Trade Anchor DevLog: (Re-)Inventing a Galactic Economy

Introduction

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Core elements of a game deserve the most attention and thought. So for a trading game, I have of course been thinking a lot about trade and economy.

In this devlog, I will elaborate on the complete re-design of trade in Trade Anchor, the why and what it means for gameplay and players.

Interstellar Trade

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Something felt wrong with the goods that I have had in the demo this far. Not that they were bad by themselves, but they didn’t give the game the “this is the far future and FTL travel is real” feeling.

Plus there is something called the the Single Biome Planet Trope.

Looking at the scale in the game, it makes no sense that things like water, biomass or raw metals are traded in interstellar FTL trade. Solar systems in the galaxy will fall fairly neatly into one of only two categories:

1. Systems with habitable worlds worth colonizing
2. Systems with no planets or no habitable planets and thus no colony

Given that we so far found everything we needed to build houses, computers and space ships on just one planet, any solar system worth colonizing is pretty much certain to have all the raw materials needed for a colony. If not on the settled planets than in its asteroids or other planets.

Why would anyone import water, iron ore and similar things from another solar system?

So if I aspire to have a somewhat realistic economy, at least realistic enough to be believable and not fall apart the moment who knows the first thing about economy takes a closer look, I need to think different. There will be a lot of local trade within each solar system, but this is not the game that the player is playing. I need to cut that out from my mental model and focus on what people would import from halfway across the galaxy.

Types of Scarcity

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There are several reasons why we on Earth buy things from halfway across the globe:

1. It is somewhat rare and we can’t get it locally (either not at all or not the amounts we want)
2. We can’t manufacture it locally - we are lacking the technology, industry or other requirements
3. We could manufacture it locally, but due to cheaper labor, raw materials, energy costs or other factors it makes no economic sense to do so - buying from abroad even with shipping is cheaper than making it ourselves.
4. We want it exactly because it is not from here. We value the exotic.

These are the factors that I should use to build my economy. Where No. 1, 2 and 3 are somewhat related. While thinking about this, I came to one key consideration:

A planet rich in raw ore doesn’t ship the ore; it processes it into alloys or metal goods and ships those.

And I think that makes sense. Yes, at the moment on Earth we ship nuts from country A across an ocean to country B to crack and sort them and then ship them again over an ocean to country C to sell them. But on an interstellar scale, assuming FTL travel isn’t very cheap, if we have an abundance of something, we would build the industry to exploit it and send the output of that industry, not the raw materials.

Three Tier Trade Goods

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With some more design and different concepts, I have finally settled on having three types of trade goods, each with a believable reason for being traded across star systems:

The Very Rare

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First, very rare but useful raw materials - materials that are so rare that the majority of star systems don’t have them at all, but which at the same time have a multitude of applications. If a material had only a few uses, the consideration from above would hold true - the few places where it can be found would become industrial centers and export finished goods built around the rare resource. But if it has countless applications, then it becomes more practical to export the raw material than to build up hundreds of different industrial lines.

This category also covers refined materials, where those are the useful form instead of the pure raw resource.

High-Tech Goods

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Since all my different alien races have different tech levels, there are always goods that are useful to people who can’t manufacture them due to lack of technology or science. A telescope is useful to even primitive people. And in the background setting of Trade Anchor, incredibly useful items like hyperdrive cores require higher tech levels to make, but are useful to all space-faring races.

And then there are tech goods that are uncommon not because of the advanced technology they require, but due to sheer scale. Industries that are only profitable at huge scales or that require a massive supply chain. Our current real-world equivalents are the microchips industry and cloud services - if you want to play in those fields, you need to invest a couple billion (Euros or Dollars) just to participate.

This neatly complements with the first type. High-tech goods will often require rare materials, but they are found mostly on the highly industrialized core systems.

Exotic Goods

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The final category are goods that in principle aren’t rare, but where a specific kind has value exactly because it is from somewhere else. I will put four types into the game: Exotic food, textiles, art and flora/fauna.

Unlike the above two types, these goods will have two identifiers - the type and the source. The value is in being different. These are luxury or cultural goods. If a specific fruit is popular, we will simply plant it locally - in green houses if necessary. But if it isn’t popular to the degree where building up an entire industry to create and process it is worth it, then importing it for the few who want it exactly because it is exotic, becomes a business.

The same is true with art. Sure, if human music becomes popular with the Felindar, then some of them will start to make music in the same style and probably can make a business of it. But there will always be a market for authentic human music, made by actual humans. It might be a luxury market, but it will exist the same way oil paintings still sell even though we can print posters for a fraction of the cost.

Short Term Shortages

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And then there is the other category of valuable trade: Sure, under normal circumstances, shipping water or metal ore to other star systems isn’t profitable. Except when it is. A natural disaster, local mismanagement, any kind of causes can lead to a temporary shortage.

To keep the core mechanics simple, Trade Anchor will handle these not on the market, but as transport missions. You might already have seen that button in the “Administration” menu.

Essentially: If system A has a shortage of X, then nearby star systems will offer you an opportunity to ship X there for a fixed profit. That’s good for them (they get what they need) and good for you (guaranteed profit).

This is also where the late-game pieces come into place. Eventually in the game, as the name implies a bit, you will establish permanent branch offices throughout the galaxy. These will build up local connections and find you these opportunities for trade when they are below the “big disaster we need everything we can get” level.

Implementation

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I’m writing this devlog partially as a part of my design process. When writing things down and explaining them to others, they often become more clear in your own mind.

So right now, I have ripped out the old code and started implementing the new. It isn’t yet completely done. I will start with less flavor text - so food will just be “Food (specialtes from system A)” and not something more inventive like “Xyalr Root Stew”. I might add that later but it will need a whole other level of procedural generation.

So it will be a while before it is all finished. But I am very much looking forward to showing you this. It is yet another piece of the puzzle to make Trade Anchor unique and interesting.