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So there's kind of a real-world logistics thing, the quantifiable stuff, the item ports and the seats and stuff like that. And then there's kind of a lore score, if you will: the role in the universe as being luxury, the luxury tax, as some people call it?

TL;DRThe eventual goal is for lore-based luxury and measurable value to be the same thing, with prices coming from materials, processes and labor all the way down the economic chain, though that will take a long time.

Jake MuehleEconomy Designer

Yes. The eventual goal is to make those things be one and the same. However, we want the Phoenix Constellation to be a luxury ship and to have really good reasons why it's a luxury ship, like to have all of the things that go into making a shield generator be a better shield generator. That all comes from materials that are mined on various planets, that are so hard to get, that are hazardous to store, that are difficult to process or whatever. And then behind the scenes, those are all put together in such a way, with technology and different manufacturing plants and different manufacturers, that actually translates from the effort that it takes into the value of the thing. So we don't want to just have shield generators where this one's better. Why does it cost more? Because it's better. It's kind of a circular argument. What we want to do is really link that to the entire economic chain, all the way down to the rocks that these things are mined from. We want those to have better qualities that influence and inform the performance of the items and then go into actually being better on those ships. And then when you look at the ship, in the end, it's just a bunch of materials and a bunch of processes applied to a ship, and a bunch of labor tacked on, that comes out to be the price of the ship. So that's what we're working towards. We're working towards all of that making perfect logical sense. It's going to take a long time to do, but that's the goal. That's what Chris wants. That's what we want. So that's what we're aiming for.

Calling All Devs›The Economy of Spaceships·
Published on this date.3 Dec 2018
EpisodeEconomyLore