So I'm really struggling with Supplies averaging 130-160. I've seen Fuel go as low as 40-60 but most markets have it in the 125-150 ballpark. I saw earlier in the thread this is caused by faction mods adding markets and thus creating demand, which makes sense but the only one I'm running is Imperium. Does Starsector have supply elasticity in its economic model? Shouldn't markets which have the inputs and facilities to produce Supplies attempt to produce more when prices are high? Also, it feels like the necessities are getting more expensive, but that might just be me.
Is there any way to fix the high price conditions through gameplay--attempting to lift a siege, killing Pirates, supplying inputs myself, etc.--or is my only recourse to start a new game and try Save Transfer?
I think the SS economy is made to be stable, mostly to "force" the player to smuggle, fight and take advantage of events rather than trade
To achieve this, well, it is complicated, stuff is produced even without materials or demand, goods are teleported and stuff like that, let's just say that if you attempted to do it IRL you'll end up with massive economic crashes, continent-wide civil wars, WW3, 4 and 5 or all of the above.
I get how it's supposed to work, but it looks like the model doesn't hold up under the joint stresses of new markets and aggressive factions. There's a thread in the Modding forum (
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=10157.0) where Alex shares some detail on his rationale for the economy. The model is designed to ensure changes in endogenous variables--stockpiles, prices, import and export flows, etc--iterate towards a long-run equilibrium under classic 'perfect market' conditions (absence of transaction costs, access to commodities at any location, universal price discovery, etc). Obviously the player doesn't benefit from these assumptions, so exogenous factors are introduced to temporarily "shock" locations away from the market-clearing price. A modder mentioned in the thread that production facilities can't be created or destroyed, nor do production
targets ever change; I'd thought these might be allowed to fluctuate to allow increased production of goods where shortages have driven prices higher. In economic terms, structural supply and demand are perfectly inelastic with respect to price.*
That's kinda the problem. Alex
does say explicitly that a shortage of raw materials will result in reduced output; food shortages also reduce output for the affected location. The new SS+ pirate faction, along with general faction warfare, has my map screen showing most systems with 3+ ongoing trade disruptions at any given time. As big Supply producers export less (or even become importers), location trade balances adjust to redistribute remaining surpluses. This works fine in vanilla, and probably for any combination of mods whose location configurations maintain a systemwide aggregate excess of Supplies. If there isn't enough production, locations raise their bids in an attempt to meet more of their demand. With not enough to go around, bids get continually pushed up. As far as I can tell there's no built-in relief to nudge prices back down to normal--going the other way, a spoilage mechanic prevents large stockpiles from sending prices too low.
The end result so far has been that for just SS+ and Imperium, average Supply prices are now north of 150 and seem to be growing across the board as time goes on.
*In reality, not a thing--other than every Econ 101 professor's favorite trick question, since the supply and demand curves are the same vertical line at Qe
