Just floating this out there to get general feedback... I've been working out how primary, game controlling resources might work for an abstract, sandbox RPG/Life Sim game (single-player). The basic idea is that you choose from adventurous or everyday encounters based on the areas in an environments you enter (say on a starship or in an alien city). There's five major resources that control your actions and I'm trying to make a strategy out of managing them:

• Time - Each activity costs at a minimum 1 point of time
• Money - Some activities, like moving about the city or renting a sleeper cube, cost money
• Energy - Physical activities, like athletic training, cost Energy
• Focus - Mental activities, like using cyberspace, cost Focus
• Will - Activities requiring discipline or courage cost Will

Time: The player only gets so much time each day, and can burn it up adventuring, training, shopping, crafting or replenishing resources (the primary above or secondary, which I'll mostly leave out for now). Money: Living in civilization costs money. Ships deduct it from pay, but in a city or on a station a penniless soul risks starvation or homelessness (which is a powerful incentive to adventure or try to sign up with any ship that pulls into port). Energy: Energy regenerates every new day and can be recouped by resting if time allows. It's modified by living conditions such that if your environment is poor (living next to a spaceport, thin walls and arduous neighbors or police actions against gangs) your energy is more likely to be unreliable each day. Stims, implants, anti-gravity beds would be the sorts of things that boost energy. Focus: As it's a high tech universe lots of activities in the game world involve interfacing with computers or mental tasks, all of which costs Focus. Will: Entering certain areas, doing certain tasks or interacting with certain characters costs costs Will. This is based, in part, on past choices the player has made. For example, going deeper and deeper into a spooky ghost ship might require more and more Will, as might trash talking a known neighborhood mob boss. The Time (and possible Money) costs for activities varies by location and factions the player joins. Military, for instance, have Time highly restricted but require little money until on leave, whereas a member of an indie ship crew might have just the opposite. Finally, the Energy/Focus/Will triad varies based on the personality (aka character class) the player evolves. Athletic types might not only have more Energy, but pay less Will for athletic endeavors, whereas the geeks of the universe might face the opposite (no offense to muscle bound geeks out there, btw). To tie the better into the RPG section, more traditional RPG gameplay, particularly skill use, may not use up Energy/Focus/Will but will require minimum levels. That's the basics. I know it's hard to evaluate based on just that but I'm trying to be brief so questions or comments most welcome!

One thing that occurs to me is that Focus and Will are very much dependent on your Energy. Lets say you are having a very stressful time. Your energy is erratic and finally after weeks of battling your circumstances your energy is simply low most of the time. This reflects a spiral into depression basically. Now if you think about it from that point of view, your focus and courage are highly dependent on how much energy you have. One way of reflecting this I think might be able to 'buy" more focus or will with energy. You should also probably have large pools of both time and energy but make everything cost a least a bit. After all, if you have no energy, how can you have the focus to do something?

Having classes that allow a bonus (or penalty) to realms of use of these stats is, I think, A good move.

Ex. Track runner might have lower Will cost to jump rooftop to rooftop.
Karate Fighter might have lower Will costs to tell off gang members.
He might also have a boost for rooftop jumping but not as much as the Track Runner
The Hacker might have lower Will cost when breaking into company databases, but be impossibly scared to jump off a rooftop.

You need to keep them dynamic and somehow user definable though. As you can see form the first two examples, both are athletic, but in different ways with different results.

Sounds good to me. Obviously it depends a lot on what you're focusing on in the sim, but that looks appropriate.

I'm glad you've listed time as a prime resource, because a lot of strategy games have that as a hidden cost. Sure, it's good to know that unit costs 200 gold and 100 lumber, but it's also nice to know if it takes one second to spawn or a full minute.

I'm not sure about calling "Energy" by that name; in a sci-fi setting, I'd think that has something to do with your ship's power reserves. Heck, in some sci-fi settings, money and energy might be the same thing. I'd consider a more organic only name ("vim" maybe?). Likewise I'd probably call "Will" something like "Nerve" as I tend to think of Will being related to magic power, although in that case it's far less confusing the way you have it now.

I'm also not sure if you need a separate category for Focus and Will, but that depends completely on your simulation. If you needed to limit it to four resources though, those are the two I would considering merging. I could see someone with poor discipline or courage losing Focus faster, leading to poorer mental results.