Settled Systems Economy Overhaul REMASTERED V1.0

After a year of tweaks, changes, crashes, ups and downs, life, and otherwise…I’m back with a VAST update to my baby, SSEO – Settled Systems Economy Overhaul. Players are now able to manufacture, purchase, trade, or steal resource shipments, shops pay better for goods they sell, enemies and civilians now carry valuables, and many skills and backgrounds have seen tweaks to help players define themselves by their relationship with commerce, as well as add player progression to the new systems in place.

CRATES, SHIPMENTS and WHOLESELLING

The key feature from Fallout 4 returns in Starfield, but with extra functionality inspired by other space games like Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous. Getting resources for building outposts, customizing weapons, and manufacturing expensive goods is more convenient than ever. In exchange, this convenience has been reflected in the price of each collection. Sure, they’re more expensive to purchase than buying each item by itself, but the profit margins on trading in shipments is a worthwhile source of income. Furthermore, all of the 50+ crates players transport have been added to the leveled list, and these can also be bundled up into shipments of larger quantities. Boxed commodities come in 3 sizes:

Crates, Shipments, and Extra Large Shipments.

The amount of items in each will depend on the items being bundled, with only some item types coming in XL shipments. Some of these will require specific related perks to craft, to simulate the package handling skill curve of maintaining them during long hauls. Wholesalers will require a background in packing payloads to create crates, and upgrading it to higher ranks will unlock recipes for higher tiers of shipments for production. Those with more illicit cargo will need to be well-versed in Deception to create contraband shipments, with some shipment types requiring other higher-tiered skills to produce. For example, only a chemist can safely store and maintain a large shipment of Aurora.

CARGO TYPES

Manufactured goods shipments are a great way to both acquire rare crafting materials and maximize the revenue of player factories. Crafting crates of 5 will require Payloads 1 to produce, and Shipments of 10 will require Payloads 2. These will be sold at general stores, the Trade Authority, and from civilian cargo ships and traders.

Contraband Shipments can be sold in bulk. These require Deception 4 and Payloads 1 to produce and are valued at an extreme premium since they will take players a while to collect. Due to how weight affects contraband, they are also very inconvenient to smuggle. Though much lighter, Aurora shipments require a higher amount of items to craft and proper chemical handling through science will be necessary as well. These will not spawn in the game world, and can only be created by players.

Base minerals (those in the Drydock Blues Rotation) can be bundled into Small shipments of 500, large shipments of 2000, and extremely heavy extra-large shipments of 5000. You can find small and large shipments all across the settled systems from traders like the Trade Authority, mining shops, and General Stores. Extra large shipments, can only be purchased from radiant mining and fracking outposts across the expanse.

Fruit can be bundled into small packages of 5, and shipments of 10. These can be purchased at civilian outposts, general stores, and grocery stores. These will be frequently found on cargo ships, but have the lowest profit margin of all commodities.

All cargo players can deliver through mission boards are now sold by the trade authority, specialty vendors, and starships in orbit. Players can purchase these, and bundle them up into collections of 5 or 10 to be sold for a profit. There are so many, and so many ways of gathering these, that traders and pirates will effectively be on a scavenger hunt for building these into shipments.

*Combining this with other mods that add in price fluctuations can make the player into a proper space trucker/trader. My favorite is in a mod I think fits any load order – Ships Need Gas.

PERKS and Backgrounds

The commerce skill has been renamed to “Trade Authorized”. Instead of being a gameplay reflection of the player’s ability to negotiate for better prices, it instead symbolizes the player registering as a certified vendor through the Trade Authority. Higher ranks will increase the sell prices of items to a much greater degree than the base game, lowers the purchase price to vanilla levels, but will also motivate vendors to open up their pockets a bit deeper for an esteemed traveling trader like you.

The social tree has been completely reordered, making Trade Authorized a tier 2 skill. Players beginning their adventure through the settled systems will have to do so clawing their way outta poverty, all the while developing the social skills required to put them ahead of other applications to vendor certification.

The geology perk will reward players with an increased amount of extra minerals from the base game

Diplomat background no longer comes with commerce on selection, but it has been replaced with Diplomacy. That way players can better fit the role of a smooth talker who can get the most volatile of enemies to walk away from a fight.

