I’d love to take upp this blog again, but priorities! Publishing this blog post unfinished.
One of the many features of the Resources game is that it says how many days you have played it, or rather the number of days since you first started it. I’ve had a really busy 20 days so I’ve played the game quite casually but enough to reach level 5 and become a billionaire!
The basic elements of the game are mines and factories. You build mines at real-world locations shown on the map, and then build factories to refine the raw materials you mine. Everything mined and or refined are stored in separate warehouses.
Everything you store in warehouses can be sold, and naturally more refined materials are worth more on the market.
The only creations shown on the map are mines, but there are also crates of loot that appear randomly and can be picked up if you are in range.
There are also other buildings in the game. I’ve managed to build a Casino (good for losing money) and a Training Camp, where I’ve managed to train some security dogs.
Everything in the game can be upgraded. Mines can become more advanced, warehouses can hold more goods, factories can increase throughput, and so on.
Even when the game is not running it is sending notifications when factories are finished with a batch, warehouses are full, or on events such as when I was fined for a mining accident and when there was some kind of plague in the mines…
There are a number of chores in the game:
- sell goods before the warehouse get full (overproduction will be lost)
- start production in factories
- maintain mines – I assume this is to maintain output and prevent accidents. Maintenance is free if you are in range, otherwise you can use Maintenance Kits or pay “experts” quite a lot of money.
You cannot build all types of mines or factories or buildings from the start, so you have to advance to the required level first, and for factories and buildings you also have to have the correct materials in stock.
I’m now at 32 days played and rank 32 as well. I’ve recently made suggestions to the developers to ease up on how mine repairs are done in the game and found out the game is not all that I imagined – at least not at this point.
Repairing a mine causes it to produce more goods and to not cause disasters that can cost you a lot of money. There are three ways to repair: Pay a fee, use an item called maintenance kit or be within ~100m of the mine and longpress on it either in scan view or in mine list view, which is arguably easier. I opt to do a lot of the last type which is called boss-repair since you, the boss, is in range. I argued it should be the only way to play effectively since repairing in other manners cost a lot of money, right?
The issue I had originaly was how I constantly needed to watch my screen when doing boss-repairs. It left little time to enjoy my walk so I suggested it should be done automatically when in range. However there was more to it.
Mines with higher quality have a lower repair cost. As you rank up and get better scan technology you get ever better at placing the mines at the right spots. At one point you get access to drones with which you can scan and pick up crates from far away and at max level they also allow you to build mines if you use the micropayment item ‘giant diamond’.
Drones cost more but essentially let’s you do a whole lot from the comforts of your home. While you might opt out from paying real money for building mines far away you can still drive a car to your scanned locations to build the mines. That leaves the issue of repairing the mines since you probably don’t want to drive out there every other day you will use kits or pay the fee. That will be costly though, right? No! And that’s the issue here. Repairing mines cost so little that a lot of players with rank 200+ have never needed to walk much at all. Some as little as 9km. Simply put as long as repair costs are as low as they are especially for high level players the game won’t need for you to exercise almost at all unless you simply choose to for no substantial in-game gain.
This put a serious dent in my craving to play more.