells me "we are missing X and have no mining station for X" or "Production stalled because X is missing".
No indication how much X we need, how far away my only supply of X is, etc.

2. A Empire wide overview
I would need a empire wide overview for all resources of:
- Demand. That should include all currently undergoing operations - every ship or mining station in the queue across my entire empire.
- Supply. All the deposits I got under my mining stations/on my colonies
- In transit. How much is currently in transit to be delivered - on freighters of my own empire, in mining ships of my own empire. Can include how much si already delivered (waiting for the rest of the resources to start production).
- Extended in transit. Like in Transit, except it includes stuff that has not yet been retreived from the station/mined out or will have to be bought from another empire (indicating the lack of a stable supply).

3. Less is more. There are so many resource, it is hard to even understand wich one is important/a bottleneck/a important resource. If you got a lot of resoruces, a lot of them just become noise. Noise that makes it hard to figure out the ones that really mater.
And to top it off, some of them are pretty...trivial to get anyway. Carbon Fibre? Can be made from Carbon.
Steel? That is literally just Iron + Carbon.
The need to extract Hydrogen from Gas giants? it is the most common element, with a estimated 75% of the total visible weight of the universe!
Helium? That is a estimated 24% of all visible mass in the unvierse. (The remaining 1% are the heavier elements).
How is any lost colony going "space age", if it has no access to steel? Or Carbon? Or Helium?

You could cut them out entirely, without much loss. If you still want it for idel traffic, consider combining them into "Common Solids" and "Common gasses".

4. Pre-FTL in system drive
A big issue with the pre-FTL setting, is the difficulty of using the resources in your home System. On top of travel between Systems, the FTL especially allows quick travel within a System.
The same mining station/planet can be simulation years away or simulation minutes, depending on if you got Warp drive. This makes both the exploitation and defense of those assets impossible. Basically unless it is in the same moon/planet system as your starting colony, it might as well not exist.

Maybe you could give us a early "proto Warpdrive"? One that allows FTL or near FTL travel - but only within a system.
Plenty of hard-ish SciFi settings have a drive that is almost lightspeed for travel between points of interest within a solar system, but does not really allow for interstellar travel (as it is still to slow for that):
The cruiser drives from Freelancer and Elite Dangerous.
The IP Drive from Nexus: Jupiter Incident.
LDS drive from Indipendence War 1+2.
Those are just a few that come to mind.

The rules are usually:
- quick acceleration
- instant deceleration
- chargeup time
- disables the use of weapons (other then ones used to disrupt enemy drives, maybe)
- disables the use of defenses (only soem variats), making the chargeup time extra dangerous/a non-combat maneuver
- lacks either the range or speed to actually go interstellar distances on any feasible timeframe

[Latisrof]

For number's 1 and 2, all of this information is available, though I'll admit not easily accessible to new comers, 3 I could care less either way as it seems to me the resources are just ingredients to form a product with different tiers making stronger or weaker products. (making resources limited over all would be cool though)

4 is about preference, some people like the challenge of prewarp, though I usually don't mind either way because you don't have to play in pre warp if you don't want to.

[Sild]

I take issue with your point 3.

No need to cut anything out. Please don't do it. If anything give other means of obtaining said resources and new avenues in using them. Don't fall into the pitfalls of cutting things just because. It's the last thing I'd want to see.

[Miletkir]

If Pre-warp mechanics annoy you, my suggestion is to just start at the Warp era. What you describe is meant to be, sub-light speed is slow and planning/management necessarily different. But this is where it starts.

[zgrssd]

ORIGINAL: Sild

I take issue with your point 3.

No need to cut anything out. Please don't do it. If anything give other means of obtaining said resources and new avenues in using them. Don't fall into the pitfalls of cutting things just because. It's the last thing I'd want to see.

If we can fabricate it, that really just drives home how unimportant it is. I am already paying a ton of credits. Can't the private economy figure out how to run a steel mill on it's own?

