Tutorial:Pooled Resource Unit Costs

Let's Talk Pooled Resources

Pooled Resources are an important part of what makes any faction unique. The problem is they're often not used for very much. This tutorial aims to fix that by explaining how to use Pooled Resources as costs using units in the main recruitment panel as an example. The theory used here can be applied to a range of other things such as RoRs, lords, agents, buildings, and technologies or anything you want really.

This guide is also my submission for Mod Jam #7, along with an example mod for making units cost Pooled Resources in the main recruitment panel.

The Theory

If you're not familiar with Lua UI modding then the UI Tutorial Series is a good place to start as this guide won't explain everything about UI, just the main things we need to know which are:

1. Building the UI: This involves finding existing UI components, copying them, and repositioning them.
2. Handling the UI: This involves handling refreshes to the UI, making sure UI components are enabled / disabled, and have the right text, tooltips, and icons at the right time.
3. Handling the Cost: This involves taking away / returning the Pooled Resource to the player in a multiplayer-friendly way.

Some things I would also highly recommend you use are Groove Wizard's Visual Studio development environment for scripting, Groove's Modding Development Tools: Lua Console, and Groove's scripting documentation (yes this man is a machine).