History Main / RefiningResources

* ''Franchise/RockRaiders'' features the Ore Refinery, which uses Ore to create Building Studs, a building material which substitutes for Ore in construction and is valued at five Ore per Stud. Upgrading the Ore Refinery allows Building Studs to be generated from fewer and fewer Ore pieces, significantly increasing their value in construction.

** You get what you ask for. Brace yourself. ''EveOnline's'' production system provides three basic modes of production, and then combines them into a long production chain that may require up to five to six steps, depending on the end product. Of course, the maker also has to haul resources and end products now and then either by oneself or by commissioning courier contracts. Minerals don't have feet (or in ''EVE'', engines), y'know.

* ''Videogame/DontStarve'' has grass, logs, reeds, and rocks, which can be refined into rope, boards, papyrus (paper), and cut stone respectively using a Science Machine or Alchemy Engine. The Prestihatitator and Shadow Manipulator allow blue and red gems to be refined into purple gems and dark flower petals to be refined into NightmareFuel.

-->-- '''Chairman Sheng-ji Yang "Looking God in the Eye" ''', ''SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'', (itself not a game that follows the actual trope)

* ''VideoGame/LEGORockRaiders'' features the Ore Refinery, which uses Ore to create Building Studs, a building material which substitutes for Ore in construction and is valued at five Ore per Stud. Upgrading the Ore Refinery allows Building Studs to be generated from fewer and fewer Ore pieces, significantly increasing their value in construction.

* In ''{{Minecraft}}'', the [[IWasToldThereWouldBeCake Cake]] has one of the most complicated crafting procedures in the game. The end result is a food item that can almost fully heal you. It requires 3 buckets of milk, 2 sugar, 1 egg and 3 wheat. While some ingredients are, although somewhat uncommon, relatively simple to obtain (i.e. eggs are laid by chickens, sugar is refined at the workbench from sugar cane, which grows near water), others are a bit more complex:

* ''VictoriaAnEmpireUnderTheSun'' has 47 different types of resources. A lot of the basic ones are required to create the more advanced ones. (culminating in something like 4-5 steps for the most "high tech" stuff like Radios and Tanks) Due to the highly complex market mechanic, and to represent the situation in the time-period depicted, it's not always most profitable to immediately produce the high-tech stuff though, since demand for basic resources like lumber and Iron will be very high at the beginning of the game.

* At least the older ''TheSettlers'' games, 1 to 4 runs on this trope, first games added complexity by requiring roads to connect workshops. The player has to produce long chains of resources, and every stage needs special buildings and special tools which require special resources to be made. The entire chain reaches its apex in military and religious production.
* ''{{Imperialism}}'', similar to Victoria above had resources that needed to be gathered, then in factories refined to better stuff.

** Let's assume a long-winded example: Pig Tail/Rope Reed Seeds (Farm plot) --> Pig Tail/Rope Reed (Farmer's Workshop) --> Thread (Loom) --> Cloth (Clothier's Workshop) --> Bag; Wood (Wood Furnace) --> Ash (Ashery) --> Potash (Kiln) --> Pearlash; Wood (Wood Furnace) --> Charcoal; Bag (Glass Furnace) --> Sand-filled Bag; Sand-filled Bag, Pearlash, Charcoal (Glass Furnace) --> Clear Glass.

** Most examples are somewhat less extreme, however. Nearly all the basic metals are relatively simple: Wood (Wood Furnace) --> Charcoal, Charcoal and Ore (Smelter) --> Metal bars, Metal bars and Charcoal (Forge) --> Metal weapons, tools, furniture etc. And you can leave out the charcoal entirely if you have access to [[LavaAddsAwesome a handy magma vent]], though that has its own logistical issues. It's also possible to trade for any resources you can't produce yourself; cloth in particular is easier to import if you use a lot of it.

* ''A Kingdom For Keflings'' has the basic resources - wood, stone, etc. These can be delivered to certain buildings, where they are converted to improved resources - planks, cut stone, etc. Different building components require different types of resources.