Those with a background in Long hauling will begin the game with payloads instead of ballistic weapons, so enterprising players can jump right into making money on the commodities market, and make a splash doing so…

The Wanted trait is treated as a special bounty on the player that is substantial enough to bring together bounty hunters across the galaxy to bring you in, or to attack other hunters to ensure your bounty keeps going higher. Because of this, I think being able to pay it away with a small credit sum of 3000 dollars is simply too forgiving. Now, the player will have to pay off a million dollars to your local Tracker to escape the manhunt. This sum will hang over the head of a player, and the path to paying it off to evade Ecliptic and other hungry hunters will become a playthrough goal in of itself.

The starter home trait will have players begin the game with a 1,250,000 loan with Gal Bank in exchange for their dream home. I imagine you might frequently find much of your morality…..flexible in pursuit of paying your now 5000 weekly mortgage. It’s a tale as old as time.

The Kid Stuff trait will still carry the 2 percent income pull, but your parents will now collect up to 5,000 dollars a week from your income instead of the max 500 in the base game. New Atlantis isn’t once described as a afffordable place to live, but love is priceless.

Faction allegiances will now have a much more defined presence in the economy. Players with citizenship in the Freestar Collective or the United Colonies will avoid the tariffs, taxes, and general xenophobia foreigners face in the marketplace, and members of the Crimson Fleet will find a friend in finance. Vendors will discount goods up to 20% percent, giving settled whole sellers a great place to get a head start on profit margins. In consequence, rival factions will place 2x the bounty on foreign enemies, instead of the 1.5 in the base game.

QUEST REWARDS and WORLD

In the base game, the only way to reliably make money is by selling loot from dead enemies, chests and outposts With SSEO, every opportunity to line your pockets will be viable, giving players more ways to define the day-to-day of their characters.

All Quest Types, (Main, Side, Radiant, Companion, mission boards, etc) have had their credit rewards adjusted to make questing a viable hustle. Players will earn more from quests as they rank up, and bonuses from faction allegiances and quest choices have been increased, further enticing audibles in your story.

It now costs 50,000 credits to join the VIP lounge at Euphorika

Bribing Bounty Hunters is now 10x more expensive (about 10,000 to 20,000 per encounter)

High Level Creatures will drop MUCH more resources, making the killing of boss animals a more rewarding experience.

Xenofresh will pay 10x more than before for each rank, making this a nice side hustle for any long stay in neon.

GalBank ships now carry an increased amount of credits on board, making them valuable prey for space townies like you

Civilians, spacers, street gangs and other enemies now have the chance to carry credits, treasure maps, valuables and even contraband. Citizens with briefcases and duffle bags can spawn extra valuables, and valuable ones at that. Clearing outposts and robbing civilians blind can now be a viable way to acquire some extra loot or side missions.

Chabasss oil is more readily available in neon.

Varuun renegades now have the chance to carry heretic papers and a brand new contraband item – the iconic ceremonial groat dagger.

As in SSEO Vol. 1, MANY items and resources have been revalued to better represent a realistic relative value to the food at restaurants, and manufactured goods are now priced to ALWAYS offer a profit margin over the resources used to produce them.

All of the non-utility clothing items in-game have had their prices adjusted.

Ship parts are extremely expensive, to simulate the expense and rarity of ship ownership in the lore. Ships will now be much more expensive to customize and purchase, and to counter this, base-level ship registration fees have been increased to 95%. Players will still be able to make extreme profits when they upgrade their Trade Authorized rank to 4, but their time will be better spent raiding cargo holds than taking stolen ships to sell second-hand to ship techs.

Player Homes have had their prices adjusted to better reflect the value of housing.

Minerals have had their prices adjusted. In addition, mineral deposits will take much more damage from the cutter, making laser skill a must for any enterprising miner.

To balance this:
Common minerals give out 7x the yield
Uncommon gives 5x the yield
Rare gives 4x the yield
Exotic gives 3 upfront

VENDORS

Some vendors in-game have had their vendor credits increased by additional levels depending on the status of the shop. For example, the Trade Authority has a HEAVILY increased credit reserve, to help make them feel like the base of trade for citizens of the settled systems and for the players as well. Ship Vendors have increased reserves so they can afford to purchase higher-priced starships from players.

