diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/advanced_alloys.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/advanced_alloys.md index 8aeb9d9f6..c85af2d97 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/advanced_alloys.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/advanced_alloys.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | High-performance materials for hulls, gate infrastructure, precision machinery. | +Advanced alloys are the high-specification materials required for vessel hulls, gate infrastructure, precision industrial machinery, and capital equipment designed for extreme environmental or mechanical stress. The production recipe requires 1.5t of metallic ore, 0.3t of rare minerals, and 0.2t of fusion fuel — making alloy fabrication one of three chains with direct rare minerals dependency, alongside electronics and drive core assembly. + +The rare minerals input is the constraint that determines where advanced alloys can be produced economically. Smelting capacity is broadly distributed; rare mineral supply is not. Systems near rare mineral sources operate alloy fabrication efficiently; systems at distance pay freight premiums on the mineral input that compound through the alloy output price into the final goods that depend on them. Transport vehicles (0.8t alloy input), drive core assembly (0.8t via downstream chain), and gate components (1.0t direct) are all sensitive to alloy pricing — and all are ultimately sensitive to rare mineral geography. + +Regional production ubiquity reflects this dependency: not every system has the mineral access to run alloy fabrication, but major manufacturing corridors typically have either local mineral production or established freight relationships with mineral-producing systems. No certification, no Compact contestation, no shadow channel. Alloys are high-value standard freight, but they're too physically heavy and too traceable by their downstream application to attract informal trade interest. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/agricultural_produce.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/agricultural_produce.md index fee635ab9..47036d657 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/agricultural_produce.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/agricultural_produce.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Food crops, livestock, grain, grapes. Every terraformed world produces some. | +Agricultural produce covers everything grown, raised, or caught before shelf-stabilization: grain, legumes, root vegetables, livestock, aquaculture, and raw harvest from viticulture or fiber-crop operations. Every terraformed world of sufficient size runs at least subsistence production. Many run surpluses. The commodity is ubiquitous because the Reach was settled with agriculture as a precondition of habitability. + +At 5 Tractus per tonne, margins on raw produce are thin. The value is downstream. Basic grain feeds food processing; the same tonnage from a specialized biosphere world flows instead into organic compound extraction at significantly better returns per hectare. Viticulture harvest from corridor-specific terroirs (VGV valley varietals, Calloway grain) feeds branded products whose prices the generic catalog does not track. A grower on a world producing brach fiber for textile feedstock operates in a different market from the grain farmer on the same continent, even if the Commission records both as agricultural produce. + +Perishable bulk class limits gate-transit windows. Fresh produce cannot clear multiple hops before viability degrades; frontier nodes eat locally grown staples and import processed food for shelf-stable variety. No Commission certification is required and no shadow channel operates — too bulky, too cheap, and too time-sensitive to divert profitably. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/chemical_feedstock.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/chemical_feedstock.md index 15904a840..e2290eab5 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/chemical_feedstock.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/chemical_feedstock.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Industrial gases, reaction mass, solvents. Hazmat certification required. | +Chemical feedstock covers industrial gases, reactive solvents, chemical precursors, and reaction mass extracted from planetary atmospheres, gas giants, and geological deposits. The primary production path for chemicals and pharmaceuticals runs through feedstock at a 2:1 input ratio — two tonnes of feedstock yield one tonne of processed output, making feedstock availability a direct determinant of a system's chemical production capacity. + +Commission certification is required for formal sale and transport, based on hazmat classification and dual-use concerns. This is where the Compact friction enters: Compact member systems contest Commission authority over industrial chemicals as an overreach on internal industrial policy, and certification costs — Tractus-denominated regardless of the buyer's currency zone — represent friction that accumulates at scale for Mark-primary systems. The result is a functioning shadow market for uncertified feedstock in Compact territory, priced below formal channels to offset the certification risk. + +The organic compounds substitution route reduces feedstock dependency for chemical production on biosphere-rich worlds (0.8 output yield versus 1.0 via feedstock), which means feedstock price spikes don't cascade uniformly through the chemical chain. Systems with viable organic compound production absorb shocks; feedstock-dependent systems do not. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/chemicals.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/chemicals.md index 8e12807a9..b8e1d3130 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/chemicals.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/chemicals.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 3 | | Description | Medicines, industrial chemicals, life support consumables. Two production paths. | +Chemicals and pharmaceuticals is a broad intermediate category covering industrial solvents, pharmaceutical compounds, life support consumables, and specialty chemistry. Two routes produce the same output: the primary geological path (2.0t chemical feedstock + 0.5t water → 1.0t output) and the biological path (1.0t organic compounds + 0.3t water → 0.8t output). The primary path yields more per cycle; the biological path is available to biosphere-rich systems that lack chemical feedstock infrastructure. + +The three-week panic threshold is the longest in the intermediate tier, reflecting the critical dependency on chemicals across five downstream production chains: textiles (0.2t), lattice substrate processing (0.3t), implant fabrication (0.3t), medical goods (0.4t), and habitat module assembly (0.2t). A chemicals shortage does not trigger immediate panic in any single downstream industry, but the cumulative draw means that stockpile depletion at three weeks generates anticipatory buying across multiple sectors simultaneously. By the time the shortage is visible in chemicals pricing, downstream producers have already started competing for remaining inventory. + +Commission certification is required because the category includes pharmaceutical compounds and dual-use precursors. Compact contestation follows the same logic as chemical feedstock: certification is Tractus-denominated, and the Compact's industrial chemistry sector faces the same conversion friction on every certified purchase. The shadow market for uncertified chemicals operates primarily in Compact territory and near-frontier systems, where Commission enforcement presence is thinner and the friction cost of certification makes informal channels economically competitive. Three-week panic threshold makes uncertified supply an attractive hedge for frontier operators who cannot guarantee formal supply chain continuity. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/commission_certification.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/commission_certification.md index 944279dff..c37b3b053 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/commission_certification.