Resources...how do they work?

[EMahn]

So, for a strategic resource, such as firaxite, how are they consumed exactly? Lets say you have 3 firaxite available. You build a unit that requires 2 firaxite. So now you have 1 firaxite remaining. If that unit dies, does the firaxite get returned, or is it forever lost? On my first playthrough, I didn't really understand how this worked. I sent some supremacy units into the emancipation gate. It seemed like i lost the firaxite forever, which wasn't what i expected.

Or have I got this altogether wrong?

 

[liv]

If the unit dies or goes though the gate you will have the firaxite back

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Full of bugs. If you send through the gates, sometimes you don't get the resource back. When you cancel a trade deal, sometimes you don't get it back. Sometimes when you sell a resource and the player is destroyed, you don't get it back.

I can't post it in the bugs forum because I cannot reproduce it, but it happens all the time.

 

[liv]

Before and after saves should work?
When I have sent angels through the gate I have always gotten the firaxite back or else I could not win

 

[EMahn]

Thanks. So I have a follow-on question.

If you trade for resources, say firaxite, and you then use that resource to make a unit...if the trade deal expires, the resource count can go negative.

Of course you will need to account for the negative value to get the resource count high enough to create another unit, but does the negative resource count have an impact on current units or play?

 

[liv]

I have not had this happen to me in BE
but I know from Civ that you get combat penalties if you do not have the required resource

 

[Ryika]

No consequences for buildings, but Units (that use the resource) fight with 50% efficiency.

 

[4N4C0ND4]

No consequences for buildings, but Units (that use the resource) fight with 50% efficiency.

Does it scale like in CiV (iirc) or it's just a plain 50% whether you lack 1 or 20 resources?

 

[Ryika]

Not sure about that actually, when I tested I had -50 Xenomass or so. ^^

 

[4N4C0ND4]

Not sure about that actually, when I tested I had -50 Xenomass or so. ^^

What the heck... How did you managed to get such a loss
I bet it's mass trade from AI + unit building then trade faded off?

 

[Ryika]

What the heck... How did you managed to get such a loss
I bet it's mass trade from AI + unit building then trade faded off?

I wasn't really playing the game but instead testing the scaling of lategame defensive buildings for a mod that I was working on at that time. ^^ Spawned a bunch of Xenotitans with the Ingame Editor AddOn.

Coming back to my last post: Have just tested it. Yes, it's always a flat 50% penalty even if you're only at -1.

 

[Mckertis]

Can someone explain the strategic resource mechanic in detail (with Rising Tide, naturally, if they made any changes to it) ? The game sure spends no time to do that. When i built an oil well i got 3 oil. I didnt have much to use it on, and when i finally did - it was 5 oil. Then i built a couple of satellites. I have 4 oil tied down in satellites, so it says 1 Petroleum : 5 total, 4 used. Then something finishes building and in the list i see i can build another satellite. So i check, and apparently i now have 6 total, 4 used. I start building a satellite, for a turn it's fine, and on the third turn it drops building it because now i'm again having 5 total, 4 used. I just...same with firaxite, it fluctuates between 13 and 14 and i cant build the hypercore because it will stop 2 turns in and i've wasted 2 turns. So where are the resources going ? I've checked and i'm not trading any away. And how do i get 13 firaxite from 2 tiles ? Or 10 floatstone from 1 tile. Do they keep accumulating when not in use ? If so, how fast ? The game doesnt explain ANY of it.

edit : i waited until i had 7 free firacraps and tried building a hypercore. 4 firacraps got sighned off immedeately. Good. So i press enter and right away another 2 firacraps fly away, so i'm left with 1. Next turn it lowers to 0 and my hypercore stops building and i'm back to 4 firacraps. After a few turns it returns to 6. What is this nonsense ?! Am i being double-billed ? I dont understand it.

 

[Eastern Heretic]

You are probably getting free strategic resources from trade routes. In Rising Tide they added strategic-resource yields to international trade routes in addition to energy and science yields, since you can't trade resources through diplomacy now. It seems that resources aren't even traded away from the donor-city, but the beneficiary-city just gets an additional copy of a strategic resource (it never goes above one copy of each available resource though).

Since trade routes are always "symmetrical" regardless of who initiated them you can get free resources even if an A.I. sends a trade route to you. The bad thing though, is you have no control over keeping these resources and they can disappear any moment, so this must be why your resource pool always fluctuates. But you can send your own trade route to secure an additional copy of a resource for the duration of the trade route.

Spoiler :

You can check if you are getting any resources through trade routes that are sent to you by going to "inbound" tab in "trade overview".

Spoiler :

Another way to trade resources that they added in Rising Tide is, you can send your spies on missions to buy (or sell) resources on black market. The resources are traded for diplomatic capital rather than energy though, and also disappear after a set period of time (after the spy "completes the mission of resource trafficking") so you need to time it well.