A market is a place to buy and sell things. In our game world the player can buy and sell from the list of item types shown below. Currency itself is also used to fund manufacturing, pay employees, hire hunters, pay off fines, and can be used to boost population status such as to fund population incentives.
Markets are the hubs where these transactions take place and may be accessed through the player’s HUD at any time. Markets exist in several forms, including specific markets for each of the subsystems where purchasing is enabled - such as buying structures when managing stellar assets as well as general markets which list a variety of items such as the ‘Open Market’ ‘Black Market’ and various Company and Faction markets.
Market Items[]
- Ships
As the name suggests these are complete ships ready for use
- Ship modifications
These are add-ons for ships that adjust stats and capabilities
- Weapons
These are well weapons ... used on ships and combat structures
- Weapon mount modifications
These are modifications applied directly to mount points of structures and ships to modify capability such as to split or group allowing larger or smaller weapons to be fitted.
- Ammunition modifications
These are modifications applied to weapons and adjust fire power, rate of fire and other factors of the munitions such a yield.
- Ship sections
These are ship parts that can be assembled to make a complete ship
- Civil structures
These structures provide a continuous bonus to civil aspects of a population
- Command structures
These structures provide a continuous bonus to population efficiencies and max rates
- Mission structures
These structures exist in mission space e.g. space stations, defense platforms, etc. and can generally be equipped with weapons.
- Resource structures
These structures produce or refine various resources
- Drones
These can be equipped by ships and function like mobile weapon platforms swarming around the ship
- Luxury items
These items provide bonuses to population happiness ... or penalties and can greatly improve or degrade efficiency rates, prevent rebellion or incite them.
Pricing and Access[]
Market item value is determined by the items commonality, the particular markets access to items of the commonality and the base value of the item itself. The same item then may have different costs on different markets and some markets do not trade at all in particular items e.g. slave luxury items are forbidden on the open market but of course they are common on the black market. Conversely, more mundane items like civil structures are more pricey on the black market while the open market has a surplus of them.
Player access to markets is controlled by their status among the various systems; for example a player with a very high infamy e.g. criminal rating may not be able to use the open market or many faction markets (even if they have a good status with the faction) in game context - this is due to a wanted level which makes merchants unwilling to trade with the player. Another example - a squeaky clean player may find the black market sparsely populated as dealers are untrusting of law abiding peoples.