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/commission_certification.md @@ -16,3 +16,10 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Lattice Commission regulatory certification. Tractus-denominated. Availability inverse to shadow economy. Shadow-viable is false: you cannot shadow-market the Commission's own stamp — you shadow-market the goods that skip certification. | +Commission certification is the Lattice Commission's regulatory stamp — the mechanism by which lattice components, implant hardware, chemical feedstock, medical goods, transport vessels, and other regulated commodities enter formal trade. Demand is compliance-driven, not market-driven: operators procure certification because the law requires it, not because they have calculated a positive return on the cost. Inelastic elasticity follows from this — operators don't reduce their need for certification in response to price increases; they either pay or divert to shadow channels for the underlying goods. + +The Tractus denomination of certification fees is the structural mechanism that converts Commission regulation into currency-zone politics. A Mark-primary system operator paying for chemical feedstock certification is paying in Tractus — the Assembly's currency — for the Assembly's regulatory approval to conduct commerce in their own system. The ~3% cross-currency conversion cost is the visible friction; the political objection is the invisible one. Compact member systems contest not just the fee but the legitimacy of the Commission's jurisdiction over goods moving entirely within their own territory. + +Availability is inversely correlated with shadow economy intensity because Commission enforcement presence and shadow economy intensity are opposed forces: where the Commission maintains active presence, certification is available and formal trade operates; where shadow economy intensity is high, Commission presence is reduced, certification availability drops, and the formal/shadow boundary blurs. This is the operational meaning of `official_coverage_ratio`: high shadow intensity reduces formal certification density, which reduces the visible formal economy, which widens the gap between official and actual economic activity. + +Shadow viable is marked false, precisely: you cannot obtain a counterfeit Commission certification stamp that carries the same legal weight as a real one — Commission records are centralized and cross-checkable. What you can do is skip certification entirely and trade the underlying goods through shadow channels. The Commission's stamp is not the contraband; it is the absence of the stamp that defines the contraband. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/consumer_goods.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/consumer_goods.md index 9be93efdd..5940bbbea 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/consumer_goods.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/consumer_goods.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Daily necessities, household items, personal tech. | +Consumer goods is the broadest final category in the catalog, covering everything from household cookware and personal care products to light personal technology, clothing, and the durable goods that populate residential and commercial spaces. The production recipe mixes 0.3t of processed food, 0.3t of textiles, and 0.2 units of electronics — a deliberately broad input mix reflecting the category's diversity. Ubiquitous production ubiquity means consumer goods manufacturing is distributed across essentially every settled system at sufficient scale, making it the most geographically resilient final category. + +Consumer goods demand is market-driven and unit-elastic, meaning price changes produce proportional demand responses. This is the standard commodity behavior — no panic, no regulatory complexity, no political flags. The category is interesting to traders primarily as a signal of upstream input conditions: a consumer goods price increase that outpaces general inflation suggests electronics or textiles constraints propagating forward; a consumer goods discount suggests processed food or textile surplus clearing through the manufacturing sector. + +The 80 Tractus base price places consumer goods at the lower end of the final goods tier. The category is volume-driven — high turnover, competitive margins, geographically distributed producers. Brand differentiation (thrds garments, corridor-specific specialty items) operates above the generic catalog level, where the brand system rather than the commodity price governs margins. The generic category here is the floor of that market, not the ceiling. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/drive_cores.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/drive_cores.md index d6ae55501..da0ccc63c 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/drive_cores.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/drive_cores.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Propulsion components. High-value, specialized. Double rare-minerals dependency. | +Drive cores are the propulsion assemblies that power commercial and industrial vessels — standardized across a size range from light freighter to heavy cargo hauler, but manufactured to precision tolerances that limit production to well-equipped industrial facilities. The recipe requires 0.4t of rare minerals (direct) and 0.8t of advanced alloys — which themselves require 0.3t of rare minerals in their production. This gives drive cores a double rare-mineral dependency: each unit produced consumes roughly 0.64t of rare minerals across both the direct and alloy-embedded inputs. + +Elastic demand reflects the commodity's capital goods nature. Vessel operators do not replace drive cores on a fixed schedule; they replace them when degradation reaches a threshold or when procurement pricing makes early replacement economically rational. During a rare mineral price spike, operators extend core service life rather than replace at elevated prices, and demand contracts. When mineral prices normalize, deferred replacement demand returns in concentrated buying pressure. This cyclicality makes drive cores one of the more interesting freight commodities to track for timing-sensitive traders. + +Concentrated production ubiquity means a small number of industrial systems produce essentially all commercial drive cores. Transport vehicles, freight haulers, and heavy equipment all require drive cores as inputs (0.3t, 0.5t, and 0.2t respectively), anchoring demand to the general manufacturing cycle. No shadow channel: the specifications and serial-number tracking on commercial propulsion units make informal trade impractical. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/electronics.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/electronics.md index 62507b413..16bf7d3d6 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/electronics.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/electronics.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Circuits, processors, control systems. Rare mineral-dependent. Input to nearly every final good. | +Electronics and components cover circuit assemblies, processors, sensor arrays, control systems, and integrated modules from basic industrial controllers to precision-grade guidance hardware. The production recipe requires 0.5t of rare minerals, 0.3t of refined metals, and 0.2t of fusion fuel per unit. Rare minerals are the binding constraint — the same minerals that bottleneck alloy fabrication also bottleneck electronics, which means a rare mineral supply disruption simultaneously affects both chains and propagates into every final good that draws on either. + +Electronics appears as an input in five of nine final production chains: heavy equipment (0.3 units), transport vehicles (0.3 units), freight haulers (0.3 units), consumer goods (0.2 units), implant hardware (0.5 units — the largest single input), habitat modules (0.3 units), and rail infrastructure (0.3 units). This breadth means electronics availability is effectively a ceiling on general manufacturing throughput. A node running low on electronics components does not slow one industry — it slows most of them. + +Compact bulk class means electronics moves efficiently relative to its value at 120 Tractus per unit. Regional production concentrations track rare mineral geography, with electronics fabrication hubs typically located adjacent to or downstream from mineral-producing systems. No Commission certification required, no shadow market. Electronics are traceable by specification and generally too high-value for casual diversion; the shadow market interest is in the downstream products rather than the components themselves. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/entertainment.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/entertainment.md index 4b1183ae5..865587317 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/entertainment.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/entertainment.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Performances, holo-content, cultural production. | +Entertainment and holo-content covers live performances, venue-based cultural events, and the consumption of holo-content in local presentation facilities. The Meridian delivers content data reach-wide, but the experience of attendance — the social context, the physical presence, the shared audience — is location-bound. A concert hall at Altmark, a gladiatorial circuit at a Compact festival venue, a holo-theatre running archival Earth content in a frontier settlement: all are priced locally against local demand and local cost structures, not against some Reach-wide market rate. + +Common production ubiquity reflects the low capital requirement of entertainment services relative to most economic activities. Any system with population density sufficient to sustain an audience supports some entertainment sector. Quality and scale vary enormously — the holo-theatres at major station hubs operate at orders of magnitude larger scale than a frontier settlement's community hall — but the service exists almost everywhere. This makes entertainment a useful economic signal: entertainment sector health tracks discretionary income availability, and entertainment sector collapse is an early indicator of broader economic distress in a community. + +Elastic demand means entertainment is the first casualty of genuine economic hardship. When energy costs spike and food security tightens, audiences shrink before food purchases do. The entertainment sector's price sensitivity relative to inelastic necessities makes it a leading indicator of community economic stress that most economic data series don't capture directly. No Commission involvement, no shadow channel. The content may carry political valence in some corridors — Compact cultural production explicitly reflects values the Assembly disapproves of — but the service itself does not require regulation. