Hi

Making a empire builder where you colonize planets and make war on other empires. My economy now consist of 4 resources which are global:

Matter

Energy

Rare earth (...metals/elements)

Research

Matter is the base resource similar to cash, wealth or funds. Used for construction and recruiting units  How does this sound (matter I mean)? It could also be "materials". Stellaris uses minerals. Also, any idea for a good icon for this resource?

Rare earth is a uncommon resource for advanced tech and units. Does this sound ok? Some sci fi games uses "crystal" or similar but it depends on the feel of the game I guess. Any good alternative? Dark matter? Anti matter? Preferably something that can be mined!

Nano-carbon or just "Nanomatter" for the resource to create upgraded units.  The upgraded units could be able to heal a considerable amount of damage every turn because of the self-repairing technology made possible by the nonomatter, but it costs lots of matter and energy to create and takes quite a bit of research to unlock the option to build upgraded units, and maybe requires the player to build an additional building in order to create the nanomatter and/or upgraded units depending on how fast you want the game play.  

HI

well first off I love empire builder games, my favorite genre. look forward to the end result

Matter sounds good to me, the only other thing I can come up with is supplies. I m not sure this is something I have seen before. Materials would also be good. Depending on what other elements you have used in your game and what the game is called you could use something with the game name in it. Like spore did, sporebucks you could use a similar technique. As for an icon I was thinking a simple wooden crate or even a metal one seeing as its a sci fi game. I think the icon will depend on what you choose for the name.

As for rare earths what about Rodium? Just a simple name that popped into my head and I'm hoping it is a made up name. Ill google it after this.

let me know what you think. I'm sure i could help come up with other ideas if you need them.

The first resource is both physical and wealth. So maybe funds or material could still work. It's used for construction which needs both actual physical stuff and means to do it. I'm still leaning towards "materials".

The point of using the label "rare earth" is it's a group of elements that are used in advanced electronics. It's not a single element. That would make it more realistic. But maybe a made up single element is clearer. It's what most games do after all. 

I landed in a setup that is similar to stellaris. It gives more robust possibility for gameplay mechanics (but I might change it again along the road). I might add rare resources that gives buffs/unlocks (but not as a base resource like vespene gas works in starcraft).

• Materials. Your typical money, used for starting construction and units/fleets. Also for upkeep.
• Energy. Used for upkeep of structures but also upkeep for units/fleets. And for terraforming, scanning planets and activating starlanes (travel between star systems).
• Influense. Used to control other empires/npc and change and upgrade your administration.
• Research. Upgrades/bonuses and new structures/units/ships. A single tech is researched at a time (picked from 3-4 fields such as "navy", "land warfare", "infrastructure" etc).

There is also some "local resources" for each planet:

• Population growth. This includes "food" in some sense (farms are a source of growth) but actual food is not counted.
• Production. From factories. Used for ships and land units. Infrastructure ("buildings") speed is not affected by this but have fixed construction times.

Does this seem reasonable?