Remind me...

All resource mining works as follows...

Mining Starbase is mining 1 Durantium resource, this produces 1 Durantium resource for player to use or trade.

This resource is not cumulative over time meaning if you are mining 1 you only have 1 to use until it's gone it does not add up.  Think of it this way, I'm building a durantium ship component but, to keep it working it costs that 1 durantium resource per turn to keep it working.  

The good thing about this is if the mining base is destroyed the player can be negative and still have the component working, it does not cease to function.

If you build more mining modules or extra options to increase the yield then you can use more  

Resources are used in Ship components and Planetary Improvements.  I would love if they would let one terraform more planetary tiles

Seilore is correct.

One thing I wish they did was make it a resource 'per turn' then make the costs of components a set cost and buildings be a cost per turn. What does your average game last? 200 turns, 500? 1000? Assuming the mining tech worked the same  you could have tens of thousands of each resource but then have to spend as much for fleets of ships with special components. This also would allow for interdiction of trade to divert that back into or out of your economy via piracy or war. 

Just more ideas I suppose. 

You forgot to tell him that you get it back after it is destroyed.

Also they are great for trading, which you trade away a # as a resource, which you get back after 50 turns.

Thanks for bringing me back up to speed...time to get it on!

One thing to remember about trading multiple resources of one type the computer only values the resource not howmany of each type you need only trade one resource of each type.

Trade Resources they value numer

Relics they only value one per...

I always wondered what happens to a ship with prototype components if i sell it to the AI?

Does it give back my resources?

The AI then has to use its resources to support it?

In Galciv2 my ships would 'lose' hit points from experience, and many other things when sold to the AI, does this happen in Galciv3?

I should test this but my brain with no knowledge about this would tell me that you will get resources back because it is no longer owning by you and the AI need to spend their resources to keep it. It will still working even they don't have enough resources for it because this also happen to the player. You can go in negative of specific resources and everything still working fine. It should has penalty for combat unit or randomly select shutdown the improvement.

yea, its a bit odd.... i don't really know what the ship is actually doing once constructed that it can permanently 'use up' the special resources mine? The fact that you can go into the negative on resources proves the ship doesn't actually permanently need it at all!

Edit... Lets say for example, in real life, someone builds a nuclear powered Submarine. Tell me, which Uranium mine do you see that suddenly produces uranium only for that one submarine?

Is there is any Uranium mine in the world so small it is possible?

When you look at it in these terms you realize how truly absurd this aspect of the game is.

What is more realistic is that the special resources should be stockpiled and x amount is needed to build a ship and a much smaller amount is needed in maintenance

Please ignore the fact that why the mining base won't mine anymore resources when one being in use, or it will turn into generic mine/refinery route that most of RTS game doing. Civilization 5 also does what GC3 doing. But the difference is, if you don't have enough strategic resources to feed (go into negative) then all combat unit using that resources will get -50% penalty to their strength. GC3 could do this if you went negative, all improvement and ship system using that resources will disable itself until you get adequate resources to feed them again.

You can be total scum and scam an AI by building a ship that fit every prototype modules to brim then sell it to an AI for high-price. It will collapse their resources and cripple it until it decommission the ship which AI rarely do.

Take note that this also happen in Civilization 5. You could build a tank (it require 1 oil) and gift it to an AI that doesn't even research a tank or has any tech that let them know what the heck is oil yet. They will get your tank but with -50% power in both attack and defense. The difference is; AI in Civ 5 know this and will retire it pronto since it eat their maintenance and resources. Also, you can't sell the combat unit in Civ 5, you can only gift it for free (technically, you could sell it if you play with human.)

I have not played civ games for some time, but i thought you just need 1 strategic resource, say 'aluminum' and you can build any number of units that depend on it? Which makes far more logical sense than 1 aluminum mine can only support 1 unit, how stupid! And that is why Galciv3 is stupid in that regard.

Civ4 is what i played most.... and it is stupid for a different reason.... sometimes a cavalry unit with a rifle can defeat a tank! How exactly is that possible? It is a massive in your face reminder that the game does not understand the reality of the units it is fielding.

If Galciv relied on the same combat probabilities as civ4, you would see strange combat outcomes happening, such as a tiny hulled ship defeating a fleet of large hulled ships!!! I am glad Galciv restrains itself from absurd combat outcomes like that.

Well my main complaint with the civ series is they removed some of the basic concepts that made the civ series what it was culminating the best was four because of it's features. Now In five they removed the most important fundemental features of the franchise using  micro management  as an excuse because of micromanagement they probably will not bring these back. Sala v. Now I understand micromanagement. I don't agree, but I understand. What doesn't make sense is why does a developer remove features that make the game fun while leaving in issues that could be improved. To be honest civilization doesn't do enough to ever of had a micromanagement issue.

Now I agree the resource is weird. This way it keeps you from being to powerful, but the real issue is that Stardock doesn't add anything that is not over the top. This is no different than precursor worlds, mercenaries, but only some of them others are rather weak, or the latest planetary events.

Assuming stardock realises that then they could change the resources, so it could give it by so many turns.

For the obvious reason you go into a negative, so as to penalise you for destroying a starbase after you trade it. A solution instead of this is not to let you trade the resource.

I think they did put a limit in civ4 now that i think of it? but not sure?

So lets say you have 1 aluminum mine.... you can then build say 100 units that use aluminium, more than that, then it says sorry, you need more aluminium.

So ok, in galviv3 you have 1 promethium, lets say that then allows 20 prototype engines, not just the stupid 1 engine. However, in production, you still need 1 on 1.... so if you have 1 ship using a percentage of 1 promethium, you cannot initiate construction of a new ship until you have at least +1 promethium.

