Commodity Prices

This page tries to collect what we want, and where we want to go with the next version of economy system in pioneer. An ideal case would be to have a dynamical economy. Perhaps a smaller version of the Star citizen economy or similar.

Other sources of interest might be: Interstellar gamedev - Economic Simulation

What affects a market, and how?

This section aims at basically brainstorming all ideas for how markets and their commodities should be affected for the future new market system in pioneer. The prices will fluctuate in time with prices going down if a good becomes abundant, and becoming expensive if in demand. This will be modeled through a set of coupled ordinary differential equations (if there isn't some cheaper way to do it?).

This section aims at basically brainstorming all ideas for how markets and their commodities should be affected for the future new market system in pioneer. The prices will fluctuate in time with prices going down if a good becomes abundant, and becoming expensive if in demand. This will be modeled through a set of coupled ordinary differential equations (if there isn't some cheaper way to do it?).

• Every planet / station? produces and consumes goods, proportional to population, and other factors, like listed here below.

• Production and consumption rates depend on what kind of planet/station, population size, what other goods are available, etc. E.g if there is a shortage of grain, then price of grapes and other food goes up.

• Price is relative to the amount offered for sale

• This price drives AI/NPC to trade, taking goods from where it is cheap (abundant) to where it is in need. -> model through stochastic differential equations?

• Goods are consumed when producing other stuff?

• Is production seasonal? The trade between northern and southern hemisphere (if axis tilted), seems to not at all be worth it, and break space travel.

• Government? Will communist government lead to flat prices, due to planned economy? Or will they fluctuate more due to not being in sync with true demand? what effect will the different systems have?

• • Democracy
  • Corporate
  • dictatorship
  • anarchy

• Only trade with closest neighbors. Could be done like so: expand a sphere out from the system until with radius r_min, and if found inhabited systems are below some value (10?) keep expanding sphere until r_max. This generates a list of closest neighbors for all systems.

• On the star map, one can see which systems a market is trading with? Why would this be useful? It would be all within some distance.

• In the market (if player subscribes?) we show for the selected commodity its price over the past months? Zoom in/ out from 1 to 3 months? Show system index average, "galaxy index" (based on nearby systems or all systems in the game?).

• How will the dynamics from the market lead to ships with those actual items coming in? Somehow c++ engine must tell TradeShip.lua how many shipped units of each item is being sold / bought / shipped?

• If I kill off trade ships carrying something, then I should be able to create a shortage of some goods. Mission: Drive up price of grain: attack all grain carrying ships?

• Will a system like Mu Herculis, with very far between jump point and station, have much higher prices for everything, making the long transit worth while

• Faction specific: Distance to faction home world? Trading over faction borders?

• Tech level?

General

Many goods are traded, ranging from simple H2O (water), all the way up to farming equipment. In order to keep exchanges simple, a standard unit is used for trading; the metric ton. There are a total of 31 commodities used on the standard stock market, encompassing all major aspects of life.

Goods Descriptions

Hydrogen

Average Price: 1 Credit

Used as fuel for hyperdrives and propellant for starships, Hydrogen is an extremely important element. Fortunately, it is also abundant, even though storing it isn't trivial. It is often among the cheapest commodities on the stock market. Starports have thousands of tons in stock at any given time.

Liquid Oxygen

Average Price: 1.5 Credits

Liquid Oxygen has many purposes. Most common uses are in medical and industrial applications, though it is sometimes used for waste treatment. It is very affordable, as oxygen is easy to obtain.

Water

Average Price: 1.2 Credits

Basic requirement for life, as we know it. An often overlooked commodity, water is needed wherever humanity roams. As such, the vast majority of off-world colonies import water from comets or planets like Earth. Water is also commonly used for Hydrogen and Lyquid Oxigen production.

Carbon Ore

Average Price: 5 Credits

Another basic building of life as we know it. Used in almost everything from plastics to alloys and sometimes even power production, carbon is another inexpensive, but important commodity. As such, almost all industrial settlements import carbon ore.