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/financial_services.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/financial_services.md index e213075bf..d5f248873 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/financial_services.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/financial_services.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Banking, credit, clearing, currency exchange. Cross-zone settlement infrastructure. | +Financial services covers commercial banking, corporate credit facilities, interbank clearing, currency exchange, and the cross-zone settlement infrastructure that makes multi-system trade possible. Common ubiquity means most settled systems have functional banking — the Reach cannot operate without it. The service is location-bound because banking requires local regulatory standing, local currency clearing relationships, and local credit risk assessment. A Groombridge bank can run clearing for cross-corridor transactions, but its credit assessment for a frontier mining operation relies on information that a distant institution cannot evaluate without local presence. + +The cross-zone dimension is where financial services become strategically interesting. Mark-primary systems need financial institutions with established Tractus-Mark clearing relationships to conduct commerce with Assembly-compliant systems. The ~3% cross-currency conversion rate is the published friction; the actual cost includes settlement delays, counterparty credit risk across zone boundaries, and the political uncertainty about whether Assembly-compliant institutions will maintain correspondent relationships with Compact banks under Assembly pressure. Systems at the MARK_PRIMARY / TRACTUS_PRIMARY boundary — the MIXED zone — host the financial institutions that manage both sides of this clearing relationship, which is why those systems tend to have disproportionately large financial services sectors relative to their population. + +No shadow channel for financial services. You can shadow-market goods; you cannot usefully shadow-market the settlement infrastructure those goods need to move. An informal bank that isn't connected to formal clearing networks cannot actually clear payments at scale. What the shadow economy uses instead of banks is Sol — the untraceable medium that requires no clearing. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/freight_haulers.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/freight_haulers.md index 53aaaa90e..7f30faa4e 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/freight_haulers.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/freight_haulers.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Commercial cargo vessels. Demand driven by trade volume, not population. | +Freight haulers are commercial cargo vessels at the working scale of Reach trade: gate-capable freighters, system-run bulk carriers, and the orbital-to-surface logistics craft that move goods between planets and stations. Production requires 1.5t of refined metals, 0.5 units of drive cores, and 0.3 units of electronics — the most metal-intensive final good recipe in the catalog. Commission safety registration is required, and the Compact contests this on the same jurisdictional grounds as transport vehicle registration: Commission certification of vessels operating within Compact systems is interpreted as implicit acceptance of Assembly commercial authority. + +Demand is driven by trade volume, not by population. A system with high trade throughput — a major transit node, a mineral-export hub, a gate junction — generates freight hauler demand in proportion to cargo flows. A system with equivalent population but low trade activity does not. This decoupling from population means freight hauler production cycles track economic activity patterns rather than demographic growth, and experienced operators monitor trade-volume signals rather than census data when positioning equipment orders. + +Concentrated production ubiquity reflects the capital intensity of shipbuilding. Only major industrial systems with integrated metal-to-drive-core supply chains and dry dock capacity operate at commercial hauler scale. Shadow viable is false: vessels require registration for gate transit, and unregistered cargo shipping is impractical rather than merely illegal. Commission registration contestation in the Compact plays out through licensing disputes and fee non-payment rather than through shadow vessels. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/fusion_fuel.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/fusion_fuel.md index c8b718978..0aa462272 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/fusion_fuel.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/fusion_fuel.md @@ -16,3 +16,10 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 2 | | Description | Deuterium/tritium refined from water at 8:1 ratio. Continuous consumption. Every system needs it. | +Fusion fuel is the Reach's operational energy currency. Every inhabited node consumes it continuously as a utility overhead — proportional to population and active systems — and three major industrial chains require it as a direct input: ore smelting (0.3t per tonne of refined metals), alloy fabrication (0.2t), and electronics fabrication (0.2t). The demand model is utility, not market: consumption does not adjust to price. When fuel becomes expensive, smelters still run, stations still operate, and the cost moves downstream into everything that depends on energy-intensive production. + +The 8:1 water-to-fuel yield ratio is the structural driver of the Reach's energy geography. Eight tonnes of water refine into one tonne of fusion fuel. Water is cheap (2 Tractus/t) but the volume requirements mean that frontier refineries, which must pay elevated transport costs on water imports, produce fuel at structural cost premiums over inner corridor operations where water is locally abundant. That premium is not event-driven — it is geometric. Every hop of water transport adds to the fuel production cost, and from there to smelting throughput, alloy costs, electronics costs, and ultimately to every manufactured final good on that frontier shelf. + +Commission certification is required for formal trade; Compact members contest this as currency-zone coercion. Certification fees are Tractus-denominated regardless of the buyer's Mark-primary zone, which means every fuel certification in the Compact zone involves a cross-currency conversion at the prevailing ~3% friction rate. This is not a regulatory dispute — it is a structural tax on Compact industrial operations, and it feeds directly into the shadow fuel market that operates throughout the west reach. Shadow fuel moves without certification; it prices below formal channels by enough to absorb the compliance risk. The two-week panic threshold means any credible supply threat triggers hoarding before the shortage materializes. + +For nodes that are gate-energy connected, Gate Corporation's energy-over-gate service reduces utility fuel demand to roughly 0.3× baseline. Compact member systems have historically refused this service as an act of energy sovereignty — the consequence being that Compact systems run full fuel demand from their own production, but are also insulated from Gate Corporation cutoff scenarios. When a dependent inner-corridor node loses gate energy access, it is Compact surplus that absorbs the emergency demand. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/gate_components.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/gate_components.md index bdc1c5248..4c8463365 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/gate_components.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/gate_components.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Gate maintenance and construction parts. Gate Corporation monopoly. Triple rare-minerals dependency. | +Gate components are the maintenance and construction units for span gates — the infrastructure backbone of all inter-system commerce and communication in the Reach. Production requires 1.0t of advanced alloys, 0.5 units of drive cores, and 0.3 units of lattice substrate, creating a triple rare-minerals dependency: rare minerals appear directly in alloys (0.3t), in drive cores (0.4t direct + embedded via alloy input), and in the electronics that feed drive core production. No other final good in the catalog concentrates rare mineral dependency so completely. + +Gate Corporation holds an effective monopoly on gate component production and maintenance. This is not a regulatory designation — it reflects the reality that the engineering specifications, manufacturing infrastructure, and technical personnel required to produce functional gate components exist in one place. Gate Corp's monopoly is self-reinforcing: the expertise to certify that gate components meet operational standards resides in the organization that produces them. Commission certification is required, and the Commission's technical standards for gate components essentially codify Gate Corp's own manufacturing specifications. + +Compact contestation of Commission authority over gate components follows from the general Compact position on Commission jurisdiction, complicated by the fact that gate infrastructure operates within Compact systems. A Compact system disputing Commission gate component certification is in tension with Gate Corp's service contracts — the gate runs on Gate Corp's hardware, and Gate Corp's warranty and service terms require certified components. The shadow channel for gate components is thin but real: counterfeit or refurbished components that lack the certification chain occasionally reach systems where the alternative is extended gate downtime. The decision to use uncertified gate components is made under maintenance duress, not as policy. