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Pools (P) store Resources and are the building blocks of Machinations. They can receive Resources and send them forward to other Nodes.

Select a Pool to adjust its properties, such as Label, Trigger, Action, Resources, Overflow, Capacity, Style, and Position, in the Properties panel on the right.

Properties

Label

Use the Label field in the Properties panel to give your Pool a name. Once your diagram becomes more complex, it will make finding a specific component much easier. The label will also be used when adding a node to the chart.

Trigger

As with any other Node in a Machinations diagram, Pools can be passive, interactive, automatic (default setting), or enabling (once before a diagram starts), depending on its Trigger Mode.

Action

Pools can be set to either Push or Pull Resources, depending on what action it needs to take once activated. You can learn more about these settings in the Pushing and Pulling Resources article.

Resources

Resource amount

In the Resources field, you can set the number of Resources with which a Pool starts. The default is 0. A Pool cannot have negative values except when influenced by a State Connection. If a Pool has a negative value, it cannot lose its resources until it reaches a positive value.

Resource Colour

Machinations uses colour to distinguish between different types of Resources. You may use one of five colours to distinguish your Resources on a diagram.

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A Pool can store more than one type of Resource. This allows you to model compound entities.

Please take a look at the example below.

Overflow

In the Overflow section, you can set what happens to the Resources that are produced and sent toward the Pool after reaching its limit. The receiving Pool can either block the incoming, overflowing Resource or drain it automatically (consume it).

If a resource is drained, it is removed from the economy.

Capacity

Limit

Use the Capacity limit to set how many Resources the Pool can store. The Pool will not be able to accept more Resources above the amount set in the Capacity limit.

Display

Resources stacked in a Pool are, by default, displayed as small black tokens ◉. If there are too many Resources in a Pool to show them as stacks, the tool displays them as numbers instead.

Set the Capacity display to “-1” to always display the Resources as numbers or manually set the limit from which onward Resources are shown as numbers. The default value for this limit is 25.

Show in Chart

Tick the “Show in Chart” option to display the node on the chart. This option is also available in the contextual menu (right-click on the component) to plot the amount of Resources the Pool stores at each Time Step when running a diagram.

When using this option, the Label and Stroke colour of the Node will be used when plotting the values of the Pool on your chart. If no Label or Stroke colour is set, the default settings will be used on the chart (Node type, Stroke colour black).

Values

Fractional Values

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Pools cannot store fractional values. To emulate fractional values, you can express your games’ Resources in sub-units so that

1 sub-unit = 1 Resource

In the Player’s Bank Account example, the value in the account should be expressed in cents.

Negative Values

Pools support negative values but only as the result of a State Connection‘s effect on them.

In the example above, Pool 1 is affected by the number of Resources in Pool 2. Whenever Pool 2 receives a Resource, Pool 1 loses 3 Resources. If Pool 1 has less than 3 Resources, its value becomes negative.

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While a Pool has a negative value, it can only accept Resources. Any other output event will be delayed until the Pool’s value is positive.

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