Trade System (v4.x)

Trade System (V4.x)

Important Basic points

Every civilian vessel in v4.x will be owned by a Shipping Line. Each Empire will have one or more Shipping Lines that carry out colonization and trade. Each Shipping Line will be generated and controlled by the program and new Shipping Lines may appear as the game progresses

Trade Goods

There are seventeen different Civilian Trade Goods. Each planet of more than one million pop will both supply and demand eight basic goods. When it reaches reach ten million pop, six luxury goods will be added as well as three illegal goods.

Basic Goods

Consumer Electronics

Civilian Transport

Textiles

Chemicals

Machinery

Pharmaceuticals

Plastics

Construction Materials

Luxury Goods

Precious Metals,

Spices

Luxury Foods

Wines

Furs

Entertainment Products

Illegal Goods

Weapons

Slaves

Recreational Drugs

Supply and Demand

The basic demand for each good will be the size of the population. Some populations will produce more than they need of each good and some will produce less. Pops will tend to specialise so they will produce anything from 0-100% of about three-quarters of the goods and produce anything up to 400% of the others. This will vary from pop to pop and some will be net importers overall, as well as for individual goods, and some will be net exporters. This has nothing to do with trans-newtonian minerals, which are mainly for military applications, so some pops with little TN mineral resources could actually be major exporters of civilian goods. Given an equal spread of probability there will be about the same amount of supply and demand across the galaxy, although within a sample of a few pops there may be considerable excesses and shortages.

Civilian freighters will look for opportunities to move different types of goods from planets with a surplus of a particular trade good to those with a shortage. When the freighter arrives, it will generate wealth for the shipping line and wealth for the parent government in the form of tax on both the shipping company and on the original (invisible) company that produced the goods. With a trade treaty in place, goods can be shipped between pops of different races, which will create more opportunities for trade. A trade treaty will also allow foreign shipping lines to move goods within your own Empire or between your Empire and another. In this case the foreign government will get the tax revenue from the shipping company.

Final Considerations

All of the above will take place automatically. You will see the shipping traffic but you won't have to get involved apart from possibly building jump gates to facilitate the trade and protecting the common trade routes from pirates and raiders. Trade routes in this context are not planned in the v4.x sense. They will naturally be formed by civilian traffic as it identifies trading opportunities.

The existing Trade Point Creation tech line will be replaced with some type of Increased Civilian Trade tech line. This will boost both the demand and production of trade goods. So with a twenty percent increase, pops will demand goods equal to 120% of the population and all trade good production will increase by 20%. This will increase the amount of trading opportunities and generate more revenue for the shipping companies and the government.

As Shipping Lines make money, they will keep some for their owners and shareholders and spend the rest on building new civilian ships. Therefore all new civilian shipping will be paid for by the wealth generated by the existing civilian shipping (plus one or two by the Shipping Lines' startup capital). I will add a window where you can monitor the holdings and profit of shipping lines within your Empire if you wish to. This is not something you need to monitor but some players will be interested to have that information.