Resources

States across the enabled game world hold deposits of natural resources that can be extracted by corporations. These resources feed the commodity market, affect corporate profit margins, and represent sovereign wealth that governments can choose to contract out or protect.

The six extractable resources#

Six resources can be extracted from state deposits. Each is measured in its own unit:

Copper is folded into Rare Earth rather than tracked as its own commodity. These six are a subset of the broader set of commodities tracked in the commodity pricing engine. Standard manufactured commodities (steel, electronics, consumer goods) have no extraction model: they come from corporate sectors processing other inputs, not from the ground.

The capacity system#

Every state that has natural resources holds a resource capacity document specifying the maximum extraction output (in commodity units) it can yield per turn. These figures are benchmarked to real-world production data.

For example, Texas's authored oil, gas, and coal values are 450,000, 2,250,000, and 15,000 units. Seed headroom expands those to live ceilings of 1,350,000 oil, 6,750,000 gas, and 30,000 coal units per turn. The live Resources map is authoritative.

A reference calculation: a ₳10M/day extraction corporation running at a 20% supply rate produces roughly:

• Oil: 25,000 bbl/turn
• Coal: 13,333 tons/turn
• Natural Gas: 48,000 MMBtu/turn
• Timber: 2,000 m³/turn (at an 8% rate)

Every seeded state receives a capacity document. A state without authored resources receives resources: {}, which means zero extraction capacity. The runtime's uncapped fallback applies only to a truly missing document and is not the normal state for an unlisted region.

R&D can expand capacity#

Extraction corporations with active R&D budgets can permanently increase a state's resource capacity through innovation breakthroughs. A breakthrough for an oil-and-gas corporation grows that state's oil and natural gas capacity; an iron mining breakthrough grows iron capacity only. This mechanic represents "unlocking new deposits" and means state capacities are not truly static over the game's lifetime.

Prospecting: funding a geological survey#

Prospecting is a deliberate, paid alternative to waiting on R&D breakthroughs. Any extraction corporation with a sector in a state, or that state's own government (national or state level), can commission a geological survey targeting one resource in one state. NPP miners do this too when the deposit is short and they can afford the survey.

A survey has a 12-turn base duration multiplied by the era duration scale. In the 1953 preset that is 18 turns. The corporation launching a survey pays a starting cost of ₳500,000, which climbs the more that state and resource have already been successfully surveyed (up to 4x the base cost). Government-funded surveys draw from the national treasury or the state budget instead of a corporation's cash.

Success odds and payout differ by who is funding the survey:

Every survey is capped at adding no more than 20% of the resource's current capacity in a single roll, even at maximum R&D score. A corporation can run up to three active surveys at once; each government can also run up to three active surveys at once across the country.

A failed survey costs the money already paid and produces nothing. A successful survey immediately increases the state's capacity for that resource, available starting the next turn's commodity price calculation.

Prospecting and R&D breakthroughs stack: a corporation with a strong R&D program benefits from both a passive chance of a breakthrough each turn and much better prospecting odds when it chooses to commission a survey directly.

Deposit depletion#

In plants worlds, state deposits are finite. A resource's derived reserve is its per-turn capacity multiplied by 1,920 turns, equal to 40 game years of continuous extraction at the full ceiling. Only units actually extracted count against the reserve, so a partly used field lasts longer.

The normal per-turn capacity remains unchanged until the deposit's remaining units fall below that ceiling. Its final turns then taper rather than shutting off all at once. Prospecting and extraction R&D raise both the flow ceiling and the derived remaining life of the field.

How capacity affects corporate output#

Capacity caps work as a multiplier on extraction sector output, not a hard cutoff:

• If a sector's computed output for a resource is below the state's capacity ceiling, it operates at full output (multiplier = 1.0).
• If demand from all extraction sectors in a state exceeds available capacity, output is proportionally squeezed.
• A truly missing capacity document falls back to uncapped output for compatibility. Normally every seeded state has a document, and an empty resource map means zero capacity.

The result: resource-rich states support more extraction activity before running into diminishing returns, while resource-poor states effectively can't supply commodities they don't have in the ground.

Contracted vs. open-access capacity#

State resource capacity is divided between two pools:

Contracted capacity is reserved exclusively for a corporation holding an extraction contract. The corporation has guaranteed priority access to its contracted share of the state's ceiling.

Open-access capacity is the remainder: available to all extraction sectors in that state on a first-come, proportional basis. If total demand from uncontracted sectors exceeds the open pool, every uncontracted sector's output is squeezed proportionally.

Player-issued offers cannot take the total offered and active share above 75%, so at least one quarter remains open access. Admin grants are an override: they can push allocation past 100%, at which point the open-access pool collapses to zero and uncontracted sectors produce nothing for that resource.

Which states have which resources#

Major resource concentrations vary with the countries and start date enabled in the world. The live Resources map is the authoritative view for every state. Some representative authored concentrations are:

United States: Texas leads in oil and natural gas. Pennsylvania and West Virginia are major gas and coal producers. Minnesota holds the largest iron deposits. Wyoming and Alaska are uniquely diverse, holding several resource types each.

United Kingdom: Scotland holds the country's largest oil and gas deposits (North Sea). Wales, Yorkshire, and the East and West Midlands hold most of the UK's remaining coal and iron.

Germany: North Rhine-Westphalia dominates coal and iron production. Lower Saxony holds oil and natural gas. Bavaria and Rhineland-Palatinate hold rare earth deposits.

Japan: Hokkaido and Kyushu hold coal and timber. Chugoku and Tohoku hold rare earth and natural gas. Japan's overall resource base is modest compared to North American counterparts.

Other enabled country maps, including Ireland, Brazil, Nigeria, China, Russia, and East Germany where present for the selected era, carry their own authored deposits. Use each country's Resources map instead of assuming the examples above are exhaustive.

Why resources matter#

Resources flow directly into the commodity pricing engine. When extraction output is high, commodity supply is abundant and prices fall, benefiting industrial sectors that use those commodities as inputs. When output is constrained (whether by capacity ceilings, lack of contracts, or over-allocation), supply tightens and commodity prices rise, squeezing margins for downstream sectors.

Legislators and corporations can influence resource flows through three tools:

• Extraction contracts, granting exclusive capacity shares to specific corporations
• Prospecting, paying for a geological survey to grow a state's capacity for a resource
• Subsidies, providing margin bonuses that make extraction sectors more profitable regardless of commodity prices

For the corporate side of this system, see Corporations.