Just looking a bit at the Modding Guide, apparently DWU/DW1 already contained code to have colonies produce resources. It was purely based on population and mutually exclusive with finding the same stuff in space (I think). But it had the option, roughly speaking.

ORIGINAL: Miletkir

If Pre-warp mechanics annoy you, my suggestion is to just start at the Warp era. What you describe is meant to be, sub-light speed is slow and planning/management necessarily different. But this is where it starts.

I like the concept of the Pre-FTL start. But given that I am already limited to a single system, it would be nice if I at least could defend and exploit that one somewhat reliably.

Of course I am not talking about Day 1 in-system drive. But as the first (rather easy to do) step of getting full on warpdrives it would be usefull in itself.
In DWU the Warpfield precursors already kinda did this. It could be given even less range, but be made easier to get.

[Jorgen_CAB]

For pre-Warp they have included an "early" type of FTL drive that are mainly viable for system jumps called a skip-drive... you should be able to research this drive very fast (as seen from the preview)... probably around the time you build one or more structures around your planets neighbouring bodies (if any).

In regards to resources I also think it would be a mistake to remove resources, the more resources there are in the game the more the reason there will be for trade as you are always going to lack some valuable resources. As long as there is some balance between the expenditure of resources and the quantity of them there should not be a problem. I don't mind if we need to mine some of the more common material as well as the more exotic ones... in general most bodies might not have enough easily accessible of most common resources so not worth mining them, so the ones we get in the game are where there are enough easily accessible resources we do get to mine. We just need to view if from a rather abstracted point of view, no big deal in my opinion.

[BigWolfChris]

Tbf, the amount of different resources is what seperates DW from most other games - but it really only works because of the automated state of the game

As for FTL, the issue I feel is more balance than anything

[zgrssd]

ORIGINAL: Jorgen_CAB

For pre-Warp they have included an "early" type of FTL drive that are mainly viable for system jumps called a skip-drive... you should be able to research this drive very fast (as seen from the preview)... probably around the time you build one or more structures around your planets neighbouring bodies (if any).

Good news on the skip drive.

ORIGINAL: Jorgen_CAB

In regards to resources I also think it would be a mistake to remove resources, the more resources there are in the game the more the reason there will be for trade as you are always going to lack some valuable resources.

Valuable resource are the operating words. If it is very common and found on 3 kinds of stellar objects - it is not a valuable resource. Tracking it is really just busy work and wasted CPU cycles.

Now I can only go of DWU data, but using that:
Aculon? Very common, but only on one planet type. A keeper, as the place to roll it is rare.

Argon, Helium? Very common at both gas Giants + Gas Clouds. Pointless to track.
Gold, Lead, Steel, Iridium? Very common. At Barren Rock, Continental and Asteroids.
Those are all way to common. When were they ever a valuable and/or limited resource? Something you could aim a raid at?

Caslon? Very common and found like Argon/Helium/Hydrogen, but it is rather important as early game fuel. So it is worth tracking.
Hydrogen? While it works like a Fuel like Caslon, we can literally gather it from the interstellar medium. That is what a Ramscoop or Star Treks Bussard Collectors do. It is also advanced fuel, so we might be able to just entirely ignore it as a limited resource. You may still ened refueling, but getting the fuel is childs play.
Unless we talk about a rare isotope, like Helium-3 or something.

Carbon Fibre? seems way to uncommon. We built almost everything out of the stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fi ... plications And the main ingredient is carbon - a stellar fusion product and the basis of all carbon based biochemistry. it is literally in the air we are exhaling.
But I heard they replaced it with the Fictional "Carbonite", so it can be rarer. As long as iti s not quite that universally nessesary.

[Jorgen_CAB]

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

Valuable resource are the operating words. If it is very common and found on 3 kinds of stellar objects - it is not a valuable resource. Tracking it is really just busy work and wasted CPU cycles.