* To make Depleted Grimacite items in KingdomOfLoathing, you first need to smith a [[GreenRocks Chunk of Depleted Grimacite]] with the Meat-smithing hammer you've been using to make a Depleted Grimacite Hammer.
* Industry Giant is nothing but this, while food resources can be sold immediately, to make any refined products, you first need to build the raw material industry from two different groups, then refine the good to a semi-usable item and then again to make the final product.
* Practically everything in the ''Cultures'' series is treated as a resource, and most resources can be refined at least three times (I.E.: quarrystone>masonry>marble.)
* In the original ''Capitalism'' you need so many expensive resources that full vertical integration of car or consumer electronics production chains is halfway impossible. As an example, if you want to own the chain of production from raw resources to a car, you need to start with an iron mine, an aluminum mine, and a cattle farm. You'll need factories to process the raw iron into steel, the aluminum into aluminum sheets, and the cows into leather. Then more processing to turn the steel into engines and the aluminum into car bodies. Then a third factory to turn all three into cars. Oh, what's that? Cars have computers and electronics now? Guess you're going to need to invest in a silicon mine to harvest silicon to turn into computer chips.
* ''{{Stronghold}}'' and its sequels. To make bread you need a wheat farm to grow the wheat, a mill to turn the wheat into flour, and a baker to turn the flour into bread. Other resources also have their own chains. The resources need to be stored at every stage and can be bought or sold at the market at any stage as well.
** There ''are'' shorter processes, such as meat (hunters kill wild deer, turn them into meat automatically), but to keep happiness up while simultaneously raising the money you're going to need for your army, you'll need all four food groups (hunter -> meat, cow farm -> cheese [takes longer], orchard -> apples [longer still], wheat farm -> mill -> baker -> bread [longest]). And some maps prevent you from gather specific food groups.
* ''Deadlock'' allows you to refine iron into steel and [[UnObtainium endurium into triidium]]. Although not required, doing so makes more efficient use of your resources.
* {{EVE|Online}}. Dear god, EVE. A list of all the various production processes would be a page of its own. Things are only going to get worse when Planetary Interaction goes live...
** You get what you ask for. Brace yourself. EveOnline's production system provides three basic modes of production, and then combines them into a long production chain that may require up to five to six steps, depending on the end product. Of course, the maker also has to haul resources and end products now and then either by oneself or by commissioning courier contracts. Minerals don't have feet(or in Eve, engines), y'know.

*** '''Tech 1 ships/modules''': Gathering(Mining) -> Assembly. (Basic Minerals + Tech 1 Blueprints -> End products).
*** '''Rigs''': Gathering(Salvaging) -> Assembly(Salvaged components -> Rigs).
*** '''Mobile Starbases and Facilities''': Gathering(PI) -> Assembly(PI) * 4 -> Assembly(P4 components -> End product).
*** '''Boosters'''(Combat Medication): Gathering(Gas Harvesting, PI) -> Reaction(Gas + Base Materials -> Raw Booster) -> Reaction(Raw Booster + Catalyst -> Stronger Raw Booster + Catalyst)...(Repeat up to three times, depending on target potency) -> Assembly(Raw Booster + Megacyte + Blueprint -> Usable Booster).
*** '''Tech 2 ships/modules''': Gathering(Mining, Moon Mining) -> Simple Reaction(Moon Minerals -> Tier 1 Moon Materials) -> Complex Reaction(Tier 1 Moon Materials -> Tier 2 Moon Materials) -> Assembly(Tier 2 Moon Materials -> Tech 2 Components) -> Assembly(Tech 2 Components + Tech 2 Blueprint + Tech 1 base module/ship -> Tech 2 module/ship).
*** '''Tech 3 ships''': Gathering(Mining, Gas Harvesting, Salvaging) -> Reaction(Wormhole Materials -> Hybrid Polymers) -> Assembly(Hybrid Polymers + Wormhole Salvage -> Tech 3 Components) -> Assembly(Tech 3 Components + Tech 3 Blueprints -> T3 Subsystems/Ship hulls) -> Assembly(T3 Subsystems + Ship Hull -> Functional T3 ship).
*** '''Capital Ships''': Gathering(Mining) -> Assembly(Basic Minerals -> Capital Ship Components) -> Assembly(Capital Ship Components -> Capital Ship). (Process looks simple, but requires THE most hauling effort. Each capital component takes about 2000 times more space than regular modules, and you need more than a hundred of them to make the smallest fighter carrier. Before you start the assembly you also need the blueprints for the components, about twenty sets per race.)