Due to their vastly increased vendor prices, they will now restock every 4 days instead of 2.

Civilian Starships now have an increased credit limit, making the many travelers in space into proper vendors. Players can now trade with these traveling salesmen and cargo workers on the spaceways, and the more immoral of us can play the part of interstellar highway man, robbing them for their goods instead of bartering.

Radiant outposts will be the best place to find specific resources. For example, in contrast to vendors within civilized limits, the mining, industrial and fracking outposts have a surplus of rare manufactured goods needed for crafting, and vendors keep inorganic shipments in high supply, perfect for acquiring materials for outpost building or selling to shipyards. These items are of course priced a bit higher in bulk, but this is the price of convenience.

All specialized vendors within city limits (ones with a reduced level list, essentially all except UC surplus stores, trade authority locations, and general stores) will have slightly better buy and sell prices for all their items on offer. Players who want to maximize profits should try to specialize in selling their specific goods to specific dealers. The trade authority is something of a generalized trader now. good for selling in bulk.

I hand-picked a few vendors who exude an air of shadyness and I made them a fence for stolen goods. These include the Emporium, and Legrande Liquors in NEON, and Apex Electronics in New Atlantis. Since making exploration more rewarding through making items more valuable was my original plan with the mod, I had also given the Emporium special tweaks to make it the place to go with your treasures. Tevin will sell his expensive collectibles at 2.2x the value of the item, making players looking to decorate their spaces with fine goods have to pay a fair commission to Tevin. To balance this, he will also purchase your goods at 1.75x the value.

OUTPOSTS

(Copied from my previous release SSEO Outpost Investor)

I wanted to push players into taking advantage of the outpost system by making resource collecting more profitable and purchasing them more punishing. The problem is, once a player has a working outpost mining resources and/or producing goods, the player would essentially have a money printer that doesn’t take THAT much effort to set up. In addition, vanilla Starfield is balanced so that manufactured goods are (typically) not very profitable to produce since the value of resource costs is usually much more than the value of the item you are producing.

BUILDING

In order to address the balance issues both I and Bethesda introduced into the game, I made some changes to make the player think more about their Outpost designs. Special thanks to user VirtualChrisM for inspiration.
The changes are as follows:

All outpost items now require financial investment to place, to simulate installation/delivery/manufacturing fees. (take your pick) These fees scale with the quality of the outpost item.

Manufactured goods have had their prices increased significantly in scale with the cost of production. Finding and collecting these items out in the world is now a worthwhile endeavor with drama, as the player can sell them for a quick payday, or keep them for upgrading gear or producing manufacturers in outposts. Each manufactured item has been hand-tweaked to be profitable to produce, with the profit margins scaling with the perk cost to produce them. -SPECIAL THANKS TO ColinBT1994 FOR THE IDEA, AND SPECIAL THANKS TO remosito ON REDDIT FOR POINTING OUT THE ISSUES WITH VANILLA MANUFACTURING! –

Tier 1 Items pay 20% more than their crafting cost
Tier 2 Items pay 35% more than their crafting cost
Tier 3 Items pay 50% more than their crafting cost.

Most items have had their inorganic and organic resource cost increased 5x to try to mitigate the changes to the furniture system. (see below)

Outposts are now true long-term financial investments and HUGE ones at that. It’s going to take careful financial planning to make them more than a money sink, and they take quite a bit of time to break even on investment. But when they do finally get there, and with a proper cargo ship to transport goods, you can kiss poverty away forever.

FURNISHING SYSTEM OVERHAUL

Starfield takes place in a semi-established space fairning civilization. While players might be living in a post-apocalypse with societal stagnation befitting a dark age, capitalism is alive and thriving. Take advantage of the conveniences in the luxury living industry by purchasing pieces to furnish your properties instead of having to craft them yourself. This is my personal favorite change here, which turns every credit you earn into an easily burnable resource. Hopefully, this makes it a tad bit harder to save money, or that much easier to trade your morals for a nice couch to match the rugs. Some luxury items still require you to source resources, under the premise that they are custom-made by skilled artisans with appropriate labor fees.

Credits:

JayDovahkin