Natural Resources

[Chade]

The mines, especially gold, seem to run out very, very quickly. This gets annoying for finding a new supply, and makes me want to stay out of the jewelry business. I'm hesitant to get into natural resources at all because of this. I also I don't understand quality ratings for most natural resources, such as oil, gold, and silica (I understand timber). In real life, natural resource quality is a measure of how difficult (expensive) it is to extract from the source. It affects the cost-yield ratio, but after the resource has been yielded, there shouldn't be a mineral quality factor in the manufactured good's quality rating. A low-yielding source for most natural resources should be more expensive, but of the same final quality. You can get similar oil from fracking, oil rigs, oil wells, or by compressing organic matter with your bare hands for a long time. An expansion on natural resources would be in researching extraction or refinement technology which would return better yields over time.

Let me give you an example:

Current Silver Mine:
Reserve: 5.2 mil oz.
Quality: 56
Land Cost: whatever

This mine will run out depending on how quickly you mine and move the inventory. It will have a direct effect on the quality of the silver goods created.

My suggestion:
Yield: 56
Extraction: Conventional (tier 1 in this example)
Land Cost: whatever

The yield is a measure of the amount and difficulty (cost) to extract/refine that natural resource. It will have an effect on the speed in which you can mine and the price of the resource. This mine will run out as normal, its yield fluctuating up and down, but eventually starts to drop ever lower (for example at around the 4 million oz. mark in the first example). When it does, if you have the technology and pay the fee, you could start mining using a more advanced silver extraction tier (tier 2) or sell the site to a more advanced mining company (or even more complex arrangements such as leasing or profit sharing). The second tier's yield and reserve are unknown until you have the technology. When that tier is finished, you can go deeper (with more tech and more money) or do whatever.

As tiers increase, operating costs also significantly increase, and remember that each tier's yield has little relation to the previous tier. At a certain point, a low yield at a lower tier will be less profitable than a high yield at a more expensive tier's operating costs. The time to switch (or skip tiers) is up to the player. When you get a new tier of extraction technology, new, previously hidden sources will show up on the map, replacing the randomly occurring ones now. At the highest tier, the mine will never 'run out' but the yield might taper off to a number (which can be set in difficulty settings), ensuring that there are sources of natural resources indefinitely without the random “mine site infusion” events that we currently have. As long as the game knows to have at least once source of every natural resource available by the final tier, we won't be locked out of supplies. Alternatively, you could make the same investment in a seaport and have the resource extracted off-site at corresponding extra cost – this is the ideal arrangement for a small number of cities, but otherwise has the same mechanics as I suggested.

[David]

FYI, you may check out this discussion thread about the same topic:
http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... =14&t=2955

I would recommend you give the new Redirect Clients function a try if you haven't yet?

A new "Redirect Clients" button will be available on the Sales Unit interface of firms that supply raw materials or products to other firms.

If any of your other firms have broken supply links which requires the same item that this Sales unit is selling, you may use this button to redirect the supply link to the current Sales unit.

For instance, your mine’s reserve has exhausted, and you have just built a new mine, then you may use this button to redirect supply links to the new mine.

[Chade]

Thank you for reading my suggestion and pointing me to that thread.

I understand that the reserve quantity is moddable and this solves one problem (small reserve) but introduces another problem (game-breaking profit and/or insurmountable initial investment). I suppose you could mod the operating costs as well to compensate. I think the current system is fairly profit-balanced (perhaps slightly unprofitable though, especially with the wonky inflation). However, the viability of natural resources wasn't really my main point about this suggestion.

I believe (and it is my understanding that others believe as well, based on the number of natural resource threads) that there is something inherently wrong (or perhaps not fun) about the game design of the natural resource industry.

That's why I suggested a new mechanic that incorporates scale (both credit and debit) through technology as well as diminishing returns that still have some end-game viability. Furthermore, I think my suggestion is more realistic than the current system (1. remove the problem of having to infinitely spawn mining sites; 2. corrects what I see to be a natural resource quality flaw). Third, I think my suggestion answers the question you posed in that thread:

The inevitable side effect of this is that natural resources with greater reserves will be more expensive to acquire. Right now a single natural resource site can already cost upward of $100 million. If it is going to cost even more, I am quite sure that there will be players who will complain about it.

Essentially, I believe my system adds a bit more capitalism without very much coder/art asset investment.

Just an idea that could potentially improve the game a bit.

[David]

I would recommend that you create a post with a poll and seek other users' feedback on your suggestion. If there are a sufficient amount of interest, it will be easier for me to pitch it to the dev team for implementation.