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/habitat_modules.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/habitat_modules.md index 1f19edb49..8067b80cc 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/habitat_modules.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/habitat_modules.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Complete living/working units for stations and settlements. 2-5 year lead times. | +Habitat modules are complete, pressurized living and working units manufactured for integration into orbital stations, surface settlements, and expanding population centers. Each unit includes life support interfaces, utilities routing, structural connections, and interior finishing to habitability standards. The production recipe requires 1.2 units of structural panels, 0.3 units of electronics, and 0.2t of chemicals — with the panel input creating a direct dependency on timber or stone availability in the supply chain. + +Lead times of 2–5 years from order to delivery are structural, not market-driven. Large station expansions require coordinated panel supply, manufacturing capacity booking, and transport scheduling well in advance of the installation date. Operators planning population expansion programs treat habitat module procurement as a multi-year infrastructure commitment rather than a commodity purchase. Systems experiencing rapid immigration pressure — frontier expansion waves, post-disruption resettlement — face severe module shortages that cannot be resolved on short notice regardless of price. + +Settlement density across the Reach is therefore partially a function of module lead-time management. Systems that run persistent module procurement programs and maintain forward inventory position their populations for growth; systems that procure reactively face population-to-capacity mismatches during growth phases. The 2-5 year figure is why experienced colony administrators consider module order placement to be among their most consequential routine decisions. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/heavy_equipment.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/heavy_equipment.md index 5f5174211..ed020b110 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/heavy_equipment.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/heavy_equipment.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Mining rigs, construction machinery. 1-3 year lead times. | +Heavy equipment covers the large-scale mechanical systems used in extraction, construction, and industrial operations: mining rigs, ore processors, planetary dozers, drilling platforms, construction cranes, and the capital machinery of expansion-phase development. Production requires 1.0t of refined metals, 0.3 units of electronics, and 0.2 units of drive cores per unit — positioning heavy equipment as a capital goods category with direct drive core dependency. + +Elastic demand reflects the capital investment cycle. Mining and construction operators hold equipment orders against expected project demands and defer during economic contractions or price spikes. A 1–3 year lead time from order to delivery means demand signals in heavy equipment pricing represent commitments made one to three years ago, not current conditions. Active frontier development systems generate consistent heavy equipment demand; established core systems replace equipment on longer replacement cycles. + +The economic significance of heavy equipment exceeds its direct commodity price. Equipment throughput determines extraction rates, construction timelines, and the physical pace of expansion — the economic output of a mining operation scales with its equipment capacity, and delayed equipment procurement delays the ore throughput that feeds downstream manufacturing. Stalownia is the canonical Reach manufacturer in this category; their large rigs carry 1–3 year lead times even in normal conditions, and procurement priority is a commercial relationship as much as a price negotiation. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/hospitality.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/hospitality.md index 148f5e2c9..80308ad37 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/hospitality.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/hospitality.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Corridor taverns, station cantinas, Talbreu taphouses. Cultural dining reflecting local heritage and transit-corridor traditions. | +Fine dining and hospitality encompasses the full range of prepared food service and residential accommodation, from transit corridor cantinas to the Talbreu taphouse circuit and the prestige restaurant culture of major hub stations. The service is explicitly location-bound: Ostmark cuisine prepared at Ostmark, with Ostmark cultural context and the social network that makes a specific establishment meaningful, is not reproducible elsewhere. A station cantina in the outer west reach serves as both provisioner and community infrastructure — the social hub where transit workers, merchants, and locals negotiate the informal economy that formal records don't capture. + +Regional production ubiquity reflects the commodity's dual dependency: good hospitality requires both the skill and cultural context to prepare it, and reliable access to the agricultural produce and processed food inputs that go into the service. Frontier systems maintain basic provisions but rarely develop the ingredient diversity that supports serious hospitality culture until the settlement matures. Major transit nodes and corridor junctions develop hospitality sectors disproportionate to their populations because transit populations are willing to pay for quality in transient contexts. + +The 60 Tractus base price positions fine dining above entertainment as a discretionary luxury but below tourism as a considered destination investment. Elastic demand means it contracts with income; it also expands notably during transit booms and economic growth cycles. The cultural character of hospitality in specific corridors — the Germanic-Scandinavian cooking of west reach settlements, the east reach fusion traditions, the Sol-nostalgic cuisine that clusters around stations with significant Unbound communities — is legible in the commodity pricing but not captured in the generic catalog figure. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/implant_hardware.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/implant_hardware.md index 8d043affc..8eb194f7a 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/implant_hardware.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/implant_hardware.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Neural interfaces, lattice components. THE Compact political flashpoint. D-037 adjacent. | +Implant hardware covers neural interface assemblies, lattice tier upgrade components, peripheral neural modules, and the physical substrate of the Commission's certified lattice ecosystem. Production requires 0.5 units of electronics, 0.3t of chemicals, and 0.4 units of lattice substrate — the highest electronics input of any final good in the catalog, reflecting the processing density required for neural-grade signal fidelity. Commission certification is not optional; it is the difference between a certified medical device and contraband. + +The Compact's contestation of Commission authority over implant hardware is the sharpest political friction point in the commodity catalog. Compact member systems interpret Commission certification requirements as jurisdictional overreach that gives the Assembly a structural mechanism to control their citizens' neural autonomy through the hardware supply chain. Certification fees are Tractus-denominated and non-negotiable. Every certified implant purchased in a Mark-primary system pays cross-currency conversion on top of the certification fee — a structural tax on neural identity that the Compact has consistently refused to normalize. + +The shadow market for uncertified implants is the canonical contraband stream of the Reach. Unlicensed lattice components are not conceptually different from certified ones; they simply lack the Commission audit trail that would tie the hardware to a registered citizen identity. Shadow-viable implants trade in deep-discount channels, primarily in Compact territory and frontier systems where Commission enforcement presence is intermittent. The demand comes from: citizens priced out of certified hardware, individuals seeking capabilities beyond licensed tiers, and operators who want neural infrastructure that is not on the Commission's registry. All three groups exist in every corridor at varying intensity. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/insurance.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/insurance.md index a6a3eae1a..696a6abd2 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/insurance.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/insurance.