About a month ago I was thinking about how the game could divide up resources in a way that makes for functional UI in the Society stage that also takes into account both the large variety of resources a society actually needs and potential for an alien planet to have access to different natural resources.
To give an example of what I mean, concrete is an important resource for construction, but is the game going to consider limestone, gypsum, rock/gravel and sand individual resources? Most likely not, but how would it collapse them together? Sand has uses of its own beyond concrete (glass mainly, but also sandpaper, primitive filters, agriculture…), would rock and limestone be lumped in together? Perhaps these should all be collapsed into a single “mineral” resource alongside mud and clay.
How would organic materials be grouped together? Wood (and analogues), fiber, skin/leather/hide, furs, bones, ivory, shells, whatever else might evolve. Many of these could be fine as a single resource, but wood is incredibly versatile. Wood is used as a material for making structures and tools, for burning to make fire or charcoal, for paper, for some species it might even be food, and there may be planets where their given wood analogue may not be able to provide all these uses.
Because of this I think it would be best if the material that wood would belong to was defined by its use as fuel, and its uses for other things could be instead an ‘external’ matter defined by its other properties, likely unlocked via options made or not made available in the tech tree.
For example, on a planet where there is plenty of combustible organic material (leaves, fruiting bodies, whatever), but all the “trees” instead use stems partly made of silica or calcium carbonate, the player simply wouldn’t be able to unlock the option to make things like structures or tools out of the “biofuel” resource they harvest, and harvesting the “tree” stems would simply provide “minerals” to make other things out of. Likewise, on a world with traditional wood, if your species is able to digest it, perhaps you can start the society stage with the ability to also use your “biofuel” resource in place of your food resource.
In this case you could have (working names) Minerals, Organics, Biofuel, Food, and Water. Potentially Tools and Luxuries, too. Not bad for the early Society Stage. Add in one more resource for Metals and you’re probably golden until Industrial, where you’d probably have it somewhat easier as the many resources at that point have more standard ways of categorizing them (structural metals, precious metals, fossil fuels, radioactive material, etc.).
I definitely don’t envy the developers that are gonna have to think about this stuff and implement it because it’s probably going to be a mess, especially in stages after Society where the potential amount of resources could balloon rapidly, but I think they’ll be able to make it work once it comes down to it. I’m interested to hear other people’s thoughts on this topic.