Commodities

Commodities, also known as items or resources, are the basis for the entire economic system. All man-made objects are constructed or manufactured using commodities, including buildings, vehicles and spacecraft.

• Buildings are constructed using commodities.
• Buildings use commodities in their manufacturing processes.
• Spacecraft and vehicles are manufactured using commodities.
• Commodities are needed for fuel, ammunition, and repairs to vehicles, and spacecraft.
• Player characters and citizen populations eat and drink food commodities to stay alive. People consume air in harsh environments.

Commodities are manufactured from other commodities or they are acquired from the environment. The chain of all commodity production begins with raw materials from the environment.

Durability

Commodities have condition factors. The maximum condition of a commodity is a measure of its overall durability; a commodity with a high maximum condition takes longer to wear out than a commodity with a low maximum condition. The current condition of a commodity is an indication of its state of repair. As a commodity wears down, its current condition is reduced. A commodity can be repaired before the current condition reaches zero, raising the current condition back to the maximum. When the current condition reaches zero, the commodity is irreparably broken and removed from play.

Quality

Commodities have a quality factor. The quality of environmental commodities is uniform across each resource zone of a planet. For example, the quality of stone does not vary no matter where mines are built in resource zone 1 on the same planet; however, the quality of stone will likely be different in another resource zone and on other planets.

The quality of manufactured commodities is based on the average of the qualities of the commodities consumed by the process. When calculating the average, farming processes include an additional quality factor that is determined by the resource zone in which the farm was built; the resource zone provides a quality factor for each different farming commodity that can be produced. For example, when farming eggs, the quality of the resulting eggs is based on the quality of eggs for that resource zone and the quality of animal feed used. Farm animal processes using pasture, will use the quality of the resource zone's vegetation density.

The quality factor of all commodities ranges from 1 to 255, with 255 the best and 1 the worst.

The quality determines the rate of failure of the commodity when it is used. A low quality tool will wear out faster than a high quality tool when it is used. Commodities may fail when fetched from the city's inventory for construction or manufacturing. Each commodity that fails adds one unit of labor to the process before disintegrating.

The quality affects the value of a commodity. Higher quality commodities are more expensive than lower quality commodities. When selling cargo, a prospective city might not be interested in buying low quality merchandise but they will usually offer a high price for good quality merchandise.

Environmental Factors

These environmental resources cannot be possessed, but they simply exist on a planet with the right conditions. For example, magma as well as inferno atmosphere is found only on planets in the inferno orbit zone, while atmosphere density is found only on planets, not on moons.

Environmental	Orbit Zone
Atmosphere Density	Any
Frigid Atmosphere Density	Frigid
Inferno Atmosphere Density	Inferno
Lava in the Environment	Inferno
Sunlight	Any
Supercooled Liquid in the Environment	Frigid
Vegetation Density	Inner, Habitable, Outer
Water in the Environment	Inner, Habitable, Outer

Building Construction Materials

Buildings are constructed of one of six basic materials, with other specific requirements added for various types of buildings. Each material allows a different maximum height.

Material	Maximum Levels	Production
Log	1	Farmed from orchards or gathered from logging camps.
Lumber	4	Produced by processing logs in a lumber mill.
Stone	8	Gathered from mines.
Metal	16	Produced by smelting ore at a smelter. Ore, in turn, is gathered from mines.
Magmium	24	Produced by smelting magmex, which is gathered from inferno worlds that contain magma using treatment plants.
Vulcium	32	Produced by smelting vulcanite, which is gathered from inferno worlds using mines.
Adamantine	32	Produced by smelting Adamantite, which is gathered from the core of gas giants using mines.

List of Commodities

For a full list of all commodities. See the Category:Commodities page.