Quote:Additionally the lore value of each of those commodities varies wildly. Most "research" commodities (Artifacts, Xeno Relics, Cryo Organisms, Azurite Gas) have zero sustainable lore value because once something has been researched, it's rarely further required, especially when it has no practical value. (Like, Iridium Ore has quite a bit of lore value as there might be many factions who need it to construct new ships for instance. On the contrary, few factions would need a reliable source of mass Xeno Relics for anything.)

Quote:I didn't say that faction commodities are bad, I mentioned that some of them have minimal lore value. What I mean is perhaps best ilustrated by other examples. Commodities such as Stabiline or Cardamine have giant lore value (knowing firsthand from leading Wisp), because you can easily secure trade contracts for them with many factions. This leads to more RP and ultimately more incentive to fly those -- to supply RP efforts of other factions which in turn boosts your diplomacy and activity. In other words, people need them.

On the other hand you have stuff like Xeno Relics. Nobody /needs/ Xeno Relics, they aren't used to build ships or remedy problems of people, they are a luxury commodity. However unlike Artifacts, they cannot exactly be substitutes for stuff like pieces of art or archaeological artifacts (which is what I've been doing with Custodi), as they are mined in space. Thus, there is little explanation why anyone would /need/ them and why would they ever reach a high price in large quantities.