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Cargo, liability, corporate risk management. Affects trade volume through risk pricing. | +Insurance and risk management services cover cargo underwriting, commercial liability policies, corporate risk transfer, and the actuarial infrastructure that enables large-scale trade and investment across systems with varying political stability. These are location-bound services: an insurer operating at Altmark is pricing risk for the west-reach corridor, drawing on local loss data, local legal frameworks, and local settlement capacity. That expertise cannot be freighted to another system — a Compact insurer providing coverage for inner-corridor cargo is operating at an information disadvantage that the price reflects. + +The critical economic function is enabling trade volume. Insurance does not add to GDP in a conventional sense, but uninsured freight is freight that either doesn't move or moves at risk pricing that constrains volume. High-insurance-cost corridors generate measurably lower freight volumes than equivalent corridors with competitive insurance markets. This is the mechanism by which `shadow_economy_intensity` interacts with formal trade: shadow economy expansion degrades insurers' ability to price risk accurately (they can't see the full economic picture), which raises premiums, which suppresses formal trade volume, which is the `official_coverage_ratio` degrading in real time. + +Regional production ubiquity means not every system has competitive insurance depth. Frontier systems often operate with single-insurer coverage or import coverage from corridor hubs at a distance premium. No certification required, no shadow channel — insurance is location-bound professional services, and the contractual framework that makes an insurance policy valuable requires functioning legal infrastructure anyway. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/lattice_grade_material.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/lattice_grade_material.md index 0d2fb1b37..15217a618 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/lattice_grade_material.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/lattice_grade_material.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Crystalline substrates for neural lattice fabrication and gate optics. East reach anchor. Strategic material. | +Lattice-grade material is a class of crystalline substrates with the purity and structural coherence required for neural lattice wafer fabrication and gate optic components. Production requires geological conditions not present across most of the Reach — a small number of east reach systems hold essentially all known commercial deposits. Monopolistic ubiquity is not market language: there is no substitute input for lattice substrate processing, and the east reach anchor systems holding those deposits know it. + +Commission certification is required for all formal transactions. Lattice-grade material is a dual-use precursor — the same crystalline substrates feed licensed implant fabrication and unlicensed modification. This is why shadow viability is marked yes despite Commission oversight: the formal market controls supply but cannot fully suppress demand from unlicensed fabricators, particularly in corridors where the Commission's operational presence is intermittent. Uncertified lattice-grade material commands a substantial premium in shadow channels because the certification process provides traceability that buyers in those channels are specifically avoiding. + +The production chain is short: 1.0t of lattice-grade material combined with 0.3t of chemicals yields 1.0t of lattice substrate. The simplicity of that recipe makes the material's scarcity the dominant cost driver — there is no processing efficiency to gain, only sourcing discipline to maintain. Gate component manufacturers, implant fabricators, and lattice substrate processors all operate under the constraint that their primary input sources are geographically specific and Commission-monitored. Supply disruptions from east reach propagate directly into implant hardware and gate component pricing within two to three production cycles. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/lattice_substrate.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/lattice_substrate.md index 639e87407..14effb20b 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/lattice_substrate.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/lattice_substrate.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Processed neural lattice wafers and gate optics. From lattice-grade material. | +Lattice substrate is the processed form of lattice-grade material: precision-cleaned crystalline wafers and optically finished gate components ready for end-stage fabrication. The processing recipe is simple — 1.0t of lattice-grade material plus 0.3t of chemicals yields 1.0t of substrate — but the output requires Commission certification for legal sale, and the production is concentrated in systems adjacent to east reach lattice-grade deposits. Moving substrate legally means moving it with its certification chain intact. + +The shadow market exists because of what lattice substrate feeds: implant hardware fabrication consumes 0.4 units per output, and uncertified implants require uncertified substrate. Commission certification provides the traceability that distinguishes a licensed neural interface from contraband. Any fabricator operating outside Commission oversight needs a substrate source that doesn't carry a traceable certification number — hence the shadow channel, which sources material from either uncertified processing operations or certified stock that has been diverted after purchase and before the final audit trail would record the end use. + +Gate component assembly also requires 0.3 units of lattice substrate per gate unit — a separate demand stream from the implant channel, operating entirely in the formal economy because Gate Corporation has no incentive to circumvent its own supply chain audits. The substrate market is therefore split between two fundamentally different demand profiles: the traceable, regulated gate manufacturing sector and the partially-shadow implant fabrication sector. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/legal_services.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/legal_services.md index 3c5321f7f..5a7b6f3d3 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/legal_services.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/legal_services.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Contract enforcement, dispute resolution, commercial law. | +Legal services covers commercial contract enforcement, trade dispute resolution, licensing and regulatory compliance work, corporate structuring, and the transactional legal infrastructure that supports all formal economic activity. Inelastic demand reflects that legal services are consumed when disputes arise and contracts are formed — neither of which scales back significantly when prices rise. Common production ubiquity means most settled systems maintain some legal services capacity, though depth and quality vary considerably between a major commercial hub and a frontier outpost. + +The commodity's economic role is as an enabling infrastructure for everything else. Formal trade requires enforceable contracts. Insurance contracts require legal standing. Commission certification challenges require legal representation. A system with functional legal services can support higher-value economic activity than one without, because counterparties cannot rely on contract enforceability in the absence of competent legal institutions. This is the mechanism by which governance quality feeds into economic productivity — not directly measurable in the simulation's commodity framework, but present in the effective functioning of every market transaction. + +No Commission certification, no shadow channel. Legal services require qualified personnel operating within a recognized legal framework — they are inherently formal sector, and an "informal" legal service is simply a contract that neither party has meaningful recourse to enforce. The service is location-bound by jurisdiction: Compact legal services are authoritative within Compact systems and largely unenforceable outside them, which is precisely the point. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/medical_goods.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/medical_goods.md index 9c32ae562..2ad040fa1 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/medical_goods.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/medical_goods.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Pharmaceuticals, surgical equipment, diagnostics, re-embodiment supporting hardware. | +Medical goods covers certified pharmaceuticals, surgical equipment, diagnostic hardware, and the supporting physical components for licensed re-embodiment procedures. Production requires 0.4t of chemicals, 0.3 units of electronics, and 0.2t of advanced alloys — inputs from across the technology chain. Commission certification is required for formal distribution because the category includes pharmaceutical compounds and re-embodiment hardware with direct implications for patient safety and lattice compliance. + +Compact contestation of Commission authority over medical goods is one of the more politically charged disputes in the certification framework. Commission oversight of re-embodiment hardware is interpreted by Compact member systems as an attempt to extend Commission jurisdiction over their citizens' neural identity infrastructure through the goods supply chain. The Tractus-denominated certification fee adds currency friction on top of the jurisdictional grievance. The result is a functioning shadow market in medical goods throughout the Compact zone — not driven by criminal demand but by communities that have collectively decided that Commission certification is not a legitimate gate on their medical autonomy. + +Medical goods without certification cannot be distinguished from certified goods by physical inspection. The shadow market prices them at a discount that reflects the legal risk to the buyer, not any quality difference. In Compact territory, that discount is narrow — the political cover provided by Compact non-compliance with Commission authority reduces buyer risk substantially. In inner corridor systems, the legal exposure is larger and the shadow discount is correspondingly deeper. