Lucky find, some planets develop with abundance, some with extremity, or to destroy ( the Red Star... ) .

We have no reason to assume that the volume of gold on this planet reflects the rarity of gold in the universe overall. It's totally possible the amount of easily accessible gold here is extraordinarily high compared to most planets and is the reason for a gold rush on this one to begin with.

As for the value of gold. New technologies are being constantly developed. Many current technologies demand elements that where "useless" before their invention eg: If someone from the 15th century got hold of a lump of titanium, I doubt he'd have a clue how useful it would be 500 years later.

However, the drastic decrease in the value of gold does suggest that either gold isn't as valuable as a currency anymore, or that there is already a large supply in circulation. (Or it could be that gold is just as valuable as it ever was, but the trade star owns the whole monopoly of weapons trading in the system and can therefore charge any price it likes.)

Another point is that... it might be the only ressource left. The cities have expanded and its inhabitants have burned away every possible ressource. Now they must use gold, the only ressource left, as a currency.

Well, it's obvious that this planet has a particular abundance of gold in comparison to the rest of the universe in general, if that much gold were on planets commonly, no one would particularly care for the gold on this planet.

Remember, the intro suggests that's you've traveled through space to specifically get here of all places, to be a gold miner of all things, because it's a big opportunity, which suggests people need that gold for something; there's a high demand. But I'm bringing into question the source of that particularly high demand in the context of the CC universe.

Gold is fun, and I think that's the only reason. but on a lighter note, there are jokes about this.


In world of warcraft, the draenai, which are from space, say in one of there jokes (/silly) that 'these people have so much slate on this planet, they must be wealthy beyond imagining'. silly russian space-goats.


In other bits, there was a book a while ago, where scientists went to mars, and found out that 80% of mars' crust was PLATINUM. They didn't tell anyone because of numerous things A) if they did, people would mine all the platinum from mars and bring it to earth, which would increase the amount of platinum in circulation, thus decreasing it's value, and B) the amount of MASS removed from mars, and added to the earths, would throw off the balance of the solar system, getting earth in a tug of war between the sun and jupiter.





Realistically, mining out a planet of all of it's gold is a DISASTER waiting to happen.

Look at how much it destroys the maps. think of it on a planetary scale.


A) the planet itself would collapse
B) the planet's gravity would be all screwed up, it'd fall into the sun or something, and that entire system would be off balance
C) There would be more gold in circulation, thus decreasing it's value. hence, 5 OZ of gold for a grenade.



This is a very bad idea, in real life. but its a friggen videogame, so who cares?!

Yeah, that joke expresses exactly what I mean.

And yes, the CC planet is now destined to be destroyed from mining, and the three species it apparently supports, crabs, rock-moss, and grass*, will go extinct, like the giant underground fossils of dinosaur like creatures.

*joking, but from what we've seen, that is the entirety of the living natural biosphere of the planet.

If there's many importers of the gold in small quantities, the mass change won't do much to them.

I don't think those fossils are meant to be taken seriously since there's a metroid fossil in the zombie cave.

I think when he used the term rare, the word that should have been used was scarce. A good can be scarce and yet uncommon or common. The reason the gold is valued is because it is a scarce commodity with a high perceived demand.

The colloquialisms used to emphasize this "universal rarity versus local scarcity" are all spot-on. The Draenei euphemism, specifically, is particularly fitting. Equally as appropriate is the Spice a la the Dune saga. An resource in infinitely high demand, universally rare while locally scarce.

And Candlejack, you're a retard. He was probably making a joke about fossil fuels in the real world--or at least that's how I read it.

Oh, I did mean the big dinosaur-like fossils in the CC maps of missions.
I was just needlessly mentioning that they seem to be an example of an extinct species, in CC.

Unfortunately, prom said vanilla actors won't get much bigger than the dreadnought, so we certainly won't be interacting with living dinos... of that size, in vanilla content. So if the entire planet is being mined out and we won't interact with them, it's kinda assumable they're extinct.

(I actually started trying to make a playable actor from the tutorial map fossil, but I never got the limbs to function correctly, I might work on that further again some day)

About taking the CC fossils seriously...
You can still consider it even if it's obviously just for decoration, and has references in it.
From the backgrounds we know there are columnar rock formations, pacman doesn't negate that.
boulders, the zelda moon or whatever it is
sand, flying spaghetti monster
From the mission maps, we know there used to be massive creatures dwelling on this planet, the metroid doesn't negate that either.

you're forgetting jumpers on that species list azukki. i've wanted to see those things working since i saw the sprite, why havnt they been made yet?
also, reading into the postulation that the planet would collapse on itsellf: in all the known regions of the planet in question, Gold is only found to a depth of 350 pixels, so it wouldnt collapse on itself, but rather lose a debatably significant portion of its crust.

Oh right, them. I too have wanted to see them in-game since seeing the sprites, but with... varying urgency.
I think they're not in the game yet because they may be in a new actor class that actually supports real jumping. Or they may require changes to an existing class.

Although it can actually be achieved by AHumans and maybe ACrabs, (I've made the idle limb path screwy looking jumping before, maybe it can be made to look right and directional for walking limbpaths) it's not currently implemented. (although it was for AHumans, looong ago, instead of jets, if memory serves me well. I think there's even an unimplemented limbpath still on their code)


Also, it may be a regional thing, the maximum gold depth. And for all we know the core and/or mantle could consist of significant portions of gold. Although if that were the case, and planet cracking mining like in dead space or something similar to it were in use, they might just do that instead of all this fuss on the surface, to cut to the chase.

Thats only because the maps aren't any bigger. find a 1280 x 1024 map, that only has 500 pixels worth of sky, the rest underground, and make sure it randomly places gold as any other map vanilla map, and see just how deep the gold goes.

I'm pretty sure skirmishes don't reflect the campaign.

MinDepth = 25
MaxDepth = 350

Although that could be changed.

You guys are having the most ridiculously inane argument ever.

Just making sure you are aware of this.

You guys are being ridiculous. It is a game mechanic. It requires no further examination than this. Perhaps (and I mean this in the most kind way possible) you should direct your creative energies at something more fruitful, meaningful, and substansive--as opposed to arguing over why Data chose "gold" as a resource.

That's like asking Westwood why they chose Tiberium as their resource, or why Frank Herbert invented "Spice." It's just a mechanic. It is not any more important than that.

/discussion