The most shocking resource

[rallythelegions]

I have no screenshot of it, but I would like to comment on an amazing touch by the devs that shocked and excited me. A resource indicator pops up on my map. Low and behold, Perovskites! Not only that, but they give a bonus to solar energy produced!

I'm currently a Chemistry grad student researching applications of Perovskites in solar panels. Using these babies for dye sensitized solar cells is something that has only been around for like 4 or 5 years, so the fact that it's made its way into the game is astounding to me (unless I just vastly underestimate how much the public hears about new scientific innovations that haven't yet made it to market). Kudos to the devs!

[TheVampire100]

I had to google it up in order to understand what you mean. And yes, appearantly the developers did their research for this. I guess no one except someone with a chemistry background knowledge would notice this, they could totally do something different to the resource without someone even saying anything.
People would just shrug it off with the "It's an alien sci-fi game, they can do whatever they want with it." behaviour.

While we're on it, why not stating out other interesting resources?

I shuckled at the dropbears. they are clearly a reverfence to the Ewoks of the Star Wars franchise.

[Zebeast46]

I had to google it up in order to understand what you mean. And yes, appearantly the developers did their research for this. I guess no one except someone with a chemistry background knowledge would notice this, they could totally do something different to the resource without someone even saying anything.
People would just shrug it off with the "It's an alien sci-fi game, they can do whatever they want with it." behaviour.

While we're on it, why not stating out other interesting resources?

I shuckled at the dropbears. they are clearly a reverfence to the Ewoks of the Star Wars franchise.

Had a good laugh off the dropbears, also had a laugh about a particular spice (i think) that empowered ground troops.

[crazyroosterman]

I have no screenshot of it, but I would like to comment on an amazing touch by the devs that shocked and excited me. A resource indicator pops up on my map. Low and behold, Perovskites! Not only that, but they give a bonus to solar energy produced!

I'm currently a Chemistry grad student researching applications of Perovskites in solar panels. Using these babies for dye sensitized solar cells is something that has only been around for like 4 or 5 years, so the fact that it's made its way into the game is astounding to me (unless I just vastly underestimate how much the public hears about new scientific innovations that haven't yet made it to market). Kudos to the devs!

god dam nerds!. ps in all seriousness that's actually pretty cool.

[rallythelegions]

The nerd in me has to point out that the perovskites used for solar cells aren't the ones that come out of the ground. They just have the same crystalline structure. Still, though, super cool that the devs knew about them and put them in the game. I'm curious what other resources have ties to real science that I'm not catching.

[x4000]

Thanks guys.

Out of the original set of resources (I believe about 40ish), all of those were based on real-world plants or compounds, and all of them are tied to real-world uses for things.  The minerals and rare earth elements in particular.  Some others, like salt for instance, are used in a real way that they are commonly weaponized, too.  Capsacinoids are really a fungal deterrent, and so on.

Later on the other 40ish second set of resources we did are all completely fictitious flora and fauna.  Some of them are a bit on the funny side, like dropbears.  Some are references to other things a bit (ghost spice is somewhat a reference to Dune as well as to ghost peppers).  And then others are just things that I tried to come up with that are plausible uses either chemically or animal-training-wise or food-wise.

Anyway, yeah, I put a lot of time into all that, so I'm glad somebody noticed!

[ptarth]

dropbears = Australian lies about koalas