Talk:Resources

Resources and Materials

I might be alone, but I'm a little confused by this page. Across the wiki many people (myself included) are referring to things like Compound and Laterite as resources, and yet the Resource page refers to them as materials. Even the Materials page starts out calling them materials and ends up calling them resources halfway through.

Are the elements we dig out of the ground resources, materials, or both? And in either case, do Artifacts, space wreckage, etc. really qualify as "resources" as opposed to objects or items? --Infinimbal (talk) 16:17, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I think we need to make this distinction still. Ultimately I think everything is a resource. And items mined/used are materials. Currently I think Resources is fine to include artifacts and discoveries so we have a central page. If you have another suggestion put it here. --Crychair (talk) 16:53, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm not seeing the connection between Artifacts and Discoveries beyond "stuff you find while exploring." I agree that loosely speaking everything can be considered a "resource" for the player, but at that point the potential scope of this page encompasses more or less every other page in the wiki, doesn't it?

Here's how I would suggest categorizing things (a bit broader to give context to my logic):

• Resources/Materials - Raw materials collected from the environment and their refined counterparts. e.g. Compound, Laterite, Aluminum, Power Crystals
• Items - Things that can be interacted with and placed in the backpack. e.g. Tethers, Tanks, Wind Vanes, stacks of Material
• Objects - Things that can be interacted with but not placed in the backpack. e.g. Artifacts, Wind Turbines, Storage Racks, small spaceship debris
• Discoveries - Environmental occurrences that yield Materials, Items or Objects. e.g. Large spaceship debris, stone monoliths, supply pods

--Infinimbal (talk) 17:47, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I think these changes would be good. Also Artifacts are now the unidentified research it seems. If you would like to make these changes go ahead. And if you would like help let me know. The other thing I noticed you working on is the Printer page. If we are going to mix the backpage printer with the large printer I think they should be separate pages. Which is why I originally left the backpack printer out and just had that info on the backpack page. I think having Small/Large items of the same name would benefit us as well. --Crychair (talk) 18:39, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm happy to make the changes, and I sure appreciate your input Cry (and anyone else who wants to chime in). As for the printer page, I put them together to make that page a single location from which you could see every printable item, but I certainly see the benefit in the Printer module having its own page (as other modules would). --Infinimbal (talk) 19:02, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I think the backpack stuff needs to be moved to the items page or backpack pages. I'd rather not mix information like this. --Crychair (talk) 19:31, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I go away for a couple days and come back to not have a clue whats going on. I understand the confusion with resources vs materials, sicne bot hterms had been in use whe nI started. Based on the definition that: Resources is an umbrella term that includes, people, materials, time, equipment, salvage etc and that materials was literally 'the stuff you make things out of' I had Resources setup as a hub page for ALL the different groups of things and then Materials for 'the things we collect to make other stuff'. Now it seems the Resource page has been turned into the 'things we make stuff from' page and I have no idea if there is even a path to any info about resources that are not materials. Can someone PLEASE explain the logical heirarchy being used for everything now so I can at least find my way aroud nand see what I might help with? Rkaneus (talk) 04:07, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

The definition list provided by Infinimbal seems like the right way of doing things by merging both Resource and Material into one word. "Raw materials collected from the environment and their refined counterparts" is a much better definition than "the things we collect to make other stuff" since the latter definition does not cover resources Oxygen and Power, which cannot be made into anything, or Astronium and Hematite, which are planned to be but are not yet usable. Also, if the word resource covers so many different things then, as mentioned earlier, it'll just be a page about the entire wiki. --Skell Skell (talk) 15:42, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

You've summarized it really well Skell Skell (thanks!), so I don't have much to add. I will say that all of the features mentioned on the previous Resources page deserve to be linked on the front page of the wiki (I thought they were, but I see Discoveries is missing, for example), so that's a change I'll work at having made. --Infinimbal (talk) 18:02, 29 December 2016 (UTC)