Finite resources vs infinite resources

Suicide Junkie · #1 February 26th, 2002, 05:38 AM

If you do that, you end up with a heat death for the universe.

Perhaps better would be a one-per-planet value improvement facility. Then you still get to balance conservation & productivity.

Teach the kiddies responsible use of resources!

HP Delron · #2 February 26th, 2002, 06:12 AM

Eventually everything dies... even the universe, sad but true

Suicide Junkie · #3 February 26th, 2002, 06:19 PM

Sure, but it takes longer than a decade to happen

If you disable Stellar manipulation, you'll get a better heat-death scenario, as the stars go nova one-by-one.

1FSTCAT · #4 February 26th, 2002, 10:16 PM

I like them. I've never learned to grow my resources though. In every game I've played, we all just strip-mine, and pummel until everything is gone, then we wither-up and die.

There's probably a more graceful way, but I haven't learned it yet..

I feel like it gives another reason to fight over planets, too..

capnq · #5 February 28th, 2002, 01:09 AM

I've only played one finite resource game, and disliked it so much that I've never played another. IMO completely stripping the resources of an entire planet within a few years is totally unrealistic.

jimbob · #6 February 28th, 2002, 02:38 AM

Oh, I don't know, I think we've done a good job of significantly reducing our resources in the past 500 years

Sure, we haven't quite succeeded in bring our resources down to zero yet, but we've only just left the industrial age! Think of the possibilities once we really get some space-aged/nanotech-aged manipulations happening!

Egregius · #7 February 28th, 2002, 01:38 PM

Actually it's not unlikely that in 50 years most of our natural resources will be depleted to the point where it's completely unproductive to mine what's left, so it's not THAT unrealistic.

Fun possiblity with limited resources games would be fighting over worlds, and the sense that your empire might 'run out' just like the universe, so it's a speedy battle to get more then the others, opening up options for necessity of mining asteroids.

Unfortunately mining asteroids is completely unproductive and not an option for the AI, I focus on getting infinite resources via those crystal solar thingies or value improvement plants, and the enemy has a depleted homeworld within 50 turns which makes him die in effect.

Versus humans it might be fun, balancing stripmining versus putting only 1 mine on such planets to prolong it's value.