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/medical_services.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/medical_services.md index 9895720c3..e2dc291f2 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/medical_services.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/medical_services.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Healthcare, neural backup, licensed re-embodiment. Unlicensed variant is canonical contraband. | +Medical and re-embodiment services covers general healthcare, neural lattice backup procedures, and the full stack of licensed re-embodiment: the neural imprint capture, body preparation, continuity verification, and identity attestation that constitutes a legal re-embodiment under Commission standards. These are location-bound services — re-embodiment requires certified facilities, certified personnel, certified equipment, and a Commission-recognized procedural record. A body prepared in one system cannot be considered continuously certified if the procedure crosses jurisdictions without Commission tracking. + +Commission certification is mandatory because re-embodiment is identity-critical infrastructure. An uncertified re-embodiment is, under Assembly law, not a continuation of the original person's legal identity. The downstream consequences — property rights, contract obligations, criminal record, familial status — make the certification question existential rather than regulatory. This is why unlicensed re-embodiment is canonical contraband: the buyer is not purchasing a cheaper service, they are purchasing a service that the Commission will not recognize as valid, with all the legal exposure that entails. + +Compact contestation follows from the jurisdiction dispute over lattice regulation and the particular sensitivity of re-embodiment to Commission authority. Compact member systems have passed internal legislation recognizing re-embodiment procedures performed under their own governance frameworks as legally valid. The result is a two-tier system: re-embodiment certified by both Compact frameworks and Commission standards is recognized everywhere; re-embodiment certified only under Compact law is recognized in Compact systems and refused or contested in Assembly-compliant systems. The shadow market for medical services in Compact territory is therefore less criminal than it is an extension of the political dispute — communities offering re-embodiment under their own authority rather than applying for Commission certification they consider illegitimate. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/metallic_ore.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/metallic_ore.md index 2e5d4864f..51fc3018b 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/metallic_ore.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/metallic_ore.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Ferrous and non-ferrous ore from planetary mines and asteroid operations. | +Metallic ore is the base input for the Reach's entire metals economy: ferrous ores for structural steel, non-ferrous for copper wire, aluminum, and specialty metals for precision components. Common availability across settled space means most mid-corridor systems have at least one active mining operation. The commodity becomes interesting at the frontier, where terrestrial ore bodies may be unexploited and asteroid belt access varies enormously with system topology. + +Smelting consumes 2t of ore to produce 1t of refined metals — a 2:1 drawdown that makes the ore-to-metals ratio a standard measure of a system's metal production efficiency. The process also requires 0.3t of fusion fuel per output tonne, which means smelting throughput is an energy cost story as much as an ore availability story. Frontier smelters pay more to run the same recipe because fuel costs are structurally elevated. + +Alloy fabrication draws on both metallic ore (1.5t) and rare minerals (0.3t), making ore an input to two different metal chains. This dual dependency means a single ore shortage cascades into both refined metals and advanced alloys simultaneously. No certification required, no shadow channel. Ore moves as bulk freight and its value accumulates in the processing step. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/organic_compounds.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/organic_compounds.md index 5d62c018e..37e98820c 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/organic_compounds.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/organic_compounds.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Biochemicals, pharmaceutical precursors, biological feedstock. Requires complex biosphere. | +Organic compounds require a functioning complex biosphere to produce in commercial volumes — not just agriculture, but a mature ecological system capable of yielding biochemicals, enzyme precursors, complex lipids, and the biologically-derived feedstocks that industrial chemistry cannot economically synthesize from mineral sources. This restricts production to older terraformed worlds and naturally habitable planets with sufficient ecological depth. Regional ubiquity reflects this: not rare, but not universal. + +The commodity feeds two production chains. In textile fabrication, organic compounds (0.8t) combined with chemicals (0.2t) yield textiles and composites — the only route for brach fiber processing, which requires biological precursors that chemical synthesis cannot replicate. In chemical production, organic compounds provide the substitution route: a biological pathway yielding 0.8t of chemicals per 1.0t input versus 1.0t from the feedstock route. Lower yield, but available to worlds with functioning biospheres and no chemical feedstock infrastructure. + +At 35 Tractus per tonne, organic compounds command a premium over stone and metallic ore but remain well below the high-value raw materials. The premium reflects the biosphere requirement — geological extraction scales with equipment investment, but biosphere extraction scales with ecological health over centuries. Braemar is the canonical example: brach fiber output is capped by herd biology and habitat, not by investment. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/processed_food.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/processed_food.md index 1d9659be1..742933d51 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/processed_food.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/processed_food.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 2 | | Description | Shelf-stable, transportable food products. | +Processed food is agricultural produce run through preservation, packaging, and shelf-stabilization. The recipe requires 1.5t of agricultural produce and 0.2t of water per tonne of output — a simple, energy-light process that every settled world with surplus agriculture runs continuously. The output is transportable through gates without viability loss, which is precisely the point: raw produce cannot clear multiple hops, but processed food can move Reach-wide on standard freight schedules. + +The two-week panic threshold is lower than it looks. Most inhabited nodes maintain 2–6 weeks of processed food stock as standard operational reserves. A supply disruption triggering hoarding behavior compresses that buffer quickly, particularly in high-population orbital stations where local food production is negligible and processed food is the primary caloric supply. Stations are more exposed than planetary surfaces; a gate blockage affecting a station's primary food route becomes a crisis in days rather than weeks. + +Ubiquitous production means processed food rarely generates price signals worth chasing on its own. The trading interest is in agricultural production disruptions upstream — a bad harvest on a surplus world ripples into processed food availability two to three production cycles later, and by then the price signal has already moved. Follow the agricultural conditions, not the shelf-stable output. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/rail_infrastructure.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/rail_infrastructure.md index 0db75f1ad..5bc407fa5 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/rail_infrastructure.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/rail_infrastructure.