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FROM THE POSTBAG: PLANETS WITHOUT ECONOMIES

by Hazed

A Financier who was working hard on the map for his forthcoming planet recently sent a letter in to the Star office. What would happen, he asked, if he put in his planet without having an exchange on it?

Well, I answered, it would be a planet without an economy. Nobody would be able to trade on the planet, it would produce and consume absolutely nothing, and therefore it would have no way of making money.

I thought that my reply would have made it clear that leaving off the exchange was definitely something to avoid, and that the matter was closed, but no. I received a follow-up question. So what would happen if somebody put in a planet with an exchange, then amended the planet map to take the exchange off, and then later, put the exchange back - could they use this as a sneaky way to force a re-roll if they didn't like the production and consumption figures that fate had dealt them?

After I stopped laughing at the audacity of this idea, I answered again. No, it wouldn't work. While I admire the attempt to exploit a loophole, the fact is that if a planet goes into the game with an economy, then it will continue to have an economy even if the exchange somehow vanishes off the map. And if it goes in without an economy, it won't ever magically grow one even if you do put an exchange onto the planet at a later date.

The proof is what happened to Titan recently. For centuries it plodded along as a resource planet, then all of a sudden something goes wrong and it becomes a world without an economy. However, despite showing as a no-production world, it still had a working exchange and (if factories were allowed on the planet) they would have continued to run as normal. Then, hey presto, it got fixed and was a resource world again... with no perceptible change to its production, consumption, or prices.

Whether a planet has an exchange or not is determined when it is first linked into the game, and will never change thereafter.

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