Basic Trope: Real time strategy games usually have different kinds of resources which have to be gathered to construct buildings and combat units.
- Straight: You have to gather resources to build something.
- Exaggerated: You have to spend resources for even the smallest action like giving a command to a unit or scrolling the screen.
- Downplayed: Once the requisite buildings (mines, refineries, power plants, etc.) are established, the resources collect themselves at a fixed rate and act more like limits on how much can be spent at a certain time.
- Justified:
- The game takes place in a scenario with a very complicated barter economy system. The price to buy a battle tank is indeed five tons of lumber, three tons of wheat and a half ton of gold.
- The game takes place in a scenario with a very simple construction system. The construction materials for a battle tank are indeed five tons of lumber, three tons of wheat, and a half ton of gold.
- The game is given strategic depth by its selection of resources. Do you use rare and valuable Uranium for power generation, or nuclear bombs? Or that nifty depleted uranium armor for vehicles? Hell, one Stockpile unit of the stuff sells for a million Gold, so it can be used as a trade good. We have a ton of Food and Iron, but little Oil. Do we build a tank, or an aircraft? Or would it be better to turn that oil into body-armor made from an advanced polymer? Exotic Biochemicals are needed for both Super Soldiers and Battle Beasts. You can research one or the other, but not both, and you won't be able to research Medkits for your baseline troopers if you do. Corundum is needed for laser guns and cloaking devices, and is also a valuable trade good.
- Resources act as a Restraining Bolt on production so that games don't devolve into slugfests between hordes of Tactical Superweapon Units.
- Inverted: The game simulates recycling of used military hardware. The goal is to gather raw materials by disassembling tanks and other weapons of war.
- Subverted: There are a lot of resources to collect but they aren't important at all to win the game.
- Double Subverted: ...unless you want the Golden Ending.
- Parodied: The resources you need to gather to recruit soldiers are beer and porn. Research is based on how much Cake and internet acess you give your pet Mad Scientist.
- Zig Zagged: Only some units and buildings are bought with collected resources; others are acquired with a different system, e.g. by waiting until the factory that makes them "recharges power", or by killing enemies to gain "Victory Tokens" which automatically turn into units/buildings you seem to need at this point.
- Averted:
- There are no resources in the game. Units and buildings can be built for free making time the only resource.
- There is no way to produce anything and you have to work with the stuff you are given at the beginning of each mission and what you lack must be acquired by completing side missions (ie: rescuing prisoners to gain more soldiers).
- Easy Logistics; You don't have to worry about getting more vespene or different kinds of resources. Even if you do, you don't have to worry about how those resources are going to your army.
- Enforced: "It's a Real-Time Strategy Game. You've got to have resource gathering and base-building."
- Lampshaded:
- Invoked: During a mission your superior officer tells you to "Secure the iron mine to the south so you can build an army to attack the enemy".
- Exploited: The player employs siege and starvation tactics to prevent an enemy army from functioning, making a kill that much easier.
- Defied: The backstory mentions some sort ofphlebotinum that assembles your buildings and/or units out of pure energy.
- Discussed:
- In an action game, the characters talk about how much vespene gas their tanks cost, and hope that the general can procure enough of it to buy them a hospital.
- Stop Poking Me! and find some more vespene gas!
- Conversed: "Sigh. It'll take at least half an hour before I can collect enough vespene gas to build this required unit. When the developers promised 'hours of gameplay', they meant it."
- Deconstructed: To build a tank you need about twenty different kinds of raw materials which are processed by different factory buildings into different intermediate goods which are then used to construct hundreds of different mechanical and electronic components. The tank assembly factory is the last one in a very long production chain.
- Reconstructed: The game is in fact an economy simulation where you manage an arms manufacturing company. Optimizing the convoluted production processes is one of the most interesting aspects of the game. The actual warfare is just a very minor aspect of the game or even completely absent, set to be released in a "Weapons Test Expansion Pack, coming 20XX".
- Played For Laughs: The Worker Units bitch and moan about the lack of resources whenever there isn't enough to build something, and the soldiers sometimes go "Oh, No... Not Again!" when ordered to capture a resource point.
- Played For Drama: The entire story of the game revolves around a bloody, violent resource war.
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