I have a mechanic idea that I have an hard time to implement because it has a chain of effect with many other things in my game. It's for my game idea called "Rats craft" and for the curious you can find a picture of the prototype I made here:
http://bgd.lariennalibrary.com/uploads/Mainsite/GameIdea/GameIdea2010032...
The idea is that I wanted to use the "Stack" mechanics used for placing actions in star craft the board as a way to manage a stock pile of resource. The idea is that rats can stock pile resources by placing their resources on the top of the pile which blocks the resources below.
So my idea is that each turn, you harvest resources, at then end of the turn, what has not being used is stockpiled. If you want you can use the top resource of the pile to purchase stuff.
Now using a mechanic like that has many implications:
- First, I need more than 2 resources to make sure the player is going to get stuck with the resource he has and be forced to stock pile.
- Second, the minimum cost of the stuff to buy must be either 2 or 3 and if possible use 2 different resources. Else if there is stuff that cost 1, players can easily build it and empty their stock pile very fast.
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I made a play test and there was not much stockpiling, but now the problem is that I need to change the resource gathering system and the new system would generate less resources.
This means that if players get less resources, then the price of the stuff to buy must drop, even if it is already low, and if the price are as low as 1 resource, then there will be now opportunity to stockpile.
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One of the solution I thought is to collect the resource in a certain order and place them directly in the stack. Then the player must buy using the top of his stack. The problem is that it makes resources gathering longer and more annoying and it dictates what the player can buy.
The second solution I found is to dramatically increase the various type of resources. For example: there could be 7 types of resources. This way, the player could want to save some resources for later, or some resources could be useless for him right now (nothing to buy). That could give a reason to stack.
Third, give each resource token a different value. It will lead to situations where a player does not have enough of certain type of resources and will be forced to stock pile for later. The drawback is that I must label each resource token with a number. But there is more stock piling opportunity since even if you have the resources, you could have not enough.
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So do you have any other ideas on how I could create a stack of resource or is there any of the solutions above that you prefer?
Thank You for any ideas