Now I can only go of DWU data, but using that:
Aculon? Very common, but only on one planet type. A keeper, as the place to roll it is rare.

Argon, Helium? Very common at both gas Giants + Gas Clouds. Pointless to track.
Gold, Lead, Steel, Iridium? Very common. At Barren Rock, Continental and Asteroids.
Those are all way to common. When were they ever a valuable and/or limited resource? Something you could aim a raid at?

Caslon? Very common and found like Argon/Helium/Hydrogen, but it is rather important as early game fuel. So it is worth tracking.
Hydrogen? While it works like a Fuel like Caslon, we can literally gather it from the interstellar medium. That is what a Ramscoop or Star Treks Bussard Collectors do. It is also advanced fuel, so we might be able to just entirely ignore it as a limited resource. You may still ened refueling, but getting the fuel is childs play.
Unless we talk about a rare isotope, like Helium-3 or something.

Carbon Fibre? seems way to uncommon. We built almost everything out of the stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fi ... plications And the main ingredient is carbon - a stellar fusion product and the basis of all carbon based biochemistry. it is literally in the air we are exhaling.
But I heard they replaced it with the Fictional "Carbonite", so it can be rarer. As long as iti s not quite that universally nessesary.

It doesn't matter how common a specific resource are in the game as long as it is balanced in terms of demand of that resource in general. This should mean that any resource will have a chance to become scarce at some point depending on how high the demand is. This is a pure balance act.

I don't care what technobabble you use to explain in what quantities you need certain resources and why... there probably are thousands of ways you can rationally explain anything to be internally consistent so I will not even try.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: zgrssd
1. Things should tell me how much of any given resource they still need/need in total. That is both planets doing a construction and ships in the designer.
All DWU tells me "we are missing X and have no mining station for X" or "Production stalled because X is missing".
No indication how much X we need, how far away my only supply of X is, etc.

First, resource cost is now paid when you build something rather than starting to build and then getting the resources over time. Also, the cost is made clear and resource shortages are much, much easier to see and understand.

2. A Empire wide overview
I would need a empire wide overview for all resources of:
- Demand. That should include all currently undergoing operations - every ship or mining station in the queue across my entire empire.
- Supply. All the deposits I got under my mining stations/on my colonies
- In transit. How much is currently in transit to be delivered - on freighters of my own empire, in mining ships of my own empire. Can include how much si already delivered (waiting for the rest of the resources to start production).
- Extended in transit. Like in Transit, except it includes stuff that has not yet been retreived from the station/mined out or will have to be bought from another empire (indicating the lack of a stable supply).

This exists but not with every category above summarized but still much more easily accessible and transparent than in DW1. We might add more break-out categories if it proves useful during the beta.

3. Less is more. There are so many resource, it is hard to even understand wich one is important/a bottleneck/a important resource. If you got a lot of resoruces, a lot of them just become noise. Noise that makes it hard to figure out the ones that really mater.
And to top it off, some of them are pretty...trivial to get anyway. Carbon Fibre? Can be made from Carbon.
Steel? That is literally just Iron + Carbon.
The need to extract Hydrogen from Gas giants? it is the most common element, with a estimated 75% of the total visible weight of the universe!
Helium? That is a estimated 24% of all visible mass in the unvierse. (The remaining 1% are the heavier elements).
How is any lost colony going "space age", if it has no access to steel? Or Carbon? Or Helium?
You could cut them out entirely, without much loss. If you still want it for idel traffic, consider combining them into "Common Solids" and "Common gasses".

Resource abundance is decreased from DW1, mining rates are decreased, some resources (even construction resources) are more scarce than others, etc. Typically, the more scarce resources are needed for the more advanced technologies.

As far as re-doing the resources along more real-world lines, that's certainly possible, it's just not quite what we were aiming for.

