Cargo rework

Right now cargo prices don’t make any sense. On Tatooine, for example, water costs around 5 times as much as the same volume of precious metals.  This works because water’s in high demand there and we want people delivering water to Tatooine, but we’re missing a lot of RP opportunities with this simplistic system. Here’s my idea.

Each type of cargo has a base market value, set by the imms. Precious metals might be set at 100 (1.3 mil to fill a 13k cargo ship), while water would be cheap. Then each planet has a supply/demand value for the commodity, adding or subtracting from the base value.

If a planet produces water the supply steadily increases, and prices slowly drop until someone buys it as cargo.

An importer like Tatooine would pay an increasing premium for water as past deliveries are used up, while prices go down with each shipment. If players don’t deliver enough to sustain the planet, prices skyrocket. If a shortage gets bad enough, popular support falls as people start dying of thirst. GNI would of course make a big deal of it, ensuring that someone comes to the rescue and makes a fair profit.

This would impact pirates and government clans, since now there would be an incentive to steal valuable cargo like spice precious metals. Instead of arbitrarily setting prices, clan leaders would be able to implement general policies for commodities.

Prohibition – Higher prices, the clan has to RP actually banning the product. There could be a smuggler skill required to buy and sell this cargo without alerting the governing clan. Some clans might ban spice, bad guys could use this on food to starve the citizens.
Subsidized production – The clan spends some credits to increase supply by a percentage on the planet.
Consumption tax – Lowers demand slightly, generates some revenue as the cargo is used up (Sin tax on spice, water rationing, etc)
Import/export tariff – Generates revenue, makes cargo running less profitable. Does nothing to a planet’s production and demand.

There’s a lot of potential here, and it would fit in well with the leadplanet changes that are being planned.

I like the idea of staff-set prices on goods as opposed to planetleader prices.  Players should be encouraged to travel to far off sectors to sell their goods.

Amusingly enough, LOTJ already had most of this system before it was turned into what it is now.

Yes, please! This seems..interesting to implement and good to do RP wise.

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