History Main / YouRequireMoreVespeneGas

* ''Earth 2160'' had three sides and four resources in total: Metal/Rock, Crystals, Water and Power. What makes it notable is that each of the three races only used and only could collect two of the first three resources, with one as a Gold-type and one as a Lumber-type. Even though all three used Power, each had a different way of gathering it. The easier it was, the more power the race required.

*** Actualy, you could argue that in Age of EMpires II is agold type reosucre, as it is by far the most pimportant resoucre in the game (unless you are playing as the Dutch or India).

** It is worth noting, that all of those games avoid MostAnnoyingSound. Lack of resources will cause heavy stalling and possibly disable attacks, but new units can still be queued, building blueprints can be placed and so on. In both ''TotalAnnihilation'' and ''SupremeCommander'' energy can be transformed into metal/mass in case all metal spots are occupied and it's still not enough. Unfortunately "metal (mass) makers" are costly on energy and they don't turn themselves off when energy is low, thus turning off defenses/rest of economy. In Total Annihilation's Open Source remake - Spring - the "metal maker" economy (energy -> metal exchange) has been balanced to prevent its domination over standard economy later in game. How it is done differs - most mods make metal makers fragile, volatile and inefficient. One of the mods removes them altogether and instead allows standard metal extractors to "overclock" themselves with spare energy. Unlike in Total Annihilation, in Spring metal makers are handled by AI, which means they don't need to be manually turned off in case of power shortage (fusion power plant got blasted for example).

* All you li'l kids wouldn't know about this one, the game MULE--I knew it on the Commodore 64 and the NES, I don't know where else it was--you have Smithore (a rock used to build the titular robot donkeys that do all the work), Energy (powers said robot donkeys), Food (powers you), and Crystite (a useless gem that can be traded for money.) Buy up plots of land, buy MULEs, outfit them, buy/sell resources from/to other players, and hope the idiot computer players don't cheat each other blind and ruin everything. Yeeha.

See also ConstructAdditionalPylons, NoRecycling and CommandAndConquerEconomy. A specific type of EasyLogistics.

* ''CommandAndConquer'': The ''Tiberium'' series uses Tiberium ([[CaptainObvious duh]]) as a Gold-type resources. ''Generals'' uses good ol' dollars. The ''Red Alert'' series used "ore" as its Gold. Another variant, gems, functioned exactly like ore, only it was worth more money. Both series have Power as, well, Power (though the spiritual predecessor ''Dune II'' is the TropeNamer for that resource). ''Tiberian Twilight'' changes their Gold into a Lumber-type, where they pay for upgrades instead. The game itself lampshades it in one of its tutorials with the above quote.
** The expansion, Yuri's Revenge, gives you the Grinder, allowing you to turn [[spoiler:units, or [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential civilians]] who you have [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel brainwashed]]]] into resources.

* SimCity uses money and power. SimCity 2000 adds water, but the pumping stations can't get enough water coverage no matter how many of them you have.

#'''Lumber:''' is a secondary resource; it's not as important as gold, but usually is needed for specific purposes (such as paying for upgrades or buildings). It's not rare that in the later stage of the game, everything will require Lumber. Some games have more than one Lumber-type resource, with each resource usually having a specific focus (for example, wood is needed for buildings, metal is needed for units).

#'''Power:''' A resource that is rarely found on the map, it's more likely to be produced by specific buildings or units. Power is different in that you do not build a stock of it. You have a power supply, and a power demand. If the demand ever exceeds the supply, bad stuff happens, varying from lowered building speeds, to some structures or units entirely ceasing to function.

* ''{{Warcraft}}'' is the TropeNamer for the Gold- and Lumber-type resources. Gold, the primary resource, is obtained from gold mines, which contain finite supplies of gold, have a clear maximum collection rate, and collapse once they have been completely drained. The Humans and Orcs collect it by cycling Peasants/Peons back and forth between gold mines and a Town/Great Hall, while the Undead and Night Elves must haunt/entangle gold mines and then place Acolytes/Wisps on them to harvest gold. The secondary resource, Lumber, has no collection-rate limit but eventually hits diminishing returns. In ''Warcraft 3'', while most maps have enough trees(or [[FungusHumongous giant mushrooms]]) to make sure you never run out of lumber, your Peasants/Peons/Ghouls/Goblin Shredders have to keep making longer round-trips to collect it or you have to keep building new Mills/Graveyards as the forest around your base gets cleared. The Night Elves avert this, since their Wisps stay in place and gather lumber magically without damaging the trees or having to return to a collection site. In addition to producing lumber, trees can also be used by the Night Elves for summoning Treants, placing Sentinel owls, making clubs for Mountain Giants, and healing Ancients. There's also a Population-type "resource" which extends the ArbitraryHeadcountLimit, and is acquired by [[ConstructAdditionalPylons building more farms/burrows/moonwells/ziggurats]].

* ''{{StarCraft}}'' The TropeNamer overall. Minerals would be gold and Vespene gas would be lumber. If you play well, you will likely [[MostAnnoyingSound constantly be hearing the phrase]], ''YouRequireMoreVespeneGas''. Both resources have a clear maximum collection rate per site. This difference from ''Warcraft'' - where wood has no collection rate limit - results in a drastically different tempo.