I think it makes the game strategically interesting plus more logical because construction is far more resource intensive than maintenance.

I think you might of hit it there. Instead of allowing one resource per ship per mine. You could have a limited number of resources per resources. Mining either one resource per turn, or a number of turns. This still doesn't negate my idea of having all buildings, ships, and technologies require resources.

The closest thing i can think of that would work well with your idea is to have resource 'pools'.

So resources are mined and build up over time just like money. Then you spend various amounts whenever you build something, and also a very very small portion constantly required for maintenance.

Whenever you get low on a particular resource, you might not have enough to construct that building or ship you want. And if your maintenance eventually gets too high, it becomes a problem too, just like it can now with money.

This will all generate a great deal of interesting strategic challenges and is far more realistic than the current model.....

Oh and yes, anomalies wont be forced to grand permanent resource bonuses - that's just so weird, it will be able to do a one off addition to the resource pool instead.

Edit: I got this idea from a very old game 'Total Annihilation' which operates with metal and energy pools.

Another idea from that game is the special metal making buildings that convert energy to metal.

Then what you could do in the game, you could have finite resources, that eventually run dry. Then you have to rely on resource creation structures that make each resource, but its expensive, and produces very little, since its a rare resource, and very difficult to reproduce.

Or you could go the way of Starcraft or warcraft.... once the gas or gold on the map is used up, its used up, the end.

Or you could go this way, and once the resources are used up randomly replace them.

Resources in Civ5 and GC3 work in the same way. I don't remember how it work in Civ4.

Well, wasn't caveman capable to knock your entire town with his puny club too? The % chance system in Civ4 was totally retarded imo. Civ5 also started with 10 base HP, so the spearman can keep poking at your majestic tank and it will eventually go down, not to mention how on the goddamn catapult and flame torch capable to knockdown the most advanced stealth bomber? When they update it to 100 HP system then it get better but still look silly.

Admittedly it's a RTS not a 4X, I still preferred the way Total Annihilation did things.

for each resource, you get X per second from each mine/generator/etc.  When building things, they took up Y resources/second.  So, you always had to balance the two, and you had to construct holding containers to deal with any excess. 

RTS have never adopted that model, and use the "bank" approach where you get and spend in discrete chunks.  4X games essentially have modeled something similar, though GC3's is a bit unusual in that it requires a fixed amount of a resource to always be available when you build something that requires it.

I'd really rather we go to at least the bank approach, where all resources are banked - i.e. each turn, mining a resource gets you 1 point, and various components/buildings cost some X number of points to build.  In other words, treat it like money.  Makes a lot more sense.

I don't see any reason to change this.   It isn't really one ship per starbase.  A starbase can give more than copy of a resource.  A ship can take more than one copy of a resource. It is based on modules and components.  There also the occasional bonuses. On a generous map, I can build up quite a stash of resources for ship use or trade or just gloating like Ebenezer Scrooge.  I don't have enough to put a Durantium Refinery on 100 planets and also augment all my ships. I consider that a valid limitation of the game's economy and my overwhelming urge for completeness. I make prioritizing decisions with my actually finite resources and that becomes part of the fun of the game.

The details of when you lose or gain copies through ship loss or trade are a bit arbitrary, but the arguments for what make sense are strictly subjective. The mechanic works well enough to make sense to me, so I'm happy and don't see a need to redesign the mechanic.  This probably means it will be completely overhauled in the near future.  

You either never play RTS or on drunk because every RTS use this "bank" system you are refer to.

This is TBS not RTS.

Things work differently unless you are willing to pay lots for an improvement that few even care about in the end.

I'll throw my hat in... 

I dislike the current system for special resources, it confused players and limits rather than expands on strategy options in my opinion.

The current method is kind of a clever way of representing a flow economy where you are producing a stream of resources. You have 1 Durantium, because that is representative of "1 constant stream of Durantium" which a ship or trade, is then utilizing constantly. If the ship is destroyed the stream is simply released from that burden. In this way, the system makes sense as an easier abstraction of things you see in games like Supreme Commander.

But that isn't obvious, and it doesn't make a lot of sense if you try to rationalize it in detailed ways (which you probably shouldn't) for example... why is a ship using a constant "stream" of Durantium... isn't it just infused into the hull? Maybe, maybe not, and it is irrelevant, but player's think about that sort of stuff and get confused.

It limits strategy however, in that it reduces the consequences of LOSING that ship. Essentially all you lose is the production time to replace it, the resources involved are essentially infinite. 

I would much prefer that Durantium be produced every X number of turns, deposited in your bank, and then you spend that Durantium when building a ship. It opens up options such as stockpiling, it simplifies trade (no trading for 50 turn BS), and means there is a real penalty to losing a ship, that resource is GONE.

It enhances wars of attrition and makes these special resources more valuable, while being way more understandable to your common newbie.

Gauntlet like your thinking.

Would be a much better system, lets hope the devs read this as they are looking at redoing the whole economy of galciv 3 in crusade.

I like his thinking too.

These resource star bases all started off in Galciv 1 by giving a percentage bonus of some kind to your entire empire. Then they have kinda forced the resource system to do things its not really good at doing, but it works, it works with little things that don't make sense here and there.

I do try, but i cannot help but notice you have the ability of prototype ships to work with zero resources available that it needs..... seems to prove it only needs it for construction. Its a critical error in logic..... people who play strategy games are often the logical types, so we do not like it! Its a disturbance in the force lol