managing resources -- use bits or a track

Seems like a great idea. Definitely good for reducing materials costs. Best comparable implementation I've seen was with pegs for missiles, ammo, and such in Screaming Eagles, and then XP and what-not in Mutant Chronicles -- but as X3M said, not resources per se. Pegs are good for keeping the counters from getting moved around, be it unintentional bumps or those cheaty little nudges.

I was going to mention eclipseeclipse as well. First let me ask this:

On average, how many bits are people getting? If the numbers are small (<10), I think bits are great. People like holding their "stuff". If somebody can collect 20 or 30 iron, a track definitely starts to make sense.

Even if the counts are low, but the type counts are high, a track might be good just to save production costs.

Glass Road, by Uwe Rosenberg, has that (well, it's dials instead of tracks, but basically the same), and introduces an interesting concept: when you have all the goods required to create a complex resource, you HAVE to do so.

There are two major reasons for using bits instead of tracks: first, handling bits brings a tactile satisfaction to many people; second, resources are usually spent in groups, and having bits allows you to group them physically in front of you when planning your turn. For example, if I'm playing Terra Mystica, and I know I need to build two dwellings and a temple this turn, I'll make a group of 2 cubes and 5 coins, then two other groups of 1 cube and 2 coins each, and see what's left.

The advantage of tracks is that it's easier to compare different "scores": that's why we usually have scoring tracks, or tracks for Area majority games, where relative placement is more important than the number itself.

Here is the resource tracker from Tiny Epic Galaxies which is on kickstarter right now at a measly 272000 raised so far ;).

What I've been noticing is this:

If the tracks wouldn't move on their own, then it'll feel like a burden to those who aren't heavy gamers.

What I mean is that if you're constantly having to worry about the track placement, and it's changing all the time, you might consider going back to tokens. People who don't like heavy games (Twilight Struggle for instance) won't like managing sliding tracks: they'd rather be collecting things which gives a physical representation of how they're doing well. I think that the reason tracks aren't often used is that few people are willing to put forward the brainpower to maintain them.

So, unless it's a "gamer's game", you might want to reconsider. I've tried a few designs with tracks, and usually, unless it's something that needs to be public information, people don't like them much. Heck, most people don't even like the tracks on the game Power Grid, and the track in Ticket to Ride is rarely used mid-game, since people prefer to add up their scores at the end of the game anyway.

I think this might be the same thing X3M described, but I didn't quite understand his description of it

For each resource, there are three tracks: Producing each turn, Spending each turn, Stockpile.

Players learn (or always have available) technologies, such as "Gun: 1 iron + 1 gunpowder = 1 Rifle" When they activate this technology, they increase Spending for iron and gunpowder by one, and increase Producing for Rifle up by one. If you are producing more than spending, you increase the stockpile, which will allow you to spend more than you produce, later.

Now you might activate the Soldier technology which is 1 Rifle + 1 Worker = 1 Soldier. (Workers and Soldier might be actual token rather than tracks. I don't see this as a problem.)

The bookkeeping would be a lot easier, because you can easily look at iron and gunpowder as producing the same amount they are spending, and rifle is producing one each turn which you pair with a worker token to create a soldier token. Such a system would allow you to make complex chains of production that would be impractical if you were actually moving tokens around.

You could include a worker placement aspect around the technologies -- for instance the Gun technology also has a requirement of "Foundry" and two workers placed on it to activate it. The tracks for each item could be printed on the technology cards rather than on the board, allowing for a lot more tracks and a weird variety of play modes as people discover different technologies in different orders.

OK, I'm rambling, now. Anyway, I think that the tracks idea is what X3M was saying.

Well, my way of explaining has always been my biggest problem.

Zag24 did do a good job re-explaining :).

Although I did mean it a bit differently.

Here is a new idea:
Perhaps you can use something like flowcharts cards. Instead of using cubes, you get the choice of a card that shows your flowchart of production.

Only the end result given on that chart card is what you really get in your stockpile.

If you want to change production. You have to look at the start of the flow chart and simply switch cards.

A down side is that you need to make several possible cards to add to your game.
Up sides are:
- It will reduce your cubes (perhaps to zero when done right) and your handling.
- You can design good looking cards which make your game better looking.

I would look no farther than the masterworks by Matt Leacock to give advice for that one. In games like Pandemic, there are many things that can be done better by a specific role. For example, the Operations expert doesn't have to spend a matching city card to build a research station, and the medic can treat as though they up to 3 cubes at a time instead of one. Those roles are improvements on what can be normally done.

However, the Archivist can take cards from the discard pile with restrictions. That role can do something that no one else can, but it's carefully weighed so that it's not overpowered.

In short, you can do both. Analyze every aspect of the game that there is to interact with, and see what can be done to make that a role. In Pandemic, it's treatment rate, moving for other players, helping with logistics, trading cards, requiring less to cure, pulling cards from discard pile, and previewing the nastiness that's coming.

However, it's far easier to make something unbalanced when it's something that other player's can't do at all. Just be careful to balance test it.

I disagree that the different roles is a good idea in a cooperative game. I think it is part of what contributes to the alpha player issue. The knowledgeable player knows what the best approach is -- the doctor should do this, the scientist should do this, the military guy should do this, and we'll manage that outbreak. (Sorry, I don't know Pandemic well enough to know if they are actual roles, but you get the idea.) If anyone deviates from the script, it will fail, and it IS the best approach, but it left all the other players as minions to the alpha.