->''"Resources! Resources! You must obtain more resources!"''
-->-'''Il Palazzo''', ''ExcelSaga''

* ''Lego Rock Raiders'' requires you to tunnel through walls in order to progress as well as mine ore and Energy Crystals. These two resources are used in the construction of most buildings and vehicles.

** There's also Terrazine in ''StarcraftII'', no buildings actually require it but if you check the editor it is a listed resource. Apparently there are plans to use it at some point. It's recource you collect in one of the campain missions.

** There's also Terrazine in ''StarcraftII'', no buildings actually require it but if you check the editor it is a listed resource. Apparently there are plans to use it at some point.

* In ''{{Achron}}'', all the races require 'L-Crystal' and 'Q-Plasma', which fulfill the roles of Gold and Lumber respectively. CESO (the humans) have a resource called 'Reserves' which ostensibly looks like Population (its icon is a small stick-figure person, and all units have a small integer cost), but it doesn't act as a unit cap; Importers continuously generate more and more Reserves over time... its closer to a cap on the number of units you can generate per unit time. The Vecgir also have a resource called 'Power' that hasn't been seen in action (since the Vecgir haven't been implemented in the alpha yet)... but will probably correspond to Power.

* ''AgeOfEmpires'' had various Lumber-type resources, each with a different purpose. Those were food (to make units and unit-related upgrades), wood (certain units and most buildings), Gold (or in the third game, coin), needed for many late-game upgrades and units as well as the global market, and stone (usually defensive buildings). Food was harvested from the terrain in non-renewable sources (berries and fish and game in [=AoE=], then sheep in [=AoK=]) but you would have to harvest it from farms and fishing traps you build using wood in the late game.
** ''AgeOfMythology'' adds [[GodsNeedPrayerBadly Faith]], used for mythological units and technologies.

** ''Warcraft 2'' had a second Lumber-type resource, oil, which was found in water and used almost exclusively for naval units and upgrades.

** It's worth noting that ''Warcraft 2'' had a second Lumber-type resource, oil, which was found in water and used almost exclusively for naval units and upgrades.
* ''{{StarCraft}}'' The TropeNamer overall. Minerals would be gold and Vespene gas would be lumber. If you play well, you will likely [[MostAnnoyingSound constantly be hearing the phrase]], ''YouRequireMoreVespeneGas''. Also subverted by the Zerg. They have a resource unique to all other races. Even other games' races. Larvae are used to produce ALL Zerg units and they spawn from the main production buildings once every 10 seconds or so. Both resources have a clear maximum collection rate per site. This difference from ''Warcraft'' - where wood has no collection rate limit - results in a drastically different tempo.

** You're not building the road out of 8 sheep, you're paying some trader the absurdly high price of 8 sheep in order to get the two resource cards needed to build the road.

*** And then SupremeCommander2 seems to get rid of this tradeoff system in favor of a more palatable (err... dumbed down) system where apparently Energy and Mass will behave exactly as Gold and Timber from Warcraft...

* In an aversion, ''WorldInConflict'' just uses Requisition. It also doesn't have a resource gathering component; you have a certain points limit, and the cost of units is refunded slowly to it after they've been destroyed.

* An otherwise forgettable RTS had three sides and four resources in total: Metal/Rock, Crystals, Wood and Power. What makes it notable is that each of the three races only used and only could collect two of the first three resources, with one as a Gold-type and one as a Lumber-type. Even though all three used Power, each had a different way of gathering it. The easier it was, the more power the race required.
** Sounds a lot like Earth 2160, if you swap wood for water.

* ''DwarfFortress'': Kivish Saziribruk, Carpenter cancels Make Barrel: Needs wood logs.
** To expand a bit, resources come in standard flavors like stone, gems, body parts, ores, and logs, and there are many subtypes of each. Even stone has a dozen or so varieties, some of which have valuable properties, like flux stones for making steel. [[TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything Like everything else]], the process to make steel from iron is kinda complicated.
*** To make this worse, recources present on the map are determined [[TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything through a process of simulated geology]]. While you can pick a starting area with favourable mineral analysis, you can't really predict what you're going to end up short on. And many resources and commodities (particularly food and clothing) can end up rotting or being otherwise contaminated before you get a chance to use them for their intended purpose. This is somewhat (but not entirely) [[TheDevTeamThinksOfEverything offset by the fact that there are multiple resources that can be used for most jobs]].

* The Paradox Interactive game Victoria: An Empire Under The Sun takes this to extremes, featuring no less than 47 resources. These include the standards of coal, iron and wood (albeit classed as timber, lumber and tropical), but also more esoteric types such as fertiliser, opium and luxury furniture. And God help you if you don't happen to be producing exactly the right blend of these materials at any point...

** Its SpiritualSuccessor AgeOfWonders had just gold and mana. Whereas another game in the genre, Disciples, had gold and four different types of mana (five with the expansion pack), and you needed the right combination of mana to be able to cast spells.

