Rice is money: trading in Hostile Flagship
Published
In short: there are no credits. Towns trade by barter, and the money is rice: every price is in tonnes of rice. Rice is cargo like anything else, so your wealth takes room in your hold and has to be carried.
Rice as money
- A tonne of rice takes 1.3 m³. The carrier’s 35,000 m³ cargo hold is your bank; a fighter’s 5 m³ cargo pod carries about 4 t.
- It has been done before. In Edo Japan, wealth and samurai stipends were reckoned in koku of rice, about the rice one person eats in a year[1].
- One price both ways. A town pays exactly what it charges, and every town charges the same for now. In the developer’s words: “it’s post-apocalypse-ish so humans shouldn’t price-gouge each other”.
Prices are placeholders while the game is tuned.
Where and how
- Land inside a town’s trade ring, out of combat. Only places that trade have one. Any of your ships can trade: the carrier or a small craft.
- Open the inventory (F2). The town shows up as “Bangkok market” on the right.
- Drag to trade: a market row into your hold to buy, a hold row onto the market to sell. Or right-click for Buy, Sell or Move amount.
- Every deal waits for you: a bar at the bottom shows what it costs, with an amount box. Enter confirms, Esc cancels.
Goods come in lots sized so the rice always works out in whole tonnes: buy something and sell it back, and you come out even.
Related
Sources
- Koku, Wikipedia.
As a rule of thumb, one koku was considered a sufficient quantity of rice to feed one person for one year.