Metal Ore

Average Price: 3 Credits

Many colonies mine metals, and export it to industrial systems. Used in everything from small toys to spaceships, metal is one of the most significant resources in the galaxy.

Metal Alloys

Average Price: 8 Credits

After metal ore is extracted, it is processed and ends up as various alloys. An alloy is a mix of metals, rather than a single element. To this end, almost all consumer metals are actually alloys, as pure metals are often impractical.

Precious Metals

Average Price: 180 Credits

Precious metals are, predictably, metals with considerable economic value. This often includes gold, silver, platinum, rare earths, and many others. Generally speaking, these metals are less abundant and harder to mine. Certain ones, such as gold and silicon, or rare earths are crucial for the construction of computers and other electronics.

Plastics

Average Price: 12 Credits

Synthetical and semi-synthetical materials that are used in everything from everyday things to spaceship construction. They are relatively easy to use in manufacture, versatile and cheap to make, thus an important part of our civilization.

Fruits and Vegetables

Average Price: 12 Credits

While there are lots of sysnthetic alternatives, real fruits and vegetables are still an important part of our cuisine and nutrition. Grown on agricultural worlds or as part of the life support of habitats, and then exported to systems in which growing plants is not feasible.

Animal Meat

Average Price: 18 Credits

A major point of controversy, meat is the flesh of animals. In this day and age, with synthetic meat readily available, most people believe that animals should not be killed. While meats are illegal in most core systems, live animals and their meat is an important part of the lives of people on less developed worlds.

Live Animals

Average Price: 32 Credits

Partly due to humanistic, economic and ecologic reasons, animal rearing and trade is strictly regulated, even illegal in most core systems. Going outward, livestock shifts to be a more important part of the lives and livelyhood of the people, both as a source of nutrition and a beast of burden. Zooz and reservations also contribute to the trade of animals around the galaxy, usually under state regulations. Not to mention illegal hunting grounds and zoos.

Liquor

Average Price: 8 Credits

Most towns have some local brew that outsiders can't stomach. These are alcoholic beverages, often served in bars. Some systems, however, feel that alcohol is unnecessary, and have banned it, on grounds that is simply decreases a person's ability to perform. Regardless of the law, a shot of scotch is almost always available on the black market, for a price.

Grain

Average Price: 10 Credits

Grain is the backbone of many peoples' diets. It is used in farming, to feed animals, and as a cheap supplement to synthetic foods. Grain is also used in many other foods, such as oatmeals and baked goods. Most cultures eat at least some grains, as there is an almost endless variety, meaning something will probably grow even in the most inhospitable soil.

Slaves

Average Price: 232 Credits

It is almost universally accepted that slavery is immoral, and as such, usually draws the strictest punishment. But despite the best efforts of humanitarians, slavery is still prevalent, even in developed parts, under the radar of authorities.

Textiles

Average Price: 8.5 Credits

Textiles are simple fabric, woven from either sysnthetic, plant or animal derived yarn. Usually produced by robots in large factories, it is still possible to find the occasional weaver who makes their own textiles.

Fertilizer

Average Price: 4 Credits

Fertilizer is used in the growing of crops. Growing plants in specialized fertilizer yields far better results than planting in plain dirt. The downside, of course, is that fertilizer costs quite a bit for a large lot of land, where dirt is free. Not to mention the possible ecological impacts.

Medicines

Average Price: 22 Credits

Derived from natural sources, or sysnthetised artificially, medicines are needed everywhere humans go. From curing the common cold to combat the adverse effects of prolonged space travel, medicines are essential to the prosperity of humanity. Carefully watched by customs agents, as it is not uncommon to disguise narcotics as medical drugs.

Consumer Goods

Average Price: 140 Credits

The term consumer goods covers a very wide range of products. Generally speaking, things that are not used to manufacture something, but used and consumed by the general public. Everything from toothbrushes to kitchen appliances to cars.

