SKM Development: Resources! Resources! Resources!

The idea behind the Resource type when I devised it was to replace the ‘everything is gold’ aspect of ACKS. The idea I came up with, since I’m too clever for my own good, was that Resource could accomplish certain things.

  Be able to be used for certain set costs.

 Be more versatile then gold or subsistence. Easier to convert.

 Be an inferior commodity to gold and subsistence to make up for its adaptability.

This, notably, has immediate issues.

Which costs, and will this complicate our spreadsheet?

    

More versatile how? It’d be silly to prevent gold for food or food for gold exchanges.

The inferior commodity status means we have to have more of it, otherwise why produce any.

Firstly, I determined the set costs it would be used to defer would be of the ‘establish’ type. Hiring and equipping a soldier, training a soldier, building a stronghold, building improvements, etc.

Secondly, I decided that resource isn’t consumed by upkeep (like gold) and has no spoilage (unlike subsistence).  Resource represents everything from granite blocks to fine silks, so that should work well as an abstraction.

Tied in with that, the idea that the initial cost of establishing a stronghold component or military unit would be cheaper if you used resource instead of gold.

I decided that a resource asset counts for 10gp when producing a stronghold part.  So say a 10,000gp stronghold component would instead cost only 1000 resource since you don’t need to pay to get the raw materials.  You’d still need to pay time based upkeep fees for the process of building of the component, but not the component yourself.   

Similarly, once I get to specific combat units, the resource value that you can get will increase with higher troop types. So say, a peasant is almost all money, but you can defer a lot of cost for say a knight, with resource. Resource representing that you have his horse, metal for his armor, a fine sword, and other fun stuff already on hand.  

As for making it valuable as a resource despite the fact you otherwise can’t spend it, or eat it, we need to figure out some conversion rates.

Here we get a little complicated. See. 1 gold isn’t 1 gold bar, or one ‘gold asset.’ It’s a gold piece. The same that an adventurer gets rifling through an orcs pockets for change.  1 subsistence on the other hand is enough food for a family of five for a month. Let’s assume therefore, using the old mindset that 1 gold piece is enough for a laborer to feed himself on a week, that therefore 20 gold pieces is what’s needed for a five person family (1gp x 5 family members x 4 weeks). Ah, but the subsistence value represents the kingdom’s production so, we need a premium. Let’s make it simple, and up the cost by 50%. So, 30 gold gets you one subsistence.

Similarly, subsistence being converted into gold is tricky. Tricky because the stuff rots and tricky because you want to eat it. Conversion processes both way on gold and food should be a pain in the butt though, so let’s either assume we’re attempting to make money off of our monthly surplus or that we’re literally stealing food from our people’s mouths for it. This means the stuff would be somewhat devalued, so..lets turn things in reverse. I’m going to SWAG that as 1 subsistence gets you 20gp.

We’ve got gold for food taken care of, now we need to move on to wood for sheep. Resource defers gold costs as stated above, 1 resource counting as 10gp when being used for very narrow purposes. However, resource has limited uses and resource has to be better at conversion then gold or food. It’d also be ridiculous to have resource around at all if buying it was more than 10gp for 1. So let’s assume you can purchase 1 resource for 8gp, a 20% cut in price. Resource’s perk is supposed to be easy conversion, so let’s assume it also sells for 8gp.

Now it gets tricky. Resource into food. We decided that 30gp buys us 1 subsistence. We then decided that 8gp buys us 1 resource. So, SWAG’ing it again.. 3 Resource could buy us 1 subsistence. This is cheaper than spending gold (24gp worth of resource, to get us a net of 30gp worth of subsistence). We’d also argue that the conversion back is exactly the same (a perk of resource), so 1 subsistence being sold is worth 3 resource.  

So to summarize.

1 subsistence can be bought for 30gp or 3 Resource.

1 subsistence can be sold for 20gp or 3 Resource.

1 resource can be bought and sold for 8gp.

3 resource can be bought and sold for 1 subsistence.

I might fiddle with those numbers, but it seems pretty solid for the time being.