Trade and Economics Question: Resource Net Exporter Sells to Who?

[demibear]

I was recently answering my own questions on how to develop the Reds further into a functioning faction with a culture (as opposed to the inflatable frailing man used as a punching bag). Though stumbled on a bit of a writer's block that I think is relevant to the whole setting: just where does a resource rich world sell its resources to in the sector. By resources I mean heavy metals, "rare" earth metals (really need a better name for those), raw agricultural products.

As far as my understanding on Yamatai is they just print the elements they need. Assuming the process (powered by aether) is they take hydrogen and mimic what goes on in stars and when they supernova. What about other factions? Trying to figure where the Reds/Ryu Keiretsu are exporting all this stuff to that isn't used domestically.

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

Manufacturers, processors, distributors, bulk good traders, less resource rich worlds, etc.

The kikyo sector might have infinite resources but they still need to come from places and be brought to those places.

All the materials for the fabricators making fleets dont strip mine the local planets after all. And not every planet likely grows enough to sustain itself either. And like always price is based on scarcity and if resource X is abundant in one system but not in another than they are going to want to import Resource X and will pay above market for it to keep a supply due to supply and demand.

Also not everywhere is yamatai which has such abundance due to its size and techology. There are likely numerous indi worlds or systems who need that surplus which is vital to them. And tbh there is no fabricator in every home that pulls atoms out of nothing to make stuff even in yamatai so you still need supply chains for less important stuff because the ones with the big fancy bulk fabricators will charge you more than its worth for the time just to print what you need in bulk imo.

Onigashima is also a good example of this. They are a textile and aggriculture exporter. They obviously make more food than they need and you have trillions of citizens just a lightyear away that still need to all eat. If you have one trillion hungry neko how many planets does it take to feed them? Even if you can just print food out of thin air how many of these fabricators are there and how fast can they print enough food to feed a trillion people 1-3 times a day? You offset this with places like onigashima who grow considerably more than they consume and export it to other systems to feed them as well because its the same problem downscaled that even if the grocery store could print every food item how many does the grocery store have and how fast can it print enough to feed thousands or more every day when you can also just get a truck in with already prepared foodstuffs all at once and just have to throw it on the shelf instead of printing that exact amount of food!

 

[Soban]

I've always like the idea in Star Trek that while you can replicate things like food/parts ect. It's not actually the most cost-effective/efficient way to do it. It's actually fairly inefficient, but really convenient when you don't have much space for storage and such. Like everything, it has it's trade offs.

I also suspect there are at least some limitations on the capabilities of the direct method. The reason that Yamatai has everything at least in my head is because they do do the mining and such to get the volume the empire needs for such low prices.

 

[Sunny D]

I like Soban's idea

There should be huge energy tradeoffs with atomic/subatomic level fabrication, either through nanotechnology or through teleportation. You can do so in a pinch, but if the entire society was doing that every day they'd be speeding their way to the heat death of the universe.

I started thinking in a parallel way when working on that white paper I mentioned a while ago (which needs another draft). Basically Yamatai and her enemies can field troops in the trillions and ships in the millions. Effective use of those forces and better technologies make them more effective, but ultimately war on that scale would come down to how quickly you can produce units, and how much resources you have access to produce them. Yeah a KIA Neko can be brought back by an ST backup, but every vat being used to reconstruct someone is a vat not used on a new unit.

In my opinion this 23rd generation warfare would ultimately come down to how quickly you can generate energy, how quickly you can expend that energy and how efficiently that energy was used in expending the energy of the enemy.

That is to say, while Yamatai has the capability to print the elements they want out of pure energy, mining would be ultimately more energy efficient and not gone out of vogue.

But that's just my opinion from what I've seen of the setting so far, and my issues with the Star Trek Deep Lore. Roddenberry had some political goals with TNG, where the replicator made its debut, the actual mechanics of it are adhoc.

 

[Yuuki]

As @Andrew has written a lot, Yugumo does a very significant fraction of the mining, it's possibly their main income, over and above everything else they do.

 

[Ametheliana]

Yamatai doesn't have fabricators that can produce organic materials and they also can't produce zesuaium. It was my understanding they only created things out of materials the fabricator had access to.

For instance, the nodal dorsal pack is a small scale fabricator but, "The pack contains enough raw material inside to produce two-cubic feet of volume objects (cumulatively), but the femtomachines can harvest raw matter from their environment..."

Just correcting that misconception going on ^^

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Otherwise, get creative and reach out to factions around you! On 188604 the planet had an overabundance of algae, some of it was radioactive somehow (I hazily remember it being in the atmosphre lmao?) and so Uso sold it to the Freespacers as chow and then the Nepleslians, too—both were RP'd! (If you were wondering how her dictatorship sustained itself financially for the Osman plot- there's your answer too!)

When Taiyou Hoshi was given a bunch of raw materials from salvage, she sent them to a business that was buying goods and they gave her a lot for it, too.

So to answer it more concisely, the conventional means of selling resources is usually involves reaching out to another player or their faction.

 

[raz]

just where does a resource rich world sell its resources to in the sector.

There is probably some kind of commodities market, even just as a most basic concept. Companies and governments buy and sell the resources available in-sector for either a market or contract value.

Just because elemental fabrication exists doesn't mean resource rich worlds (and stuff like asteroids and gas worlds) aren't still important. A ship's engineer fabricating some gold for a replacement computer board or even a whole torpedo is way different in terms of scale than the resources required to mass produce fleets of starships or metropolises. And just because fleets can be (and have been) fabricated at a Star Army starbase, it's important to remember that that's a Star Army starbase, which is representative of the setting's technological pinnacle. Not every planet or system will have access to the same tech, not even within the Yamatai Star Empire.

 

[Wes]

I'm hoping to get back to you about this on the weekend but I'm just really behind on responding to stuff right now. Sorry it's taking so long.