I had this "great" idea of having mines that exctract minerals and factories that make goods in my game.

So you can place a mine on a goldmine and then it'll start extracting the gold resource at a certain rate? Then you have a factory that makes some product that uses gold? I'm assuming this is some kind of RTS?

The thing I would say is that this aspect doesn't really need to be that exciting does it? I mean the end product is what people would be excited about right? For example in Age Of Empires you put workers on a goldmine and forget about them until the mine is used up, but it's the things you can make/buy with that gold that really matters.

However, what you can do is somehow limit how many mines they can have collecting certain resources or something like that. You have to make them make a decision on what resources they need and not let them just be able to collect all resources at all times. Now they have to think about this process. Maybe you do this with some kind of energy source that can run only so many mines or something like that.

Limitations is what makes life & games interesting. If we always got everything we wanted then it becomes boring, but having to work around limitations makes us use our brains more and be creative and make unique decisions. You need to create some kind of limitation around these mines to limit things.

So you can place a mine on a goldmine and then it'll start extracting the gold resource at a certain rate? Then you have a factory that makes some product that uses gold? I'm assuming this is some kind of RTS?

It's 4X. You have planets and construct infrastructure (mines & factories). There are no workers, mines do not "extract" anything in a physical sense (just a number of mines). There is just a global "mines output per turn" and it's compared with "factories minerals usage per turn", if the minerals are above or equal than the factories need everything is all right, if below some factories are idle/have lower production output.

What is troubling is that you ALWAYS want an IDEAL ratio of mines to factories. So it's a boring adjusting of sliders without any decisions (you ALWAYS want 1 mine per 1 factory, since that's the most optimal combination).

Can you stockpile resources?

Lets say I'm consuming 10 units per turn from factories, but producing 12 from mines.

do I retain +2 resources per turn in some sort of reserve?

If that's the case, I could make enough mines for getting +20 per turn, and eventually build a bunch of factories to burn off the reserve I've saved up.

In that case there would be no "ideal" number, because it serves as insurance in case you lose mines, or a temporary boost to production.

Can you stockpile resources?

In the current model, no.

Also I'm not so fond of this, it would require displaying these resources on interface, and it has more drastic consequences (you don't see the shortage coming if you are not careful, just one turn you get your production suddenly halved because you used up your reserves and your current mines capacity can meet only 50% of needs), also it is not within the mood of the game (you being the emperor and not dealing with logistics). A lot of drawbacks, for this particular game at least.

Probably factories could work on alternative resource which is everywhere but less effective.1 mine gives 5 materials, no mine gives 1 material (producing meat from... soybeans... you know :))

Or something like "diversification" (not sure about the word) but that is when military factory producing civil engineering - machines, toys, etc.

So you can place a mine on a goldmine and then it'll start extracting the gold resource at a certain rate? Then you have a factory that makes some product that uses gold? I'm assuming this is some kind of RTS?

It's 4X. You have planets and construct infrastructure (mines & factories). There are no workers, mines do not "extract" anything in a physical sense (just a number of mines). There is just a global "mines output per turn" and it's compared with "factories minerals usage per turn", if the minerals are above or equal than the factories need everything is all right, if below some factories are idle/have lower production output.

What is troubling is that you ALWAYS want an IDEAL ratio of mines to factories. So it's a boring adjusting of sliders without any decisions (you ALWAYS want 1 mine per 1 factory, since that's the most optimal combination).

OK, so I can just slide the mine option to have 10 global mines and it'll produce x resources. Then I can just slid the factories option to have 10 global factories to consume those resources. It seems to simplistic to it's own demise I guess. This is generally why games are more complex. I feel that without adding limitations it's just doomed to be boring. You should always have more factories building a diverse set of things from resources than you have resources. So somehow you would want to limit mines. Maybe you have different kinds of mines and you can only have so many mines total. That way you have to focus on what resources do you want the most of and others you don't need so much of. This would determine what factories you want to what things you want made.

For example say player A, makes 3 gold mines and 1 silver mine, but player B makes 3 silver mines and 1 gold mine. Now the factories they pick would generally reflect this decision too but you'd always want something that requires a lot of both resources so no matter what the player will have to wait some time to make that big thing. The player who picks 2 gold and 2 silver can make that big thing faster, but they make the smaller things slower. Some kind of limitations and having the player make options makes it more interesting. They are then forming a strategy and that's more entertaining.

