1) name: the name of your commodity is the name that it will be referred to in game.
-im going to write: 'Combat Lobster' because: that's what i want this to be called.
2) id: the id is how the game will remember your commodity. -not- to be confused with the 'name' of your commodity
also note: if your save game has a item of this ID, and you change it (and no other mod or the base game has a commodity of this ID), your game will crash. so please remember that.
-im going to write: 'LobsterCombatant_CombatLobster' because: I want to follow this equation: modName_commodityName, to avoid other mods from having the same commodityID as me (wish would cause my lobster to override theres, or theres to override mine)
3) demand class: is what the economy will see this commodity as. this should always be equal to a commodity 'id', unless you want the game to pretend its a different commodity (for the sake of economy simulation) (example: 'Volturnian Lobster' is in the 'luxury_goods' demand class, so it acts like a 'luxury_goods' for the sake of economy simulation)
-im going to write: 'LobsterCombatant_CombatLobster' because: I want my commodity to act as its own thing
4) base price: this is how mush it generally costs to buy this item from markets (before tariffs)
-im going to write: '250' because: that's how many credits i want one to cost
5) export value: this is how many credits a single unit of demand (on a colony) adds to the global market share for this commodity
-im going to write: '500' because: I want my lobsters to be somewhat valuable.
6) price variability: this is how mush the price of this commodity in markets can vary depending on demand. so setting it to 3 means the commodity can be 3X the price, or 1/3 the price. at the most extreme.
note: im not 100% sure on my equation there, but i do know that this is what this does
-im going to write: '3' because: that's what every other commodity in the game has (that can be brought or sold), and i see no reason to have this cost a different amount
7) utility: How much demand one unit of the commodity satisfies. it is recommended to keep this at 1 most of the time.
-im going to write: '1' because: I see no point in setting it to anything else

origin: probably does nothing, but at some point there was an idea for having exotic commodities that cost more further away from their "origin", still, it might do nothing
-im going to leave this blank because I see no reason to use this
9) tags: a 'tag' is something that can be attached to a commodity, and can be read by the game or mods. you can add as many tags to a given commodity as you like, but a tag can change a lot of things, so make sure you know what your doing first
-im going to write: 'military' because: a combat lobster should be 'military'.
tags that exsist, and there functions, but only as far as i can tell. I miss things sometimes:
Spoiler
1) military
the military tag does a few things:
1) it makes the commodity show up in the military market
2) it prevents you from trading it in the milatary sub market unless your relations are at least 'FAVORABLE'
3) makes it so selling this commodity on a market has a increased 'impact' (although, im unsure of what this means)
2) expensive
-some commodity based missions will prefer to give you missions based around commodity's with this tag
3) crew
-excludes this commodity from participating in procurement missions.
might be used latter for something else, but its not yet.
4) personnel
governs if a commodity uses personnel slots, but only in NPC trade fleets??? (so it effectively does nothing)
5) marines
-excludes this commodity from participating in procurement missions.
might be used latter for something else, but its not yet.
6) food
-probably unused for now. might be used latter
7) medical
-this is used in getting who you contact in a trade mission. (CITIZEN, or POST_MEDICAL_SUPPLIER. depending on i dont know.)

luxury
-this is used in getting who you contact in a trade mission. (civ or pirate, depending on if this commodity is legal or not)
9) exotic
-probably unused for now. might be used latter
10) meta
-prevents you from raiding this item from markets?
11) nonecon
-prevents you from raiding this item from markets?
-excludes this commodity from participating in procurement missions.
-prevents you from putting this item into your personal stockpile on your own markets.
12) ai_core
-lets you assing this item to the AI core sloot at a market
13) no_loss_from_combat
-prevents the player from losing this item
14)no_drop
-I think this prevents you from getting this item? I don't know though, because i could not find the code for it.
15)nosell
-this tag exists in the code, but i cant find were its used. It might be unused
10) stack size: does nothing anymore. used to determine stack size
-im going to write: '0' because: it is no longer used
11) cargo space: the amount of cargo space each item takes in your cargo bay.
-im going to write: '1' because: I think that's fine (you can set it to any number you like though. like 0.01. or 9001 or 0. whatever you think will be fun)
12) icon: the path to the sprite that this commodity uses.
-im going to write: 'graphics/icons/cargo/LobsterCombatant_LobsterFighter.png' because: that's the path to my file (and the name of my image)
-if you put your file somewhere else in your mods folder, you will need to write a path to it. and if your image has a different name then mine (and it should) you will need to write that name instead of my images name
13) sound id: the sound this commodity plays when you pick it up
-im going to write: 'ui_cargo_volturn_lobster because': that's the lobster sound, and i want to use it (feel free to copy any sound from the commodities.csv file)
14) sound id drop: the sound this commodity plays when you put it down.
-im going to write: 'ui_cargo_volturn_lobster_drop' because: that's the lobster sound, and i want to use it (feel free to copy any sound from the commodities.csv file)
15) order: the order this item will try to be sorted into when you sort your cargo bay. lower numbers means it will be more towards the top right, lower numbers mean it will be more towards the bottom left.
-im going to write: '3' because: I felt like that was a good number? you can mess with this and see were you want your item to end up in your lists
16) economyTier: The order in which the economy simulation runs. Stuff lower on the production ladder (e.g. ore) needs to have a lower tier than the stuff that's made from it (i.e. metals) to have the simulation stabilize more quickly.
-im going to write: '1' because: I plan to have this commodity require nothing to be produce
17) econUnitOrigUnused: this does nothing right now
-im going to write: '0' because: this does nothing
18) econUnit: effects how many units of this commodity are available at a market (per output)
-im going to write: '150' because: I like the number
19) baseRaidDanger: how mush more dangerous this commodity is to raid compared to others. can be left blank for LOW danger, i think.
the accepted values of this are:
MEDIUM
HIGH
EXTREME
-im going to write: 'MEDIUM' because: the lobsters might fight back. (for most things, you should leave this blank.)
20) eU * base value: this is quite literally, what you put in the 'econUnit' slot * by what you put in the 'base price' slot
-im going to write: '37500' because: 150 * 250 = 37500 (and 150 and 250 is what i put in the 'econUnit' and 'base price' slot, respectively)
21) iconWidthMulti: how close together your icons are on the market screen. smaller values are good for icons that are more tall then wide. higher values can sometimes be useful for wider commodity.
-im going to write: '1' because: I copied the 'Volturnian Lobster' stats for this.
22) plugin: this does nothing, as far as i can tell.
-im going to leave this blank because: this does nothing
23) desc: this does nothing. a forgotten bit of data from a lost age. if you want to add descriptions to your items, i will show you soon.
-im going to leave this blank because: this does nothing