There's definitely been a trend from a handful of modern automation games to have resource gathering come from an infinite node of some kind. Personally I always liked games that had resource patches that slowly ran out, because it gave you another plate to spin, and a natural break point to reconsider your supply lines.
MoteMancer takes the best of both worlds, leaning into infinite creativity over infinite ease.
Natural Infinity
MoteMancer's world is procedurally generated, and infinite in its own right, so there's no true way to run out of resources. It also follows similar rules to other games that do this where resource richness gets higher as you leave the center of the world so that your collection grows to meet the increasing size of your factory. One slight 'problem' with this design is that in encourages players to wander far before settling their factory. Not catastrophic, but not ideal either.
In MoteMancer since your main objective of restoring the Great Portal happens back at the center of the map, there's a natural reward to staying relatively central to where you start. Planar Portal density is also a little more consistent near the center, so there’s plenty of reason to stay rooted. Still, should players seek super dense Mote Fields out in the wilderness, they will be there waiting. In the upcoming December patch, Shadow is going to have ways for players to teleport across great distances too, as befitting Shadow's strengths.
Sustainability
But, that's not necessarily as comforting for people who want a set and forget solution so they can focus on the production chains themselves. MoteMancer offers several ways to achieve this, and more are on the way - but as MoteMancer is a game about logistics puzzles, most of them come with the cost of creativity and problem solving.
Let’s take a look at the options currently in your toolkit. In-game right now, there are three ways to gather infinite resources in a sustainable way:
- Coral Pools - Life/Water hybrid tech allows you to slowly grow Mote-generating Coral in a verdant shallow pool. All 6 Elements are represented, though Mushroom (Shadow) and Fire Coral need a little more effort to plant as they are opposing elements. Each Coral Pool has 9 coral bed slots, and each Coral will produce 1 Mote per minute. This takes up considerable space and the process is slow, but once planted lasts forever.
- Scythe and Rift Reaper - If you have truly abundant Power and are not afraid to call forth Rifts that can disrupt your factory, Scythe will tear open a Rift wherever you are, and Rift Reaper will drop a vein of Motes wherever the Rift is sealed. Scythes near Mote Patches will create the same element type, but can be fully random as well if they are far enough away from any other Field.
- Transmutation Engine and Entropic Alembic - The Entropy tree provides a powerful but very complicated option - reclaiming Motes from Entropy itself. The catch is that the result of coaxing Motes out of Entropic Shards is random, and players need to get creative about how to handle this powerful ability to get non-native resources. Air/Water tech will be getting filtering (Enchanted Grippers and Enchanted Deltas), and Earth will be getting the ability to lock inventory slots for earth chests, but those techs will still require a fair bit of work to access. Again MoteMancer is still about problem solving and taking your time rather than one-click solutions to ease and scale. Creative and aesthetic mastery remain the goal.
On the horizon there will be a few extra options:
- Overgrowth Pillar - Life's last Structure will follow the path of Mystical Agriculture - growing flora on Mote Fields, but also come with technology that lets collectors gather Motes from the flora itself - extending the resource-collection ability of a given Mote Field. MoteMancer does still carry the vibes of finding balance with the world, and if you are able to plant more than you collect, even a meager Mote Field can become forever sustainable. Overgrowth Pillars will start working on Life only, but you can unlock a master level tech to extend its capability to any type.
- Sovereign Manaheart - (Life/Earth) This end-game building used to be the pinnacle of Solar Power generation, but Mana Leaves and Mana Canopies do the job so well that its functionality is a little redundant. As a means of synergizing with Overgrowth Pillar and being kit appropriate to Earth, Sovereign Manaheart will channel excess power back into the ground and replenish the Mote Field that it resides upon. This well let you grow fields to be larger than they would naturally grow, and let you set up sustainable farms from large solar arrays.
- Foundry - (Earth/Fire) The final structure for Brimstone research will allow you to pour materials back into a feedback loop and get Elements straight back out. An example Foundry recipe will be to process 1 Brimstone and 1 Ingot to catalyze together and output 12 Elemental Fire, netting you a positive but less refined result. You can of course reprocess this back to complete a feedback loop, but it will require balancing your production lines to claim the benefit, with the added bonus of skipping the need to use Elemental Binders to recombine your Elements.
MoteMancer is still a sandbox with multiple paths to victory, and multiple intricate steps on each path. But, when affixes are introduced that remove access to certain Elements or have other requirements, your problem solving will have to adapt. Maybe flora is indestructible, but can still be harvested from collectors, or maybe you'll need to change the way you filter a sushi belt because Air research is completely shattered. There will be many puzzles to solve and a menagerie of tools at your disposal.
MoteMancer’s world will always provide, but it’s your ingenuity that makes it truly infinite.
Back to the lab! 🌿
~Cyanavatar