Planetary Resources Systems

I’ve thought about how resources might be able to work tonight and how to potentially make dealing with resources at least non-invasive for players.

My thought was for there to be options before starting a play through/generating a new planet,
for how to deal with resources.

1 (Realistic)- The most painful on most players and ones computer as resources would be able to be depleated and non-renewable resources such as metals don’t regenerate which would be the most realistic and have the potential for scarcity and resource wars but most likely to screw the player over at some point especially on resource poor worlds.
Alongside having to compute the resources being depleted and having to either micromanage things like mines or have the game manage it, this system would most likely be the most or 2nd most intensive system on this list.

2 (Renewable Resources)- Under this system while being less realistic due to things like metal regenerating alongside oil at a non-geologic timescale thus meaning resources regenerate on the scale of years or at most decades.
Basically easier then the 1st but takes more computation alongside forcing the player to stockpile more if they ever have to have extraction outpace renewal and somehow deplete meaning they’ll have to find another deposit or wait for the resource to renew.
This could also be used to potentially grow some resources in new places if there was a particular Ascension perk for the like.
Also the player or the civilization could have it to where extraction is around the same as the renewal rate with potentially the renewal rate being increased through technologies, government policies, and even Ascension Perks.
Another thing would be that when low on resources the production would increase even further then when low on resources on the 1st system so the renewal can properly take place here.
Alongside this perhaps special events could take place in this system such as a surprised fast renewal or cultural inspirations that could inspire cultural Great Works or even breakthroughs in science such as if the deposit has a high enough population density around it or scientists studying it.

2.5- Basically the 1st system for most deposits but with some deposits of every nonrenewable resource type being the 2nd one thus having an interesting time of resource wars as the player or AI freaks out when they run out on a deposit and the Renewal Deposits become extremely sought after.

3 (Civ/Humankind system)- Basically have a system in which the resources and infinite so basically if you’ve played those games or some like Dawn of Man except if you couldn’t deplete any resources at all.
The simplest and least computationally extensive but the least complex.

These also could play a role in earlier stages at least for creatures that consume iron and sulfur which could drive your creature to extinction on the 1st (Realistic) or even 2nd (Renewal) systems. Any of the systems could have iron eating creatures fight over deposits as well if there are other iron or sulfur consuming animals around.

So feel free to comment on which system is preferred and y’alls ideas on if the ideas for resources could be improved.

Preferred Resource System
  • Realistic System
  • Renewal System
  • Mix of Realistic and Renewal System (Option 2.5)
  • Civ/Humankind System
0 voters
3 Likes

I’ll agree that Option 2.5 is intriguing as a gameplay structure, but Thrive strives for realism and any renewing deposits don’t really match that. Maybe it could be put as a toggle in the planetary generation, “Make infinite deposits” (at the very least, you could put in an abiotic oil source - it’s wishful thinking on Earth, but with the application of theoretical science and a good heap of suspension of disbelief, that could work - nothing about other minerals, though).

The default will probably end up Realistic, I would imagine.

5 Likes

The whole being able to choose between systems is actually what I want implemented in the game since some people want a very hardcore experience while I’m fine with having a much more casual experience for myself.

I’d choose the renewal system for my personal playthroughs while others might wanna choose one of the other systems for their playthrough.

1 Like

Nothing can appeal to everybody. Even just having all these options in the menu would turn off people who don’t know what it all means or what to tick. Thrive has very limited dev time, there’s like 700 open issues right now, including a hundred that are marked ‘easy’. Putting in all these alternate modes would be something for post-Ascension development. The important part is to develop just one, and given how Thrive has treated the Microbe Stage, that ‘just one’ is probably going to be Realistic.

That being said, Thrive’s an open-source project, and if you design all of these options yourself, I’m sure they’d get in the game. I mean, if you’re willing to go work on the Society stage prototype, you could probably get them in-game now!

2 Likes

Is there really much of a point in improving prototypes of the civilization stages at this moment when even the microbe stage isn’t finished yet? I feel like such effort would be better redirected into improving microbe stage or multicellular stage.

2 Likes

I feel like if you want to to do the work of hardcore game dev we should let you do whatever you want, and even if it’s unhinged stuff that never gets merged, you can just fork.

3 Likes

I mean yes, it’s not like adding new stuff to the prototype stages is forbidden. However any sort of a “city building prototype” or stuff of such kind would almost certainly get rewritten from scratch if they were developed around now for the base game and then the development reached the stage it’s in.

2 Likes

Not necessarily as long as the “more expanded prototype” used ECS architecture and took care in anticipating the required extension points and attachment points to the rest of the game.

4 Likes

Voted realistic, but i think the matter is actually a bit more complicated. You can have some non-renewable resource, but in such huge amounts you will never run out of it in practice. It will also heavily depend on the industry part of it too. How resource-hungry will it be? Here’s a lot of space to maneuver in the difficulty and balance departments, without introducing unrealistic mechanics like renewability.
I would imagine resource scarcity as part of difficulty settings. On hard setting, here’s few resources, you’ll have to manage them carefully and fight for them. On easy, here’s a lot and you can reach ftl stage with a civ of rapidly breeding hyperconsumerists and still have some left after. Everybody’s happy.

4 Likes

That does not apply to certain rare types of resources like phosphorus

1 Like

You can also have non renewable deposits. Think about Oil. It’s actually quite hard to find oil without modern tech. Even if you find it you can’t necessarily mine all that sweat Texan oil without fracking, which isn’t easy or as profitable. You could have resources that basically everyone has, that people still fight over and still run out because everyone was consuming Arabian (Saudi and their neighbors) oil, just because it was cheapest, so now you have to stop embargoing Venezuela or start fracking and just accept price hikes. IRL, we can just literally just run out of oil, but it isn’t hard to image a resource that has the lowest quality of deposits anywhere (or are randomly located, but infinite, in a harder game mode), and higher quality ones might be under cities, or in the middle of the ocean, or they might be conveniently located, and thus worth conquering. In lower difficulties all rare resources could work like that, so if you’re willing to handle the inefficiency or get the tech to mine it, you can always have the stuff you need.

1 Like

Isn’t it technically possible to renew oil and stuff if you waited for like millions of years?

1 Like

By the time your creature evolved to need oil, your generations will be to close together for “millions of years” to mean much. There are insects that go dormant for decades, and turtles who supposedly live over a century, but millions of years? I guess you could cryo-freeze your people, but unless you had AI’s to keep your pods in working order and know when to let you out, not to mention the energy supply, it seems unlikely that millions of years would be a waitable period of time. Unless you had an Ascended ray to point at it and speed up the process, but would you still need the oil then?

3 Likes

Yes. The sun will go out in a few billion years, so I suppose solar shouldn’t be renewable? And geothermal will run out to so technically it’s less sustainable than coal even though coal would need wood eating bugs to unevolve and bring about another Carboniferous to regenerate in full. Sentences that start with technically are pretty easy to ignore, because we only need to care about sentences that start with practically. Practically, solar is free, and if you use up your oil reserves, you are out of oil and will have to go find some more.

4 Likes

Yes. Technically nothing is renewable because everything will become “nothing” one day.

I’ve heard that there are some “in-between” types of resources like animals

1 Like

Like renewable unless you consume them SO much they go extinct? Makes sense.

1 Like

Theoretically with space stage tech you could just revive these species if you made them extinct sometime before.