Resource Caps
Limits on numbers of resources allowed to be used or stored.
Players very often handle different types of resources in games and acquiring more is usually beneficial. There may however be limits on how much of a resource can be collected, either for balancing purposes or for practical issues of having to provide enough physical tokens (or not to have to handle large amounts of them), and these limits are Resource Caps.
Contents
Examples
Each land area in the board game Advanced Civilization has a Resource Cap on how many units can be sustained there, and this makes players wish to expand there territory to avoid having them be removed due to starvation. Origins: How We Became Human has a similar functionality but here all units a players has are in use always - either as producers, consumers, or population on the game board, or a 'locking' tokens regarding innovation, population actions, or brain functions.
The Age of Empires series has population caps for each player, although this varies from game to game (50 in the first game, 200 in the second and third, and 300 for Age of Mythology) and some civilizations get raised caps (e.g. the Goths in the second game being allowed to have 210 units); in addition, some units counts double or not at all in the third game and in Age of Mythology.
Using the pattern
Rewards Penalties Character Development
Diegetic Aspects
Resource Caps can diegetically be motivated as Inventories or Containers, and acquiring more of the latter can easily explain increases in the caps.
Interface Aspects
Narrative Aspects
Consequences
Resource Caps can make the effect of Renewable Resources not happen; to avoid this players' may engage in Resource Management in the form of making sure that Resources are used so that are below the cap limit, and this provides one form of Encouraged Constant Player Activity.
Relations
Can Instantiate
with Renewable Resources
Encouraged Constant Player Activity, Resource Management
Can Modulate
Renewable Resources, Resources
Can Be Instantiated By
Can Be Modulated By
Possible Closure Effects
Potentially Conflicting With
History
New pattern created in this wiki.
References
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Acknowledgements
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