I've been processing a lot of possibilities for the "stress-based" base construction game. The idea is that you almost never have a specific amount of anything: instead, everything is measured in terms of how much stress you're putting on the supply.
Let me pitch you a tutorial stage: a shipwreck. You wash up on land with a few survivors and all you can do is try to gather supplies from the beach and the tropical jungle.
To do this, you create a stockpile and assign folks to it.