* Game/EvilGenius has a particularly nasty consequence for not having enough power: your overworked generators will break down at an accelerated rate and eventually ''[[StuffBlowingUp explode]]'', leaving you with NO power to defend your base with, no control panels to use to have your henchmen and minions steal money from the world, a possible FIRE in your base... and did I mention you're also short $8000 per generator?
* BlackAndWhite offers a combination of many basic types of materials that support each other when gained: To feed your population, you have to produce food for them through either miracle spells or by assigning missionaries to harvest it. The same applies for wood, which is required for construction. To cast miracles, you'll have to spend prayer power (mana), which is generated by your villagers at the worship site...who also need food to keep worshipping. The size of your population and the number of houses they have between them also affects how large an area you can cover in the game. In the end, though, it turns out that lumber is a seriously lacking resource, because you constantly need to harvest it to build more houses, and forests have a nasty habit of running out of trees unless you took up gardening and treated your followers as vermin to be kept away from the rutabagas.
* EmpireEarth has five: food (the most basic, needed to produce citizens), gold (multi-purpose), wood (for building construction and some military units), stone (for fortifications and some advanced buildings), and iron (for advanced weaponry). All must be collected from specific sources across the map, with the exception of food, which can be farmed.
* GalaxyOnline has Metal, Gas, Population, and Science, all of which are produced passively over time by structures built for that purpose. Science points are spent to purchase new scientific upgrades without having to decide what you were studying beforehand. Population works just like metal and gas and is consumed for various tasks. One could logically suggest that the population "consumed" building facilities are just committed to working there and not available for other tasks. The population used up [[NightmareFuel creating starship fuel and ammunition]] though...
* {{Sacrifice}}, being half RTS and half RPG, had only two resources; Souls and Mana, though it's hard to tell which resource equates to which type. Mana is generated constantly from areas called "mana fountains"; placing a Manalith on that fountain allows you to draw upon that mana from a distance, so the more Manaliths you have, the faster your mana gauge fills. Souls, on the other hand, are limited- there's only a select amount on each stage, so the whole point of the game is to try and kill off your opponent's creatures (or the various creeps) and sacrifice their souls in order to use said souls to conjure your own creatures.

* PlayedWith in KingArthurTheRoleplayingWargame - gold and food are needed to maintain your empire and armies and upgrade. On the other hand, you are a king over an empire, and these resources are not directly gained while in battle like other RealTimeStrategy games - they come into play during the turn-based portion. These may be traded in specific quests, along with artifacts and [[DeliberateValuesDissonance ladies]], and gold and food can be swapped for one or the other at a loss in winter.
* {{Star Wars}} Galactic Battlegrounds has you collect 4 different types of Materials to construct your base as well as build. Carbon is needed for base construction, Food is needed for Infantry, Ore Crystals is need for Base Defences and Nova Crystals are needed for Heavy Weapons. All of these can be harvested by the same unit, and there are various ways to collect these materials (Ergo, to collect food, you can kill wildlife, fish, etc)

* BrutalLegend has "Fans", which function exactly like Mana in Sacrifice in that you collect them by placing Merch Booths over them, which sends the fans to your stage.
* Averted in {{StarWars}} Force Commander. In theory you have access to an infinite number of troops, and the only resource that matters is your reputation. Capture enemy buildings, kill the rebels and fight with small numbers of troops and your reputation will rise, constantly request reinforcements and it will fall.

* One of the most infamous issues with the horrid LeftBehind Eternal Forces can be summed up as follows: men are a gold resource, women are a lumber resource. IAmNotMakingThisUp. The game has other resources, but this troper didn't play it enough to remember them.

*** In addition, Protoss have a form of Power; all Protoss buildings must be built within range of a pylon, and if all of the pylons near a building are destroyed, that building stops working. (This can be exploited if a player makes the mistake of warping in a whole slew of photon cannons supported by a single pylon.) Zerg buildings must be built on the Creep, a layer of purple slime that spreads out around hatcheries and creep colonies, but cutting off existing buildings from the Creep doesn't make them shut down.
****In the sequel however, Zerg buildings left off of Creep slowly degenerate and eventually die, and Zerg units move much faster on the Creep than on normal ground. In its own way the Creep is practically a resource too now. Unfortunately, they need Vespine Gas as well.

****In the sequel however, Zerg buildings left off of Creep slowly degenerate and eventually die, and Zerg units move much faster on the Creep than on normal ground. In its own way the Creep is practically a resource too now.

->'''Soviet Tank''': I always wondered though.... Why the mightiest nations need to collect ore while killing each other? I mean, what's even in that stuff?

->'''Soviet Tank''': I always wondered though.... Why the mightiest nations need to collect ore while killing each other? I mean, what's even in LampshadeHanging that stuff?

->'''Soviet Tank''': LampshadeHanging I always wondered though.... Why the mightiest nations need to collect ore while killing each other? I mean, what's even in LampshadeHanging that stuff?

->'''Soviet Tank''': [[LampshadeHanging I always wondered though.... Why the mightiest nations need to collect ore while killing each other? I mean, what's even]] ''[[LampshadeHanging in]]'' [[LampshadeHanging that stuff?]]