The Tone Rebellion/Resources

Resource management

Tone Nodes
Tone nodes are places where buildings can be built, and appear on the map as blue swirls. They come in three sizes, small, medium, and large.

Tone nodes appear on the map near sources of tone. These sources are primed tone pools and opened bridges. A Tone Spreader will expand this tone outwards and will reveal more tone nodes.

Clicking on an active tone node shows what types of buildings can be built there. Any type of building can be built on medium or large nodes. Only resource buildings can be built on small tone nodes.

As long as a Tone Spreader is connected to a source of tone, either directly or by a chain of tone spreaders, the resource buildings built on those nodes will remain active. But if cut off from Tone they will lose power and become inactive, and revealed tone nodes will disappear. This can happen when a Tone Spreader in the chain is destroyed or if a Tone Pool has been taken over by the Leviathan.

Tone Production and Buildings
Tone can be harvested by resource buildings to produce resources. Resource buildings require a source of tone to do this.
 * Tone Spreaders use the tone to activate more tone nodes in an area around the spreader.
 * Tone Solidifiers manufacture structure tone. Structure tone looks like small white balls and is used to construct buildings.  You also need to have structure tone in your tribal center to teleport buildings.
 * Tone Crystal Growers manufacture crystal tone. Crystal Tone looks like small blue octahedrons.  Crystal tone is used to train warriors at dojos and power their attacks.  It works much like "ammunition" and when a warrior is out of crystal tone it can no longer make its special attack and must return to its dojo to get more.
 * Magic Tone Creators manufacture magic tone. Magic tone looks like small orange-striped balls.  Magic tone is used by wizards to power their spells (along with crystal tone) and you also need to have magic tone in your tribal center to teleport buildings.

A resource building has a capacity of one unit of resources; once it produces a resource, it will do nothing until that resource has been collected. Once the resource has been taken by a worker, the building will begin producing a new unit of resource. This is a quick process, normally a bit more than one resource per second.

Your Tribal Center stores resources but also produces structure tone. However, it does this at a very slow rate and will be insufficient for your needs in the game. This feature mainly exists to ensure that even if you have no Tone Solidifiers and no stored structure tone you can still build things. However, if you are in this situation generally the thing you need to build immediately is a new Tone Solidifier.

Workers
Workers are the backbone of your game economy. While resource buildings produce resources, these resources are useless until they can get to a place where they are needed. A worker's entire job is to collect something from one place and deliver it to another place.


 * Workers collect resources from resource buildings and deliver them to your tribal center.
 * Workers collect Structure Tone from the Tribal Center and from Tone Solidifiers and deliver them to sites where you have ordered buildings to be built. No construction labor is required; once enough structure tone has been delivered to the site the building is completed.
 * Workers collect structure tone and deliver it to buildings that you have ordered be repaired or upgraded. As with construction the job is complete when enough structure tone has been delivered to complete the task.
 * Workers collect tone crystals from tone crystal growers and from your tribal center and deliver them to dojos. Dojos have an internal storage for tone crystals that is used to train and recharge its warriors.  When this internal storage is full the workers will stop delivering tone crystals, but periodically the warriors will need to recharge and this will clear space in the storage for more deliveries.
 * Workers also collect magic tone from the tribal center and from magic tone creators and deliver them to spell towers. spell towers are a type of dojo but they have stockpiles for both tone crystals and magic tone.
 * Workers can be ordered to collect artifacts (including bridge keys) from the map. They will deliver them to the nearest large building (either your tribal center or a dojo).
 * Workers can be ordered to deliver bridge keys to unopened bridge apertures to open them or deliver artifacts to mystic locations to unlock glyphs.
 * Workers can also fight in an emergency if you activate the panic button. They aren't that good at it though.

The main purpose of your tribal center is as a building to store the three types of tone. You can control what the tribal center does with its storage space by opening the tribal center interface. To the left of the interface are symbols of three little storage buildings, with the type of resource they store next to them. Clicking on the little buildings adjust the storage settings.
 * If an arrow is going into the top of the building this indicates that the tribal center is accepting deliveries of this resource. Note that this does not prevent other buildings from collecting the same resource; the available resources will simply be divided among the buildings that need them.
 * If there is no arrow and the little building has a pointy roof, the tribal center is netier accepting deliveries of this resource nor allowing workers to collect resources from the tribal center.
 * If there is an arrow going out of the top of the building this indicates that the tribal center is allowing workers to collect this resource here.