In VGA Planets (yes, I brought it up yet again), mines harvest resources, and factories produce supplies.

Even after a planet is dead dried of resources, it can still produce supplies, which means you can still leverage the population as workforce.

I think it's clever as it means even 'dead rocks' with good growth potential are worth your attention to get supplies, whereas harsh planets with fewer inhabitants need to focus on mining alone.

In the end, each planet has its own use (mining, supplies, taxes, military outpost, refueling station, starbase, etc.)

Hmm, an interesting dynanmic, so factories are not needed to make ships? Ships are instantly constructed via resources+taxes as the currency? And factories make supplies (I assume supplies are some sort of "upkeep currency" for ships?)

The economy system is a bit complex, but essentially, supplies are good for a few things:

- Constructing factories (which generates more supplies)

- Constructing mines (which generates resources for ships)

- Sold for $

Resources and $ are useful for ships, so indirectly, factories play a large role, but directly, they do not inherently produce a resource that is a key aspect of this relationship.

In fact, the player's decision is always the same:

... Do I use my supplies to:

- Build more factories, which grants me a better industrial power which I can later turn for a lot more mines

- Build more mines, which grants me short-term resources increase

- Sell for cash, which grants me immediate money (with no added bonus in the future)

If you have a new planet and only few factories, the answer is most likely to increase factories quickly so that it has an industry, unless this is a dead rock with very few resources that you want to mine dry with a minimal investment.

Usually:

- Dead rock: few factories, few mines. After a while, you'll end up selling supplies for cash, or send supplies to other planets anyway.

- Big dead rock: more factories, still few mines. Chances are you end up selling supplies for cash to add up to your taxes gains.

- Rich rock: some factories (to speed up industrialization of mines) and as many mines as you can afford

- Big Rich Rock: many factories, many mines. After some factories are already there, split production between mines and factories as needed to balance between immediate and future gains

Now I really want to play a VGA Planets game!!

It seems to simplistic to it's own demise I guess. This is generally why games are more complex. I feel that without adding limitations it's just doomed to be boring. You should always have more factories building a diverse set of things from resources than you have resources. So somehow you would want to limit mines. Maybe you have different kinds of mines and you can only have so many mines total. That way you have to focus on what resources do you want the most of and others you don't need so much of. This would determine what factories you want to what things you want made.

Yeah... Maybe something along the lines: factories produce light products (no minerals needed) and heavy products (minerals needed)? Like, the factories that do not have their share of minerals produce industrial goods and heavy purposed factories make ships? Or some sort of slider where you decide between light/heavy production but the heavy is limited by resources?

Now I really want to play a VGA Planets game!!

:D

If you dont want to manually turn sliders of mines to match factory use of minerals, just do automatic just in time production.

Have a minimal stash of resources (enough for a minimal fixed number of turns of factory input to cover the refill+transport time) and have the mines only work as much as to fill the immediate demand (free places in the minimal stash): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban

The best resources system I've seen is in Total Annihilation and its Unofficial Sequel Supreme Commander. You had an income rate based on the number of mines ( let's say 120 metal per second) and your factories used a max of say.. 60/second. If you had 4 factories running, they'd all still run, but at a lower output. With 4, you have a max expenditure of 240/second. So all of your factories would run at 50% speed.

The games were real-time strategy though, but it could still be applied to TBS.

The best part of this kind of system was that you didn't need to micromanage your factories and could focus on expansion/warfare. You could set a factory to repeat it's build production. If you noticed that production was slow, you could either pause some or go build more mines to speed them up.

I've noticed the majority of games still run things the old style way. You "buy" your units. You have to manually select 1 unit to build at a time, paying for it before hand with each click. If you can queue them up, there's not a repeat option - and you can't set something to build unless you already have the resources. If you don't pay attention to your possibly large number of factories, they'll just sit there building nothing until you realize it.

Even if you keep the 1-to-1 ratio and switch to a style like this, factories would still be more interesting. 5 mines 10 factories, you're running at 50%. Maybe that's fine because it's faster to build your units 50% slower and not have to make them trek across the map to their intended destination - it's easier to build them on-site. Also requires less micromanagement again. You don't need to personally control where your new units are stationed.