4. Pre-FTL in system drive
A big issue with the pre-FTL setting, is the difficulty of using the resources in your home System. On top of travel between Systems, the FTL especially allows quick travel within a System.
The same mining station/planet can be simulation years away or simulation minutes, depending on if you got Warp drive. This makes both the exploitation and defense of those assets impossible. Basically unless it is in the same moon/planet system as your starting colony, it might as well not exist.

Maybe you could give us a early "proto Warpdrive"? One that allows FTL or near FTL travel - but only within a system.

We did, it's called the Skip Drive and you can/should get it quite quickly in base DW2.

Regards,

- Erik

[zgrssd]

Good news on the Skip Drive and better UI.

Resource abundance is decreased from DW1, mining rates are decreased, some resources (even construction resources) are more scarce than others, etc. Typically, the more scarce resources are needed for the more advanced technologies.

The problem with making construction resources scarce, is that there is a realistic chance that you can not build anything - at all - if you ever a shortage of them.
I learned the hard way that being unable to do something, is a realy crappy situation to be in as a player.

Also the part where rare resources are "only" used for advanced technologies, would clash with the auto-designer feature. It either:
- makes designs with those advanced technologies, wich would always cost those resources and the rares could quickly become the bottleneck
- does not make design with those advanced technologies, meaning they would be never really used even if the resources are availible

I did once thought up a solution for Stellaris:
There Tier 1-3 of gear just costs the basic construction resource, but 4+5 does costs rare resources
What if you could order give a "do not use rares" build order, where all the T4+5 gear of a design is replaced with Tier 3 gear - thus removing any need to accumualte those rare resources for those instances. You could still retrofit it with the proper weapons later.
Maybe you could apply it here? Maybe two designs, one high tech and one lower tech? Maybe a toggle that simply replaces existing components with lower tier ones if the costs for rares works similar?

[Jorgen_CAB]

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

Good news on the Skip Drive and better UI.

Resource abundance is decreased from DW1, mining rates are decreased, some resources (even construction resources) are more scarce than others, etc. Typically, the more scarce resources are needed for the more advanced technologies.

The problem with making construction resources scarce, is that there is a realistic chance that you can not build anything - at all - if you ever a shortage of them.
I learned the hard way that being unable to do something, is a realy crappy situation to be in as a player.

Also the part where rare resources are "only" used for advanced technologies, would clash with the auto-designer feature. It either:
- makes designs with those advanced technologies, wich would always cost those resources and the rares could quickly become the bottleneck
- does not make design with those advanced technologies, meaning they would be never really used even if the resources are availible

I did once thought up a solution for Stellaris:
There Tier 1-3 of gear just costs the basic construction resource, but 4+5 does costs rare resources
What if you could order give a "do not use rares" build order, where all the T4+5 gear of a design is replaced with Tier 3 gear - thus removing any need to accumualte those rare resources for those instances. You could still retrofit it with the proper weapons later.
Maybe you could apply it here? Maybe two designs, one high tech and one lower tech? Maybe a toggle that simply replaces existing components with lower tier ones if the costs for rares works similar?

Scarce resources is what drives conflict which you generally need in a game to some degree. It also means that you can benefit from trade, both to buy and sell these scarce resources. You have to see the benefit in this model...

Looking at the resources you have and planning around them is part of why I like a game economy like this. You can control the Auto-design with the research you do if you necessarily need to rely on the auto design feature.

[Ranbir]

Private sector will always do its best to deliver you resources you need. The emphasis of you controlling the 'source' is what becomes strategic importance.

[zgrssd]

ORIGINAL: Jorgen_CAB

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

Good news on the Skip Drive and better UI.

Resource abundance is decreased from DW1, mining rates are decreased, some resources (even construction resources) are more scarce than others, etc. Typically, the more scarce resources are needed for the more advanced technologies.

The problem with making construction resources scarce, is that there is a realistic chance that you can not build anything - at all - if you ever a shortage of them.
I learned the hard way that being unable to do something, is a realy crappy situation to be in as a player.