Each location that requires a delivery will be treated by the game as a "job." The game will assign a number of workers to each job. Delivering an artifact always requires only one worker, but the game AI will assign workers by dividing them among all the other jobs available. You can see and control this process by opening the Job List, either by clicking on a construction site or clicking the Job List button to the lower right of the realm display (lower left corner of the screen).

In the job list you will see a line for each job that shows how many workers are assigned to each job and what that job is. Clicking on a line will allow you to control the specifics of that job through the interface at the bottom right. You will see the details of the job and four icons at the bottom. Clicking these icons controls the priority of that job.
 * The icon showing a single floater gives the job normal priority. This is the default priority level and the normal priority jobs are listed in white on the job list.  The game will try to assign an equal amount of workers to each normal priority job.
 * The icon showing two floaters gives the job high priority. High priority jobs are listed in yellow on the job list.  The game will assign more workers to high priority jobs than to normal priority jobs.
 * The icon showing four floaters gives the job exclusive priority. Exclusive priority jobs are listed in red on the job list.  If any jobs have exclusive priority the game will assign all workers to exclusive priority jobs. If you have more than one job with exclusive priority the game will divide its workers only among exclusive priority jobs.
 * The red "X" icon cancels the job in question.

Tone Flow
Tone Flow is the most important concept in the game. If you do not manage your tone flow properly you can find yourself unable to build buildings or recruit more workers. This can paralyze your progress.

The basic concept of tone flow is that you have incoming tone flow which is consumed by your buildings and population. If you have any extra, this surplus tone you can build new buildings and recruit more workers.

You can find out how much surplus flow you have available by looking at the text in the top left corner of the tribal center interface. There will be white text that says "Surplus Flow" and a number. If your surplus flow is one or more you can build new buildings. If your surplus flow is more than four, you will periodically spawn more workers over the tone pool outside your tribal center. The higher your surplus the faster these workers will spawn.

Each member of your population (both workers and warriors) and each active resource building uses one unit of tone flow. So as your population increases and you build more buildings your surplus decreases. It is very important to find more sources of tone flow.

Tone flow is provided by primed tone pools. You begin the game with one such pool next to your tribal center. If you lose control of this pool you lose the game. It provides 20 tone flow, but since you start with four workers your surplus flow starts at 16. Your first overall goal in the game is to claim more tone pools so you can support more population and buildings.

In order to claim a new tone pool you must find another pool and then prime it by connecting it to active tone either with tone spreaders or with a bridge key. Each new tone pool you claim will provide more tone flow, though the amount of tone flow from a new pool decreases the more tone pools you control. When you find a new tone pool it is always inactive; you can tell the difference between inactive and primed tone pools because the primed ones froth and splash while the inactive ones are still.

The first few tone pools you find may be unoccupied but most tone pools in the universe will be occupied by Leviathan Spawners. These must be destroyed to access the tone pool underneath. Periodically spores will float towards your tone pools and try to occupy them. If they succeed your tone pool looks like it is filled with mud and will no longer provide you with tone. Eventually it will turn into a spawner. You can free the tone pool before it turns into a spawner by attacking the growth in the pool.

Once primed a tone pool will remain primed unless it is taken over by the leviathan, even if it is no longer connected to other sources of tone by tone spreaders. However, if it is taken over by the Leviathan and you subsequently release it, it will be inactive if you don't have tone spreaders connecting it to your other tone.

If you find that you are running out of surplus tone, you can increase this amount by:
 * Deactivating a resource producing building. If you click on a building the building management interface will open and there is a toggle switch to the right of the picture of the building.  Clicking this switch will turn off the building; it will no longer create resources or consume tone.
 * Destroying tone spreaders. Use your warriors and select the "attack building" command.  If warriors are selected, simply right-clicking on the building will only direct your warriors to move there.  Since primed pools are self-sustaining you can destroy the tone spreaders that activated it, though you may need to rebuild those spreaders if the Leviathan conquers the pool.  Losing buildings does not affect your score.
 * Priming a new tone pool.