* ''AnnoDomini''. The iron cycle is rather similar to the Outpost example, with wood or charcoal added for fuel. Alcohol can be made directly from wine or with a still from sugar. Food can be made from fish, deer, cows (with a butcher) or grain (with a windmill and then a baker). And so on. There's some nice diagrams in the manual.
* ''{{Achron}}'' has a strange variant of this trope. All three factions can convert QP (Quark-gluon Plasma) into LC (Liquid Crystal), which is tantamount to converting the more "advanced" / rare resource into the more "basic" / common one... inefficiently to boot. This has less to do with game balance and more to do with [[MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness realism]], since [[TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything it stands to reason that a player should be able to convert a more refined version of a resource into a less-refined variant in case of an emergency]].
* In ''SidMeier's VideoGame/{{Colonization}}'', the economy is built on this trope. In theory you ''could'' just sell raw materials to and buy manufactured goods from Europe, but it's much more beneficial in the long term to build your own industrial base in your colonies, especially considering you'll have to fight your mother country in the endgame. Of course, advanced resources mostly are still traded away, but for a greater profit. The only refinements used up by your own colonies are Lumber -> [[labelnote:Hammers]]used to construct buildings, as well as ships once you build your own Shipyards[[/labelnote]], Ore -> [[labelnote:Tools]]spent by Pioneer jobs or production of ships, cannons and non-basic buildings[[/labelnote]] -> [[labelnote:Muskets]]needed to to equip soldiers and dragoons[[/labelnote]], and [[labelnote:Food]]allows colonies to survive and grow without immigration[[/labelnote]] -> [[labelnote:Horses]]needed to equip dragoons and scouts[[/labelnote]].
* The ''HeartsOfIron'' games require refining of crude oil into refined fuel. Metal, rare materials, and energy are also "refined" by your industrial capacity into supplies, based on how much of the IC is allocated to producing that resource.
* ''LEGORockRaiders'' features the Ore Refinery, which uses Ore to create Building Studs, a building material which substitutes for Ore in construction and is valued at five Ore per Stud. Upgrading the Ore Refinery allows Building Studs to be generated from fewer and fewer Ore pieces, significantly increasing their value in construction.

* ''Videogame/{{Factorio}}'' tasks the player with building a massive factory to set up defenses for a colonization fleet, using only local materials. All building materials are refined from ores and other useful materials; iron, copper, coal, stone, wood, and crude oil. Ores need to be processed into plate metal, which can then be used for a variety of construction tasks. The electrical engine unit for logistics drones, for example, require a standard engine unit (built from steel refined from iron, iron pipes, and iron gears), lubrication (refined from heavy oil), and circuit boards (using copper wires and iron plates). Factories often have enormous furnace areas for processing ore shipped in via train from distance mines.
* In ''Videogame/{{Space Engineers}}'' you must mine the basic minerals from asteroids, and then process them in the refinery to create Iron Ingots, Silicon Waffers, etc. From there, only 1 resource can be directly used (Uranium ingots as fuel for the Nuclear Reactors) and all the other resources must go to an assembler where they will be processed into either tools, weapons and ammunition (which can be used directly) or block components like the "Computer components" or "Bulletproof Glass". And then, these parts must be used to create the actual ship blocks, like the reactors, turrets, or the refineries/assemblers themselves, which takes quite a lot of time (As an example, building a nuclear reactor can take up to 20 minutes running back and forth, since it requires lots of heavy components. For one, it requires 1200 Reactor Components and the player can only hold 40 at a time, and thats only if he drops everything else in inventroy). Because of this players spend a big chunk of the beginning of a game trying to accelerate this process as much as possible (by building mining ships, conveyor systems, ships equiped to build other ships, etc).

* ''KnightsAndMerchants'' plays it relatively straight mostly, up to the point you realise your warriors are also some kind of resource. It may not be easily seen by beginner players because they are supplied with some initial resources though. For example, getting an axe chevalier requires a horse, an axe, a leather armor, a wooden shield and a recruit. Axes and shields are made of wood, which is made of logs. In order to get a leather armor, you need a piece of leather, which you get when you kill a pig. In order to get pigs and horses, you need wheat farms. Finally, if you want to get the recruit, you need to pay him in gold, which is made of gold ore being burnt with carbon. Every conversion presented here requires separate building and worker, which you need to build or hire...

** Most examples are somewhat less extreme, however. Nearly all the basic metals are relatively simple: Wood (Wood Furnace) --> Charcoal, Charcoal and Ore (Smelter) --> Metal bars, Metal bars and Charcoal (Forge) --> Metal weapons, tools, furniture etc. It's also possible to trade for any resources you can't produce yourself; cloth in particular is easier to import if you use a lot of it.