Also the part where rare resources are "only" used for advanced technologies, would clash with the auto-designer feature. It either:
- makes designs with those advanced technologies, wich would always cost those resources and the rares could quickly become the bottleneck
- does not make design with those advanced technologies, meaning they would be never really used even if the resources are availible

I did once thought up a solution for Stellaris:
There Tier 1-3 of gear just costs the basic construction resource, but 4+5 does costs rare resources
What if you could order give a "do not use rares" build order, where all the T4+5 gear of a design is replaced with Tier 3 gear - thus removing any need to accumualte those rare resources for those instances. You could still retrofit it with the proper weapons later.
Maybe you could apply it here? Maybe two designs, one high tech and one lower tech? Maybe a toggle that simply replaces existing components with lower tier ones if the costs for rares works similar?

Scarce resources is what drives conflict which you generally need in a game to some degree.

My point was this:
If it needs to be very common to not hardlock the player, it stops being a Scarce resource that drives conflict.
And if it is not a scarce resource, why have it in the game at all?

[Erik Rutins]

Clearly there is a balance to be struck and that's our job to get the balance right, where between the abundance of resources and the effectiveness of the private sector, you feel that you can create a nicely working economy in peace-time, but when your lines of supply are being raided and your mining stations destroyed or captured, some resource may start to become scarce.

First, you'll start depleting the stockpiles you've built up at your colonies and spaceports. Then, if you can't prevail and protect your economy, you may have to rely on more expensive sources of the scarce resources, either from independent traders or other empires with whom you have trade relations (hopefully good trade relations, so they don't charge you extra), or even explore (or conquer?) for other alternative sources. In the worst case, you may have to settle for lower tech options for your ships and stations until the more scarce resources become available again.

There's a lot to consider in all these cases and a lot to balance, but done properly it should create a lot of interesting situations and challenges when your empire is pushed out of equilibrium, without making things frustrating to plan and optimize.

As in DW1, there are also a few resources that are ultra-rare, perhaps only one or two sources in the entire galaxy. These are most likely, if trade is denied, to cause a conflict. The others are more likely to have the effects described above during a conflict.

[Tanaka]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

ORIGINAL: zgrssd
1. Things should tell me how much of any given resource they still need/need in total. That is both planets doing a construction and ships in the designer.
All DWU tells me "we are missing X and have no mining station for X" or "Production stalled because X is missing".
No indication how much X we need, how far away my only supply of X is, etc.

First, resource cost is now paid when you build something rather than starting to build and then getting the resources over time. Also, the cost is made clear and resource shortages are much, much easier to see and understand.

2. A Empire wide overview
I would need a empire wide overview for all resources of:
- Demand. That should include all currently undergoing operations - every ship or mining station in the queue across my entire empire.
- Supply. All the deposits I got under my mining stations/on my colonies
- In transit. How much is currently in transit to be delivered - on freighters of my own empire, in mining ships of my own empire. Can include how much si already delivered (waiting for the rest of the resources to start production).
- Extended in transit. Like in Transit, except it includes stuff that has not yet been retreived from the station/mined out or will have to be bought from another empire (indicating the lack of a stable supply).

This exists but not with every category above summarized but still much more easily accessible and transparent than in DW1. We might add more break-out categories if it proves useful during the beta.

3. Less is more. There are so many resource, it is hard to even understand wich one is important/a bottleneck/a important resource. If you got a lot of resoruces, a lot of them just become noise. Noise that makes it hard to figure out the ones that really mater.
And to top it off, some of them are pretty...trivial to get anyway. Carbon Fibre? Can be made from Carbon.
Steel? That is literally just Iron + Carbon.
The need to extract Hydrogen from Gas giants? it is the most common element, with a estimated 75% of the total visible weight of the universe!
Helium? That is a estimated 24% of all visible mass in the unvierse. (The remaining 1% are the heavier elements).
How is any lost colony going "space age", if it has no access to steel? Or Carbon? Or Helium?
You could cut them out entirely, without much loss. If you still want it for idel traffic, consider combining them into "Common Solids" and "Common gasses".

