Why do resources run out at all

[Elyrien Valkyr]

This is the most infuriating aspect of the game, which says a lot considering combat exists at all. Why would resources EVER be depleted in a teraforming effort and why is that in the game? The entire point of this should be converting mater into a livable environment, yet this game handles resources as numbers that are just deleted from existence the second you use them. I've had 2 campaigns completely ended because I ran out of 2 insanely basic resources:
Iron
Water

First of all, Mars is red because it's literally covered in iron. You could go outside with a shovel and filter an ingots worth of iron out of just a random clump. Why would you ever need a very limited mine to get iron. Even on earth, genuine veins of resources are far more frequent, abundant, and plentiful than what we see on a planet that has never been touched.

The same goes for water. While not super abundant, you can't just delete water from existence. Even when it's used for food, the waste gets filtered by the planet back into water. How and Why would you ever run out of anything, specially water? Specially when smacking the planet with asteroids of your preferred type is just a casual affair, and already a fully functioning part of the game. Comets are almost entirely water... Do you know how much water you could dump on a planet with a single comet? Way more than a colony of 500 people would ever need.

The colonies are absolutely tiny, with only a few hundred humans, and facilities are run by only a few drones apparently. I've worked in office buildings with more humans than these colonies, and you're telling me that an entire planet can't provide the resources to keep that alive?

Why would there not be some way to recycle resources? This game is basically saying "Oh, guess the mission failed 20 years in because we ran out of aluminum" while ignoring the trash pile of aluminum rich broken down drones behind it.

At this point, the way resources are handled in this game, I'd rather just go play Oxygen Not Included. As cartoony as that game is, it has far more realistic and reasonable resource management. Honestly, if I were to mod this game so that resource veins never ran out of resources, the difficulty would not change at all. The pace of the game would not change at all.

There was so much hope for this game to be a very complex balance between the need for factories, and the ability to convert it into a paradise world, and how to maintain everything inbetween. Instead, this is just relegated to the RNG gods to say "man I hope I don't get screwed over and they stop giving me vital resources" on an entire planet

[Lothos]

same thing for me except its chemicals and silicon

[Kitswulf]

I want to concur, I think even just something simple like having "recycling centers" for various elements would help rectify the...incredibly weird sensation of running out of aluminum or water while casually yanking down cometary bodies as a weekend project.

[Orici Vintarion]

they also could change the tier for the mines like tier 1 is easily accessible iron for example ( like topside rocks or the exposed vein)... tier 2 is diggin into the actual vein .. and tier 3 is refinement of the process and dig even deeper... we sit on the earth for literally the entirety of humanitys existence still we mine deposits found literally thousands of years ago.. this outrunning of ressources are the chokehold of this genre .. 9 out of 10 games fail cause players run out of basic materials real fast.... which collapses the Raw Material "food" chain .. shame really .. i like this game i like the overall style .. but this problem really bugs me

[Lothos]

also, you have meteors constantly bombarding the planet. why aren't there resources spawned when they strike?

[Elyrien Valkyr]

The thing that truly makes all of this illogical is that the game is already balanced to not need resource numbers. Each mine can only produce at a specific rate on the bottom of the screen. So your ability to make steel from iron is entirely dependent on how many mines you have. This restriction already forces players to constantly keep expanding and developing.

There's zero reason that any mine should run out of resources when you are already scrambling to find more

[Elyrien Valkyr]

I also love the idea that the entire planet of Mars can run out of Silicon...

Mars has run out of sand

[Yoonas]

Originally posted by Elyrien Valkyr:

Mars has run out of sand

^ this made my day!

Anyway, anyone know how to mod infinit resources? I'm getting annoyed having to restart over and over just because the game thinks its funny to give me an overflow of Chemicals and nothing else.

[Orici Vintarion]

Originally posted by Elyrien Valkyr:

I also love the idea that the entire planet of Mars can run out of Silicon...

Mars has run out of sand

the Janitor on mars was very ,, very concerned about his job .. its is also funny to run out of water since the IAU speculates: More than 21 million km3 of ice have been detected at or near the surface of Mars, enough to cover the whole planet to a depth of 35 meters (115 ft). yet 100 people used up every drop in 25y...... what a bunch of thirsty sucker they are

[Lothos]

so, my new game atm i'm nonstop sending out additional landing sites to spawn deposits closer to my base. Getting my production up above my demand before i let the story proceed. Year 21 easy difficulty...yeah riiight

[Boris 149.200]

I get it that they deplete, sure, but deposits are laughably small and too spread away. It doesn't take long until my initial base or production center starts growing tentacles in all directions just to grab some more resources and hyperloop them to their destination.
Also - you can't mine underwater deposits, which really sucks, I thought that space-faring, terraforming civilization would be able to procure at least a fraction of these resources.
EDIT: while looking at the map, I've noticed that the most resource-rich areas are in flood-zones, which means that you can't really sustain your colonies or even buildings in late-game.

[Elyrien Valkyr]

Imagine if this game just had the resource conversion mechanics from Oxygen Not Included, and you had to just balance everything on the planet along with resource sheets like from Factorio. Instead of the most basic combat systems ever, you would have to look at a sector's co2 levels, or their oxygen production levels, or water levels.

Instead of running out of resources, you have to find ways to balance the affects of teraforming, and the machenery needed to actually do it without destroying the planet. Like the decisions of mining in the oceans you make could contaminate the water. Or the Co2 production you need to create atmosphere pressure might go overboard and make it unlivable.

There's so much you could do to make a far more complex game without having to constantly restart because Mars ran out of sand

[Sanger Zonvolt]

I think it´s worse that you can run out of water. Like my frozen water deposit I needed just got flooded. Guess now I can´t get anymore water because it is covered by all that water. What?

With Silicon I could at least somewhat argue that using the dust for it would be harder, maybe not economical. But the melted water is indefinetely EASIER to use than the frozen deposits, yet I can´t use it? Also why do I still need to produce artifical food from chemicals once I unlocked biodomes? Would´t you use farms at that point?

[Nuprin Feelgood]

this game: 1 year to dig the chemicals out of the ground... ten months for 75 drones to haphazardly stumble across your planet in no coherent fashion to deliver said resource to the food factory... more months to make one piece of food... that is eaten in five minutes. food shortage again.
seems a bit unbalanced. lol

[Nigerian Prince]

Originally posted by Orici Vintarion:

they also could change the tier for the mines like tier 1 is easily accessible iron for example ( like topside rocks or the exposed vein)... tier 2 is diggin into the actual vein .. and tier 3 is refinement of the process and dig even deeper... we sit on the earth for literally the entirety of humanitys existence still we mine deposits found literally thousands of years ago.. this outrunning of ressources are the chokehold of this genre .. 9 out of 10 games fail cause players run out of basic materials real fast.... which collapses the Raw Material "food" chain .. shame really .. i like this game i like the overall style .. but this problem really bugs me

This has happened to me on each of my play throughs so far. How do you release a game on steam, and expect people to pay for it, without actually play testing it? This isn't some bug that's found under rare conditions impacting only people with specific, exotic computer setups - this is core game design stuff. :(

[Bar4uk]

need mod for infinity veins and rebalance! ASAP!!