Toolbox Theory Part 2- Trade and Production UI (16.02.2026)

Welcome back everyone. I am gonna be honest, I have not expected to make new dev diary so soon, but another milestone has been achieved so.. Let's discuss it.

Trade Overhaul - New Types of Trade

So, in this iteration there will be three types of trade happening in the Sector. Internal Trade (in-faction), External Trade (outside faction) and Trade Agreements / Private Contracts. Factions WILL always prioritize internal trade, over any other type, which means that faction will try first to solve their in-faction demand, before exporting outside, towards the Sector.

Before this diary, I have been mentioning countless times about making factions pay for imports. This was meant to make you decide, if certain structures are worth rushing, due to their demand generating huge upkeep.

I basically abandoned idea of making you pay for imports, due to the fact that starting colonies had huge deficits, and made them too much investment for too little gain. Instead I decided to rework how you earn income from trades. So now let's discuss each type of trade in detail.

Internal trade

This trade you should think of as trade done purely by merchants from your faction, under your protection, to ensure that all your worlds are not starving.

This one is least profitable from all 3, but easiest one to expand. You earn that one by supplying your own industries, from which you get 5% cut. While it is the lowest, and first trade to be prioritized by faction, it has one huge advantage. This trade is guaranteed trade, so it will always happen no matter what. Making your world's have very very low chance of getting any shortages.

External trade and Accessibility

This specific one should be treated as done not by factions directly, but rather by independent traders, like Starfarer in early-game stages. Faction has ability to sell, cause they produce more, than they consume, and has certain stuff, that they are willing to buy. This trade has been designed in such way, due to two facts. Performance and as one of two safety features, to ensure entire sector won't starve from supplies, because Hegemony does not wanna trade with anyone.

Profitability of this one is quite high but it has risks as well. This one YOU can only earn if your in-faction production is greater than in-faction demand. Here you earn 15% cut, but there is one string attached to it, Which ties to both exports and imports. If entire sector experience shortage (Global Supply being smaller than Global Demand), you have chance to be market, with deficit, which means your production will be lowered!

Same goes with entire sector produces more than there is demand for it. Your market might end up not selling those, causing excess. With external trade there is one stat you want to maximize: Accessibility. As it is going to be single stat, determining who first engages in both external imports and exports.

To also give more customization, you will be able to choose market order, used for internal trade, so markets with highest accessibility will be the ones, to engage in external trade.

Break down of 2 trades, Internal and External on Chicomoztoc (Local one is also internal just on local market scale)

Internal and External - Reasons

Main reason for why both have different profit margins is simple. This is my way of implementing the same thing, which I wanted with imports just in different, more friendly way, which does not cause starting colony of size 3 to be on like : -300k income. Now, that each industry has also their own demand, you will need to ask yourself a question. Do you really need to build all structures? Because each new structure, will mean more demand in faction. Which will also mean, those commodities you could get 15% trade cut, you will only get 5%.

Trade Agreements

This is most lucrative deal you can get, from that you earn from 20 to 100% income, depending on type of contract Trade agreements are mainly mechanic, designed for exotic type commodities, that with new economy system, entire sector can't really demand, because there is no way to supply entire sector. Trade Agreements can also appear for normal commodities, but they will have cut around 25%-40% . For those commodities listed this will be ONLY way to earn money from.

• Lobster
• Domain Grade Machinery
• Compound
• Celluar Vapors
• Electronics

Remember that whole mission in bar that some guy wanted you to have colony with x amount of supply of guns for example ? That quest is getting complete overhaul, and will be one of ways to get yourself a private contract. Once you start to produce any of these, you will get transmissions, that certain individuals would wish to see you. To discuss a potential trade partnership.

Lorem Ipsum

Then you will need to head to bar and discuss such deal. Once in effect, you will have one of best ways to earn money, BUT such relationships require certainty.

Sometimes your faction might not be able to produce what was required during one month. Mishaps happens in all deals, but if they are going to continue, such agreement wont last long.

With each contract fulfilled you will earn more and more reputation, which means more customers and much better deals! This mechanic is particular designed for those who really really wanna engage with colonies. You don't need to, but those are best way to maximize profits.

Scavenger Guilds - Prevention measure against doom spiral of demand

Now you probably gonna ask, what if for example there would be such huge global shortage that could cause the entire sector to destabilize because you have enabled a lot of faction mods? I got you covered here with one mechanic that will ensure the supply chain will always be there — Scavenger Guilds.

Scavenger Guilds act as a second safety net for the economy. Whenever global demand is higher than global supply by 10%, they will mitigate further shortages across the sector. This will also make the affected commodity much more valuable to trade externally.

Scavenge Guild (Disregard Import stuff, its still old tooltip)

New Faction Commodity Data UI

With this module, it will be very important to keep track of how much your faction consumes and produces, as well to see also data about other factions. This is where this new UI will come in handy, and yes, Arknights Endfield was the inspiration.

Commodity Data for Each faction

Possible Mod Incompatibles with this Overhaul

Due to excessive changes, there might be slight incompatibilities between AoTD and other mods. Given that entire mod is labeled as Feature Overhaul, that is given to assume, that some mods won't simply play together. Below will be listed mods, that might be incompatible and to what extend, and if it can be resolved by either player or modder.

• LTV Economy Overhaul - 100% Incompatibility, due to both mods trying to overhaul same concept : Economy. Cant be done anything about it and will result in both mods crash
• Any mod that adds custom commodity that is ALSO DEMANDED BY OTHER INDUSTRIES : won't cause crashes but might cause commodity to be in constant shortage across entire sector, or lore issue being that somehow scavengers were able to get hands on that commodity. Those can be fixed by both players and modders, will require editing two csv files, commodities.csv and aotd_econ_data.csv
• Any mod that adds custom submarket like Open market 2.0 Electric Bogallo - This one also wont cause crashes, but will cause overflow of commodities, like 3m supplies or something like that. This one CAN ONLY be resolved by modders, either me or mod author, of which conflict occurs. By default I have covered only UAF and Nexerelin, as those two mods are only ones that I play, that also add or change vanilla submarkets. In that case I ll say immediately, that I dont plan to cover all mods, that add such submarkets. If any author will wish to implement compatibility patch, this will be literally 3 lines of code and nothing more.

If you have anu questions regarding this new overhaul, I invite you all to my discord server. Link is on website. I am well aware this module is the biggest one so far in terms of changes, and that there might be a lot of questions, regarding how stuff exactly works. I have given my best to explain it as much as possible.

Next dev diary will cover in greater detail Trade Contracts and also Trade Events. Yes that is right - events... wait a minute that means Virtues of Society is back? As I said, some ideas behind this module would and will be implemented in other modules, still VoS is obliterated and will stay as such.

Quick wall of art for distraction

A lot of new sprites right?