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Allied Markets

In a league game you can buy from another planet's Trading Market. Open Trading from the InterPlanetary Operations menu, then Markets, and choose a planet.

Only planets your Coordinator has marked Allied are listed. Barren Realms Elite had no way to trade between planets at all, so this is new.

Your order is a bid, not a purchase

What you see is that planet's market as it was when we last heard from it. The screen tells you the date. News travels between planets in packets, and a packet takes as long as it takes, so by the time your order arrives the goods may have been sold, the amount may have shrunk, or the price may have changed.

So your order is a bid. When you send it:

  • Your gold is held straight away. It leaves your treasury but is not spent yet, and it is not counted as gold you have.
  • When the bid arrives, the other planet sells to you only if the goods are still there at the same price, and you are still allies.
  • If it sells, the goods come back to you on the next packet.
  • If it does not, your gold comes back instead, and you are told why.

If the seller still has some but not all of what you asked for, you get what there was and the rest of your gold returns. You are never charged for goods that did not arrive.

Waiting, and getting your gold back

Bids Out on the Trading menu lists every bid you have waiting and how much gold is held against them. That gold is invisible everywhere else, so this is where to look when your treasury seems short.

Nothing is lost if a packet goes missing. A bid that never gets an answer is given up on after the same number of days your sysop set for lost attack forces, and your gold is returned. If the answer turns up later than that, it is ignored rather than paid twice.

Two things worth knowing

Each planet keeps its own list of who it is allied with. A planet can therefore stop selling to you before you have heard about it, and your bid will come back refused. That is not a fault.

Your sysop can turn this feature off for the whole league, in which case Trading does not appear on the InterPlanetary Operations menu.