* In the ''[[Videogame/{{X}} X-Universe]]'' series, there are three basic resources - foods, ores, and energy. ''All'' resources require energy to be refined. For example, to produce a [[MacrossMissileMassacre Flail Barrage Missile]] in a Flail missile fab, you need to set up two mines - one on a silicon asteroid, another on an ore asteroid, a basic bio factory (i.e. a Chelt Aquarium), a foodstuff production factory to refine the bio into food or oil (i.e Rastar Refinery), and then finally, a Solar Power Plant to produce Energy Cells to power the complex, but ([[NotPlayingFairWithResources non-NPC]]) solar power plants require Crystals, which on their own require Silicon, Energy, and foodstuffs. Creating a self-sufficient space station capable of producing all of the resources required for the PlayerHeadquarters ship production facilities is one of the end-game goals for many players.

* At least the older ''TheSettlers'' games runs on this trope, first games added complexity by requiring roads to conenct workshops.

* ''VideoGame/{{The Settlers}}'' series is based on this; In order to build a sword, one needs a forge which needs both coal and iron, both produced by mines requiring meat and bread, which are produced through farms producing grain to feed animals or to be milled. Flour is then sent along with water to a baker, and animals are sent to a slaughterhouse. For each stage of the production, you also need to provide tools which are made with coal and iron too. Every building is made of stone which have to be aquired from a stonecutter, and wood which needs someone to plant trees, someone to cut them, someone to make planks out of them. The player also needs to consider storing and moving these resources around. Once the sword has been produced, barracks have to be build and there has to be enough free civilians not busy doing all of the above to enlist.

* ''VideoGame/{{TheSettlers}}'' series is based on this; In order to build a sword, one needs a forge which needs both coal and iron, both produced by mines requiring meat and bread, which are produced through farms producing grain to feed animals or to be milled. Flour is then sent along with water to a baker, and animals are sent to a slaughterhouse. For each stage of the production, you also need to provide tools which are made with coal and iron too. Every building is made of stone which have to be aquired from a stonecutter, and wood which needs someone to plant trees, someone to cut them, someone to make planks out of them. Storing and moving all these resources around is also something to be considered.

* A key feature of ''VideoGame/{{Pharaoh}}'', which has a large number of different resources representing both raw and processed materials; which ones you collect/export and which you must import depends on the local natural resources of the map you're playing. The processed goods are the ones your citizens want, of course, and each one has a specific industrial building dedicated to producing it from the appropriate raw material. It's possible to make an industry out of RefiningResources; importing flax, building Weavers and exporting linen, for example.

* What about the original ''Capitalism''? You need so many expensive resources that full vertical integration of car or consumer electronics production chains is halfway impossible. As an example, if you want to own the chain of production from raw resources to a car, you need to start with an iron mine, an aluminum mine, and a cattle farm. You'll need factories to process the raw iron into steel, the aluminum into aluminum sheets, and the cows into leather. Then more processing to turn the steel into engines and the aluminum into car bodies. Then a third factory to turn all three into cars. Oh, what's that? Cars have computers and electronics now? Guess you're going to need to invest in a silicon mine to harvest silicon to turn into computer chips to turn them into...

* ''VideoGame/{{Tropico}}'': basic resource buildings like farms and mines allow you to collect food, wood, or minerals. Building an industrial factory allows you to turn those resources into industrial goods, which sell for much more than the base material but require more educated workers and a steady supply of the raw resource and produce more pollution than the resource-gathering building.

* In ''SidMeier's VideoGame/{{Colonization}}'', the economy is built on this trope. In theory you ''could'' just sell raw materials to and buy manufactured goods from Europe, but it's much more beneficial in the long term to build your own industrial base in your colonies, especially considering you'll have to fight your mother country in the endgame. Of course, advanced resources mostly are still traded away, but for a greater profit. The only refinements used up by your own colonies are Lumber -> [[labelnote:Hammers]]used to construct buildings, as well as ships once you build your own Shipyards[[/labelnote]], Ore -> [[labelnote:Tools]]spent by Pioneer jobs or production of ships, cannons and non-basic buildings[[/labelnote]] -> [[labelnote:Muskets]]needed to to equip soldiers and dragoons[[/labelnote]], and [[labelnote:Food]]allows colonies to survive and grow without immigration[[/labelnote]] -> [[labelnote:Horses]]needed to equip dragoons and scouts[[labelnote]].