The Commercial Goods Market in Space Station Designer

As I have briefly mentioned in previous entries, Space Station Designer features a commercial goods market where players can trade the products manufactured in their orbital outposts in exchange for money. You can read more about the various commercial goods available and the recipes for manufacturing them in this post.

The commercial goods market screen is accessed by selecting the ‘dollar’ button located in the right panel of the ‘Global Screen’:

As shown in the picture below, the commercial goods market screen is comprised by two elements: a table that lists the commercial goods and a graph that shows the evolution of the price of said goods.

The table shows the number of units available for selling, along with their current unit price. Notice that only those units that have been ferried down to Earth can be sold.

The player can then specify how many units to sell. Entering a valid combination of units (i.e., non-negative numbers and lower or equal than the number of units available) will enable the ‘Sell Goods’ button which, when pressed, will display a confirmation message for the user to accept:

On the left hand side of the table each commercial good has a toggle button with an ‘eye’ icon, which allows players to hide/display the associated line plot. This is specially useful in order to reduce the noise in the graph. In the bottom area of the graph there will be a series of radio buttons which will allow players to modify the time scale (this feature, along with the correct labels for the X axis, still needs to be implemented, though!).

Clicking on the button featuring a magnifying glass in the top right area of the graph will open the screen for buying commercial markets forecast reports:

This screen allows player to request a forecast report for all commercial goods. The cost of the report is a function of two parameters: the accuracy of the data and the timespan. By investing in these kind of reports, players will be able to make better decisions when it comes to selling the commercial goods manufactured at the various orbital outposts. This provides an extra layer of depth, as players will need to decide when is the best time to sell manufactured goods. If you have any feedback about this feature, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below!