STOCKPILES/STORAGE LIMITS
Finite storage as a designed constraint — warehouses with capacity caps, stockpile zones that fill, resource maximums that overflow into waste, granaries whose size is a build decision.
- SOLO-DEV COST LOW
- TIMING REAL-TIME / TURN
- COMMON IN COLONY-SIM · CITY-BUILDER · SURVIVAL · AUTOMATION
Colony sims run stockpile zones as spatial logistics (RimWorld's shelving, Dwarf Fortress's quantum-stockpile folk exploits), 4X and strategy games cap resources to force spending (Age of Empires' housing, Anno's island warehouses where overflow simply stops producing), survival games make chest management a base-design discipline, and Factorio's chests and buffers turn storage sizing into throughput engineering. Designers cap storage because unlimited accumulation deletes the present tense: with infinite granaries, every economy question defers to 'stockpile more', but caps force the use-it-or-lose-it decision — resources at the cap are income being wasted, so full storage is pressure to spend, expand, or trade, and the economy stays in motion rather than pooling. Storage as physical space (zones, chests, warehouses occupying tiles) adds the logistics layer: where things are stored determines hauling distances, so stockpile placement is quietly one of the colony genre's deepest efficiency games, and the warehouse district is real urban planning. Caps also make storage expansion a progression track (the bigger granary is a meaningful build) and create the survival genre's distinctive inventory-tetris-at-base ritual. Key decisions: cap consequences (hard stop production, waste the overflow, or degrade/rot — rot creates urgency; hard stops create idle-worker signals), storage as abstract number versus physical space (physicality buys logistics gameplay at interface cost), specialization rules (food storage versus armory versus hazmat — typed storage multiplies planning), and expansion pricing. Pitfall: storage management as pure chore — when caps are low, expansion is cheap, and the only 'decision' is periodically clicking build-more-boxes, the limit generates busywork instead of pressure; caps earn their friction when hitting them forces real choices (spend on what? expand where? sell to whom?), because a storage limit whose answer is always 'add another chest' is an interruption, not a constraint.