Industrial Commodities System

Background

Currently, AI bases purchase any non-commodity item at reduced rate, unless its server value is above a certain amount.  Players have been using this mechanic to convert unlimited quantities of raw materials such as Metals into credits.  The most popular conversion is through Station Extension Y’s, which net 17.435 credits per Metals when built by the thousand.  This project expands the idea of converting resources into credits by creating similar options for all basic commodities, not just Metals.  It also makes the whole system more natively supported by game mechanics by introducing a proper player-driven economy.  Finally, it creates new possibilities for trading by encouraging players to ship resources beyond team territory and seek out arbitrage opportunities between AI bases.

Overview

We have created seven new lines of manufactured commodities that are all produced by base-equipped factories.  Like standard commodities, these items can be bought and sold by AI and trade slaves and appear in the same trading tab.  The lowest tier of each theme is manufactured from a tier 0 resource such as Metals.  Higher tier manufactured commodities are constructed from higher tier extracted resources such as Plasma Crystals or Adamantium.  Each AI base has a theme that goes with one of the lines of commodities, and will only trade in manufactured commodities of that theme.  AI bases will consume their supply of commodities over time in order to balance the total number of credits created per day.

Details

The average value of the new commodities is balanced to be comparable to the exchange rate for Metals that is obtained in current mechanics.  Resources that extract slower than Metals are valued proportionally more.  Higher-tier commodities are produced from multiple lower-tier commodities in addition to high-tier resources.  For example:

• Steel Girders (1000 Metals): average value 20,000
• Adamantium Reinforced Girders (1,000,000 Metals, 50 Titanium, 5 Laconia, 1 Adamantium): average value 155,000,000
• Sentient Chatbots (500 Silicon): average value 15,000
• Overclocked Chatbots (100,000 Silicon, 300 Psion Icicles, 5 Plasma Crystals): average value 20,500,000

Actual prices will range between 50% and 200% of the average value depending on AI base supply levels.  Since AI bases will steadily consume their supply of each commodity, it will be possible to fully automate the process with trade slaves.  Of course, if too many players attempt to route their manufactured commodities to a single AI base, the market will saturate and someone will have to ship goods to another base instead.  We want AI bases to gobble up plenty of resources, but we don’t want them to be infinite resource sinks either.  In order to get the balance right on this, we have done a careful review of AI base placement in the universe generation code, and will adjust pricing and consumption rates on an ongoing basis if the first draft doesn’t get the balance right.

Important notes

We are planning to add the manufactured commodities and associated factories to the game before the end of the universe on test server so players can get a head start on figuring out the new system. Also, along with the introduction of the new manufacturing economy next universe, AI bases will no longer buy items that have been built from blueprint.  The code governing AI base purchases is only intended to allow players to sell unwanted loot such as augmenters and tweaks.  There will no longer be any reason to build an item just for the purpose of selling it to an AI base, so that functionality will be removed.  We are committed to replacing that old system with something that is not only comparable in economic reward, but also truer to the free market principles of the game and more rewarding to industrialists and traders alike.  We look forward to player feedback when the new economy goes live so that we can achieve that goal as soon as possible.