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Planetary transit systems, trains, intra-system transport networks. | +Rail infrastructure covers the manufactured components of planetary and intra-system transit networks: rolling stock, track sections, station structures, signaling systems, and the specialized industrial rail used in mining operations and freight corridors. The production recipe is metals-heavy: 1.0t of refined metals, 1.5 units of structural panels, and 0.3 units of electronics per output unit. The panel-intensive nature of station and trackway construction makes rail infrastructure particularly sensitive to timber and stone supply conditions upstream. + +Demand is driven by economic development cycles rather than population. A system growing in population needs housing (habitat modules); a system growing in economic activity needs freight and passenger transport. These are correlated but not identical — a primarily extractive system with high freight demand may run heavy industrial rail while keeping residential infrastructure minimal. Transit investment decisions reflect governance priorities as much as raw economic signals, which means rail infrastructure pricing can diverge from the general construction sector even when habitat modules and structural panels are moving in the same direction. + +Regional ubiquity positions rail infrastructure between the broadly distributed consumer goods sector and the concentrated production of drive cores or lattice substrate. Corridor-specific manufacturing hubs specialize in rail components for their geography's terrain and climate requirements, but the fundamentals of steel track, electrified rolling stock, and pre-fabricated station sections are common enough to sustain production at moderate scale across most mid-corridor systems. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/rare_minerals.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/rare_minerals.md index 19ce3e4fe..b60fdeadb 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/rare_minerals.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/rare_minerals.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Exotic crystals, rare earths. Scarce, location-specific. Critical bottleneck for high-tech manufacturing. | +Rare minerals — exotic crystals, heavy rare earths, actinide-adjacent compounds, and precision-grade inorganic substrates — are the single most important supply-chain chokepoint in high-technology manufacturing. Electronics fabrication requires 0.5t per output unit; alloy fabrication requires 0.3t; drive core assembly requires 0.4t directly, plus additional mineral content in the alloy input. A rare minerals shortage cascades simultaneously into electronics, advanced alloys, and drive cores — and from there into nearly every final good that depends on those intermediates. + +Production is concentrated, not distributed. Rare mineral deposits require specific geological conditions that most terrestrial and asteroid environments do not provide. The systems that have them hold structural economic advantages in the technology supply chain that cannot be replicated by investment alone — the geology is either there or it is not. This concentrates production in a relatively small number of systems, and the trade routes that move rare minerals outward from those systems are among the most reliably profitable freight corridors in the Reach. + +No Commission certification required, no shadow channel. At 80 Tractus per tonne and precision bulk class, rare minerals move as high-value compact freight, not in bulk. The absence of a shadow market reflects both the difficulty of separating extraction from certification-free sale and the fact that the bottleneck commodity in three separate production chains draws too much scrutiny for informal trade to operate at scale. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/refined_metals.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/refined_metals.md index 5f0314c74..87b3bc101 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/refined_metals.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/refined_metals.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Structural steel, copper wire, aluminum. Backbone of construction and manufacturing. | +Refined metals are the basic structural material of every construction and manufacturing sector in the Reach. Smelting reduces two tonnes of metallic ore plus 0.3t of fusion fuel to one tonne of output — structural steel, rolled aluminum, copper wire, and the general-purpose metal stock that goes into buildings, vehicles, equipment, and infrastructure. Common production ubiquity reflects the fact that ore is common and smelting infrastructure is well-distributed across the Reach. + +The commodity feeds four final production chains either directly or as a critical input: freight hauler construction (1.5t), heavy equipment assembly (1.0t), rail infrastructure construction (1.0t), and consumer goods (indirectly, via textiles and panel components). Inelastic elasticity means demand holds regardless of price fluctuations — manufacturers don't stop building because steel costs more, they pass the cost forward. The absence of a panic threshold reflects durability; refined metals stockpile without degradation and buyers hold inventory against supply variability without triggering hoarding dynamics. + +Smelting throughput is energy-constrained. A frontier smelter running at 30 Tractus/t output pays more than an inner corridor smelter to produce the same tonne, because fuel input costs are structurally elevated by water transport economics. This means refined metals prices quietly encode the fuel cost geography of wherever they were produced — metal from deep frontier carries a structural premium over the same specification produced at hop 2. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/stone.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/stone.md index 71f5e354d..7e1538c2b 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/stone.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/stone.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Construction stone, ceramics feedstock. Substitution route for structural panels. | +Stone and aggregate are the fallback input for structural panel production on worlds without viable forestry. Quarried stone, gravel, crushed rock, and volcanic aggregate feed both direct construction and the ceramic processing sector. Common availability means most settled worlds can source locally — the commodity rarely moves long distances unless a large construction program outpaces local quarry capacity. + +The critical economic role is as a substitution route. Timber-deficient worlds or settlements without managed forest access use stone-based panel fabrication instead. Stone panels yield 0.8 units per 1.5t input versus timber's 1.0 per 1.0t — lower efficiency, different source. For systems with abundant quarry operations and no accessible forests, the stone route is economically rational regardless of the yield gap. + +At 8 Tractus per tonne, stone is marginally more expensive than water and far cheaper than any processed good. The commodity generates interest only at scale — major infrastructure projects, rapid settlement expansion, or station construction programs draw enough volume to create corridor price signals. No certification, no political flags, no shadow channel. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/structural_panels.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/structural_panels.md index 24e68d056..f2edf8691 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/structural_panels.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/structural_panels.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Pre-fabricated building components. Two production paths: timber or stone. | +Structural panels are pre-fabricated building elements — walls, floors, ceiling cassettes, modular partitioning, pressurized station sections — manufactured at scale for assembly on-site. Two production routes feed the same output: the timber route (1.0t timber + 0.5t refined metals → 1.0 unit) and the stone route (1.5t stone + 0.5t refined metals → 0.8 units). Timber yields more per input cycle; stone yields less but uses a different and generally more available raw. Regional ubiquity reflects that panel manufacturing requires stable raw supply chains, which not every system maintains. + +The two-route structure is the commodity's most important economic feature. A timber shortage on a world running the timber route forces either a switch to the less efficient stone route or import of finished panels from neighbors. A stone shortage on a stone-route world rarely causes disruption because stone is more geographically common than managed forest. Systems that have both routes available carry structural resilience in their construction sector that single-route systems lack. + +Panels are a direct input to habitat modules (1.2 units) and rail infrastructure (1.5 units), making panel availability the gating factor for settlement expansion and transit development. Station construction programs in particular draw on panels intensively — station sections are modular by necessity, and each new habitation ring is largely a panel assembly problem. Disruptions in timber-primary corridors cascade into habitat module lead times, which cascade into settlement capacity expansion. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/textiles.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/textiles.md index 6bd9bfe81..66218f9c5 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/textiles.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/textiles.