Managing transmutation

Transmutation is the conversion of one resource into another resource. This approach is used to automatically fill a deficit in demand. The most common transmutation is converting finances (money) into a limiting resource such as purchasing a livestock feed supplement when needed. But transmutation need not be restricted to the classic finance example, but may include multiple other resources. For example, an amount of labour and equipment (tractor) may convert pasture in the common land into pasture in the animal food store to feed cattle.

Transmutation is only used to manage resources that are in deficit. To perform a similar task with included costs and labour as an activity you can use the Buy resource activity or Process resource activity.

Accessing transmutation

Whether a resource can undergo transmutation when needed is determined by adding a Transmutation component beneath the Resource type in the resources section of the user simulation tree. There are two components required to set up a transmutation, the transmutation component and a list of transmutation costs.

Whenever an activity needs resources, a list of resource requests are created with each request having a flag to determine if transmutation is allowed. This means an activity can specify if transmutation is possible regardless of whether a transmutation object is attached to the needed resource.

During the process of obtaining all resources for an activity, transmutation will be attempted for any resource with a shortfall where transmutation is enabled. Transmutation is handled by the Resource holder component that holds all available resources. This is required so that both transmutation resources and activity resources can be accounted for during resource allocation.