Computers

Average Price: 80 Credits

For over one thousand years, computers have developed. From glorified calculators they have matured to entertainment and processing systems and became the main cornerstone of spacefaring humanity, speedily crunching the immense amount of calculations needed for it. 

Rubbish

Average Price: -0.1 Credits

Rubbish is a general term for unwanted waste. This can be industrial waste, household garbage, or any number of other junk items. Because dumps on the surface of planets are unappealing and doesn't play well with the environment, most waste are processed, recycled or sent to starports for transport off-world. Dumping garbage in inhabited systems is almost always illegal. Starports usually charge a fee for waste disposal.

Radioactive Waste

Average Price: -3.5 Credits

Created by nuclear power plants, nuclear reactors, nuclear warheads, and military hyperdrives, nuclear wastes are the hardest and most dangerous to transport and to dispose. For this reason, most starports induce treatment charges. Dumping nuclear waste is one of the severest offenses.

Narcotics

Average Price: 157 Credits

Natural or sysnthetic substances that alter the state of mind and body in a way or other. A fenomenon as old as humanity both for recreational and medical use. Usually unhelathy, addicting, even straight up health hazard, hence most systems with a reasonable government outlawed the trading and usage of most narcotics and strictly control the remainder.

Nerve Gas

Average Price: 265 Credits

Nerve gas is almost always illegal, for good reason. It is generally accepted to be a weapon of mass destruction, meaning that not even the military in most systems has access to it.

Military Fuel

Average Price: 60 Credits

Military fuel has the same practical use of Hydrogen, except that it is used exclusively in military drives, while hydrogen is used in normal consumer hyperdrives. These drives produce nuclear waste during operation, which must be disposed of. Because of this, some governments have banned the use of military drives and fuel. Due to its synthetic nature, military fuel is also much more expensive and less common than hydrogen or water.

Robots

Average Price: 63 Credits

Robots are often imported into industrial and mining systems, due to their ability to easily perform tasks that would be too difficult, tedious, or unsafe for human workers.

Hand Weapons

Average Price: 124 Credits

Hand weapons are as old as humanity, one can argue they were always an important part of our civilization. It is unusual to find a space trader in a far-out system without some sort of small side-arm. Many governments, however, have decided that weapons have no practical use, and only serve to increase violence, thus strictly control their trade and possession.

Air Processors

Average Price: 20 Credits

Where there are humans, there is a need for air. Very few worlds, however, come stocked with just the right mixture, and so it is necessary to process the existing air and make it ready for human use. Thus, many companies produce various types of air processors, capable of turning even the most hostile atmospheres into a workable environment. It's worth noting that air processors are not terraformers. They only work inside of small, closed facilities.

Farm Machinery

Average Price: 11 Credits

Although rare, it is still possible to catch the occasional farmer with an ox-driven plow. But in almost any place where is agricultire, small and large machines are used in the cultivation of the land, be it the hydroponics of an underground habitat or the endless fields of a garden world.

Mining Machinery

Average Price: 12 Credits

In a similar fashion to farming, mining is made far easier through the use of machines. These machines help miners in locating and retrieving various ores, and then transporting them to processing facilities and/or starports.

Battle Weapons

Average Price: 220 Credits

Any kind of military-grade weapon would fall under this label. Anything from a grenade or machine gun, to a surface-air-missile (SAM) launcher. Trading them is a governmental monopoly almost everywhere, as it is generally considered reasonable that only the military needs access to weapons of this magnitude. On the black market, however, these can often fetch a hefty sum of money.

Industrial Machinery

Average Price: 13 Credits

Regardless of the industry, almost everything produced comes from a large factory of some sort. In these factories, there are often many machines busily working to create goods. Many systems import these, as they need certain experties to develop and build and it is easier to lean on that instead of making them from scratch.