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Clothing, technical fabrics, composite materials. | +Textiles and composites cover the full spectrum from basic clothing fiber to technical aerospace composites, carbon-weave structural reinforcement, and the specialty biological fabrics — brach fiber among them — that carry a cultural premium in specific corridor markets. Production requires 0.8t of organic compounds and 0.2t of chemicals per output tonne. The organic compounds dependency means textile production is effectively a biosphere-dependent industry: worlds without viable complex ecology cannot run it independently and must import. + +The commodity is a direct input to consumer goods (0.3t per unit), making textiles a quiet but consistent component of the broadest demand category in the simulation. Consumer goods demand is ubiquitous and market-driven; a textiles shortage ripples into consumer goods production at every manufacturing node that depends on it. Regional ubiquity means this effect is not uniform — outer corridor nodes with limited local textile production are more exposed to import disruptions than inner-corridor manufacturing hubs. + +At 50 Tractus per tonne, textiles carry a real price premium over the base raw materials that go into them, reflecting the processing complexity and the biosphere requirement. Specialty textile streams — brach fiber from Braemar, technical composites for shipbuilding — command prices above the generic catalog figure, but the simulation tracks this category at the generic level. No certification, no shadow channel. Technical composites occasionally attract attention for dual-use concerns, but not enough to generate a formal shadow market. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/timber.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/timber.md index 59b862e60..d548c1914 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/timber.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/timber.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Structural and decorative wood from managed forests. 40-60 year replanting cycles. | +Timber is regional because forest ecosystems take decades to establish and managed stands require 40–60 year replanting cycles. Only worlds with sufficient terraforming maturity and appropriate biome conditions run economically significant forestry operations. The commodity covers structural lumber, engineered wood products, and the high-grade decorative timber used in prestige construction and cultural goods. + +The primary production use is structural panel fabrication, where 1t of timber combined with 0.5t of refined metals yields one full unit of structural panels — the higher-yield route compared to the stone-based alternative. Systems with active forestry enjoy a permanent input cost advantage for panel production over stone-route producers. That advantage flows through into habitat module construction, rail infrastructure, and any other panel-dependent final good. + +Forty to sixty year replanting cycles mean that disruptions to forest cover — whether from industrial overcut, ecological events, or rapid-settlement construction demand — cannot be corrected quickly. A world that exhausts its standing timber inventory shifts to the stone panel route for a generation. Traders holding timber futures on active frontier development zones are pricing replanting timelines. No political flags; no shadow channel. Timber is too bulky to move for purposes other than legitimate construction. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/tourism.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/tourism.md index 365c6c371..5f7153945 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/tourism.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/tourism.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Cultural tourism, prestige destinations. Cannot freight the experience. | +Tourism is the experience of being in a specific place for its own value — Kvitfjell's marble quarry district, the Braemar highland circuit, the VGV valley harvest walk, Ostmark's old-city precincts with five centuries of intact Germanic-Scandinavian architecture. These experiences are location-bound by definition: the marble is at Kvitfjell, the wine landscape is in the VGV valley, the architecture is at Ostmark. No amount of holo-reconstruction elsewhere reproduces the specific status and social meaning of actually having been there. + +Concentrated production ubiquity reflects the rarity of genuine destination experiences. Most systems have functional hospitality; only a handful have the cultural depth, natural spectacle, or historical significance to generate tourism demand from beyond their immediate corridor. These destinations are permanently supply-limited — Kvitfjell cannot expand its marble district, Ostmark cannot replicate its founding-era architecture, and Braemar's highland ecology is biologically constrained. Demand can expand; supply cannot. This creates the structural premium that distinguishes tourism from ordinary hospitality. + +At 100 Tractus per contract — the highest base price in the service tier — tourism represents discretionary spending by travelers for whom the trip itself is the product. Elastic demand means tourism is disproportionately sensitive to income shocks across the Reach; prestige travel contracts sharply during economic downturns in ways that basic hospitality does not. The economic signal value is therefore in the gap: strong tourism spending indicates that significant populations across the Reach have disposable income sufficient to plan multi-hop journeys, which is a leading indicator of broad economic health rather than just local conditions at the destination. diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/transport_vehicles.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/transport_vehicles.md index 30d86ed98..75b0dc466 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/transport_vehicles.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/transport_vehicles.md @@ -16,3 +16,8 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 0 | | Description | Ships, ground vehicles. Commission safety registration. | +Transport vehicles covers the full range of personal and commercial ground and atmospheric transport — from individual intra-city vehicles to regional planetary cargo haulers and intra-system passenger craft. The production recipe uses premium inputs: 0.8t of advanced alloys (not base refined metals), 0.3 units of electronics, and 0.3 units of drive cores. The alloy specification reflects the structural and thermal requirements of atmospheric entry, high-speed ground operation, and the pressure cycling that intra-system vessels experience. + +Commission safety registration applies to all vessel classes and ground vehicles above a certain gross weight threshold. The Compact's contestation is categorical rather than case-by-case: Compact member systems do not recognize Commission authority to license vehicles operating within their own transit networks. In practice, vessels moving between Compact and non-Compact systems carry registration to avoid gate complications; vehicles and craft operating exclusively within Compact territory often do not. The dispute is a jurisdictional friction point, not a prohibition — unregistered Compact vehicles are legal under Compact law, simply not legal under Commission frameworks. + +MVG is the canonical high-end manufacturer in this category, with bespoke vehicle construction on 1–2 year lead times. The broader market includes numerous regional producers supplying standard-specification vehicles on shorter schedules. At 350 Tractus per unit, transport vehicles are among the most expensive routine economic goods in the final tier, with demand responsive to both individual income levels (personal vehicles) and freight economics (commercial vehicles). diff --git a/wiki/economics/commodities/water.md b/wiki/economics/commodities/water.md index 05d45916e..c21af1d46 100644 --- a/wiki/economics/commodities/water.md +++ b/wiki/economics/commodities/water.md @@ -16,3 +16,10 @@ | Panic Threshold (weeks) | 1 | | Description | Water ice, atmospheric gases. Life support critical. Fusion fuel feedstock. | +Water is the foundation commodity. Every inhabited node consumes it continuously — for life support, for agriculture, for industrial processes — and no substitution exists at scale. The Reach's terraformed worlds and station habitats carry water reserves measured in days to weeks of consumption, not months. When supply interrupts, rationing begins within hours. + +The commodity's true economic importance is as fusion fuel feedstock. Each tonne of fusion fuel requires eight tonnes of water to refine (D-187). This 8:1 yield ratio turns the physical distribution of water ice across the Reach into a structural determinant of energy costs. Systems with local water surplus — primarily inner corridor worlds with active hydrospheres and ice-rich asteroid belts — carry a permanent fuel-cost advantage over frontier nodes that must import water before they can produce fuel at all. + +At base price of 2 Tractus per tonne, water moves in bulk and generates thin margins. The value is not in water itself but in the energy cost differential it creates downstream. A node running a water deficit is quietly running an energy deficit that will manifest in smelting throughput, alloy output, and electronics fabrication costs before the shortage ever shows up in water pricing. Traders who track fuel feedstock availability often see supply chain disruptions before they become visible in the affected commodities. + +No Commission certification is required and no shadow market operates. Water is too cheap and too bulky to smuggle profitably.