This idea is to make power an indirectly tradable item with the introduction of a new resource: electric cells. An electric cell factory creates the cell resource at the cost of a lot of power and a small amount of other resources. A “generator” building converts the cells into the same amount of power that went into making them, allowing advanced colonies to sell excess power to smaller ones.
This could also be used to bring the idea of time into the game economy in a more concrete way: one electric cell takes 10,000 power and one hour to charge (plus a small amount of resources to ‘build’ the cell itself). The generator building then consumes one power cell per hour, and generates 10,000 power.
Personally, I like the idea of having a resource that will be limited to very small numbers. You might sit down to play My Colony, and see that you have only 2 electric cells left. You think “I want to play for a couple hours, so I’ll need to buy 3 more”.
Originally, I was thinking of this as a mid-game stepping stone between nuclear power plants and alien power towers, but the numbers could be adjusted to make it more late-game. The introduction of trash and incinerators kind of overlaps this idea a bit, so maybe one power cell holds 100,000 power per hour, or even 1,000,000 power per hour.
I’d like to hear your feedback on the idea itself and the art. I've wanted to submit this idea for a while, but I'm not an artist, so I've been working on the art off and on for over a month (I live in Houston, so Hurricane Harvey added a lot of time). I'd like to hear back from you regarding the color choices, detail level and the use of gradients. I avoided using gradients, but there were a couple spots where I thought it was necessary to show the shape I was going for.
Electric Cell
Electric Cell Factory
Size 4x4
workers 80
cost ore 10,000
cost water 20,000
cost steel 50,000
cost gold 35,000
cost al 4,000
cost uranium 1,000
cost microchips 12,000
produces: electric power cells, 1 per hour
uses 1,000 steel per hour
uses 100 al per hour
uses 90 pottery per hour
uses 20 micro chips per hour
Electric Cell Power-Plant
size:4x3
Workers:5
cost ore: 5,000
cost water: 4,000
cost steel: 10,000
cost gold:1,000
cost al: 150
cost microchips: 50
produces 10,000 power per hour
uses 1 electric cell per hour