I really like the idea of that image; maybe we can make some? I figure screenshots for it would be better than hand-drawn.
For the economy system, maybe something like this?
- Build mexes on metal spots for metal (picture of mexes)
- Build generators anywhere for energy (picture of solars/windfarm)
- Excess resources are wasted (picture of filled metal bar doing the flashing thing)
- Link mexes and generators (picture of the overdrive grid, with some solars and mexes being connected)
- Excess energy speeds up linked mexes (picture of a brightly glowing overdriven mex)
I don't really like that implementation, but the basic idea seems good.