Resource abundance is decreased from DW1, mining rates are decreased, some resources (even construction resources) are more scarce than others, etc. Typically, the more scarce resources are needed for the more advanced technologies.

As far as re-doing the resources along more real-world lines, that's certainly possible, it's just not quite what we were aiming for.

4. Pre-FTL in system drive
A big issue with the pre-FTL setting, is the difficulty of using the resources in your home System. On top of travel between Systems, the FTL especially allows quick travel within a System.
The same mining station/planet can be simulation years away or simulation minutes, depending on if you got Warp drive. This makes both the exploitation and defense of those assets impossible. Basically unless it is in the same moon/planet system as your starting colony, it might as well not exist.

Maybe you could give us a early "proto Warpdrive"? One that allows FTL or near FTL travel - but only within a system.

We did, it's called the Skip Drive and you can/should get it quite quickly in base DW2.

Regards,

- Erik

Oh all of these changes sound sooo much better! Music to my ears! [&o]

[Miskatonic81]

For a game with such heavy focus on logistics, supply chains, and resource flow, I'd argue that having more types of resources is better than less. More resources means more reason to keep exploring and exploiting, and I guess trading if you're into that sort of thing.

If it's just the realism of things like hydrogen and carbon, then it seems like it would be easily moddable. But removing resources feels like it would remove a large drive of what makes the game work.

[Jorgen_CAB]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Clearly there is a balance to be struck and that's our job to get the balance right, where between the abundance of resources and the effectiveness of the private sector, you feel that you can create a nicely working economy in peace-time, but when your lines of supply are being raided and your mining stations destroyed or captured, some resource may start to become scarce.

First, you'll start depleting the stockpiles you've built up at your colonies and spaceports. Then, if you can't prevail and protect your economy, you may have to rely on more expensive sources of the scarce resources, either from independent traders or other empires with whom you have trade relations (hopefully good trade relations, so they don't charge you extra), or even explore (or conquer?) for other alternative sources. In the worst case, you may have to settle for lower tech options for your ships and stations until the more scarce resources become available again.

There's a lot to consider in all these cases and a lot to balance, but done properly it should create a lot of interesting situations and challenges when your empire is pushed out of equilibrium, without making things frustrating to plan and optimize.

As in DW1, there are also a few resources that are ultra-rare, perhaps only one or two sources in the entire galaxy. These are most likely, if trade is denied, to cause a conflict. The others are more likely to have the effects described above during a conflict.

I also assume that some scarcity can also be introduced through having some areas of space being more or less abundant by even common resources?
So, an empire might be in an area where some common resources just happen to be a bit more scarce so you need to trade for them or expand into an area where they are more abundant.

At least I suppose that is one way that conflict can be driven by resources to some degree.

[Jorgen_CAB]

ORIGINAL: Miskatonic81

For a game with such heavy focus on logistics, supply chains, and resource flow, I'd argue that having more types of resources is better than less. More resources means more reason to keep exploring and exploiting, and I guess trading if you're into that sort of thing.

If it's just the realism of things like hydrogen and carbon, then it seems like it would be easily moddable. But removing resources feels like it would remove a large drive of what makes the game work.

I would agree, the less resource types you have the easier it would be to get a good balance through mining and not needing to trade for them. The more resources the more likely you are to run short of at least some of them which drives you to expand or trade for them.

[Perry_Rhodan]

Galactic Civilization III, despite all its flaws (and they are numerous, but it mostly comes from the devs not wanting to fix long standing bugs) had done it right on the special resources. This is not systematical in the tech tree, but you'll notice that some techs provide 2 variants of the same weapon. One requiring a special resource, and a weaker one only using credits (no resource). This second line of weapons allow you to continue progressing in tech and combat efficiency, but you'll definitively want to put your hands (or tentacles, whatever) on more special resources.