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How does one convert the currency of a new found race?

DocTomoe

Well-Known Member
I have been wondering how does one convert the currency of a new found race to KS?

The Lorath tend to use valuable gems and minerals as currency for items that they wished to trade between one another. I'm wondering how some one would go about converting such material worth into KS intended for the use of purchasing goods from Yamatai.

Additionaly, to what groups and organizations would natural resources be most valuble?
 
Probably Emrys Industries.

NovaCorp has ways of making its own, and Ketsuri Fleet Yards has no problem collecting its own.

Verious Nepleslian companies would be intrested, but they'd strip mine.

The problem with gems and minerals is they tend to loose their worth once you're in a society where that sort of thing can be made easily. When you can just arange atoms into any molecule and substance you want that is. That's why digitial credit is the only thing that goes well.
 
Yay, my race is completely broken!

Thank you Yamatai! You have liberated my race from it's undeveloped state and risk of being invaded by Misshu!

Screw you Yamatai! You have delivered my race into economic chaos, and opened my door to corruption from affar!

Not to mention you're going to steal my pillows.... jerks.
 
This is a thread topic that needs to be re-opened/discussed more properly. As someone who's been trying to make a species, I've wondered VERY intensely what the Brolt would even have economy-wise when compared to the sheer size of a galactic presence like the sector they're going to be exposed to. There's really no solid-footing for creating an idea of economics within their species (beyond material and maybe nutrition-value, since those are a society-necessity/life-necessity) even to this day based on what I've looked around for/at.
 
The way I worked it out for the Shravana Hive was, they have a small, weak economy and live in an asteroid belt, so they're much poorer per-capita than an industrial nation on a habitable planet would be. Still, they do have significant resources, and their technology is only a few years behind other Freespacers, who are still relatively advanced (comparable to Nepleslia, if nowhere near Yamatai's levels.)

So, ultimately I worked out that their per capita income should be at least $40,000, not too shabby but certainly not wealthy. Multiplied by the population that's a GNP of about half a billion, which sounds about right. I suspect the planet of Yamatai would beat that by about a quadrillion, let alone the rest of the empire, so it's probably more useful to think about making smaller interactions.
 
I would think you would want to find some sort of key commodity (could be multiple commodities) that both nations shared, and then use that. So if you know 1 KS is worth a brick of gold, and new alien species thinks 3 XX = a brick of gold, then you now have a conversion rate of sorts.
 
Well, this is something that becomes very subjective based upon the various types of factions. It also doesn't exactly depict how a species would justify their own production-rates via their own economics. An example might be that the Brolt have such high degrees of weaponized plasma-production materials and technology experience that they ultimately would find most technology involving it worthless and the materials to produce the various kinds of it would be so rampant that most of their plasma technology would be cheap to produce. However (as an example, not saying they are), Yamatai might have a ridiculous lack of these and as such would find VAST value in trade versus economical exchange of currency. While on the other foot Nepleslia might be running rampant and as such both of them have to assess whether their currencies would be equal via some other resource.

TLDR: it creates a potential for "run-off" economics. It might be wise to either have staff (setting-wise) support the initial economics of newer nations to help equalize/ensure that things "even out". Otherwise you might have a potential economic boom via factions (Yamatai trades tech to Brolt, the Brolt back their plasma needs, ultimately resulting in the two exploding in terms of capabilities and equipment) rather than a more palpable and (at least reasonably) predictable economy.
 
For humans, a loaf of bread or some other staple is a really good standard commodity. They used to use bushels of grain or Koku of rice in the feudal era. That gets tough when things that don't eat those are involved. With enough technology, it all comes down to energy credits, I suppose!

It is important to make sure that new factions don't have some super special thing that's disproportionate to their general tech level, since that really does wreck things when someone comes in to trade with them. That's in the guide for creating factions already. If it's not disproportionate, and their tech level is reasonable (not too high) to begin with, then the roleplaying opportunities for trade are good.

It is reasonable that someone from a more powerful economy could wreck them by making them dependent on import/export agreements. In which case the FM gets to say when enough is enough, and have them start working against the whole imperialism thing.
 
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I think it's important to remember that SARP fudges high-level economics. There's no fluctuation of exchange rates, for example. I think the main thing to remember is that, in such a massive global commercial system that any faction or species trading with the rest of the galaxy will eventually have their prices equalize relative to the rest of the world. I can't imagine any one product being any more than +/-20% compared to Yamatain prices, since even if a species doesn't produce that product/commodity at all the +20% would represent the markup for corporations trading in the goods, and subsequently a -20% would represent the markdown for anything readily available to your species that Yamatai might not have as much of. There's an exchange rate conversion table floating around the wiki somewhere, so it's a matter of falling into there.
 
Something I'll note, is that the EME(Essia Monetary Exchange https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=corp:essia_monetary_exchange) was created to fix this exact problem for the Separa'Shan and expanded to also do a lot of other things. Even if your country did something as crazy as using huge immobile boulders for currency, the EME could handle it. Or if there wasn't any currency and they handed a small bag of jewels to them. The EME is pretty aggressive about being available, so if you are having a formal nation to nation type talk, the EME would be available to them.
 
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