Realistic Tariffs

Description

A small gameplay and economy mod which is vanilla friendly it replaces static global tariffs with a more reactive & realistic system meant to add to the immersion of the game economy. Local governments now actively lower trade barriers and provide rebates for commodity exports.

Additionally, Ship & Weapons buy & sell prices now increase if there are deficits in the Ship Hulls & Weapons commodity.

To add some extra flavor selling faction design ships to their factions provides reputation and boost in credits when these factions are at war, like selling XIV battlegroup ships to the hegemony.

Installation instructions

• []Download the latest release.[/]

  []Extract into

  Starsector/mods the folder structure should be "..\StarSector.v0. 9. 8a-RC8\game\mods\RealisticTariffs\(files)"[/]

  []Enable Realistic Tariffs in the launcher.[/]

First as of 2026 in vanilla Starsector you don't get a notification when there is a significant demand for commodities, secondly tariffs are not immersive or logical the main purpose of tariffs is to control imports & is usually done in a per commodity basis.

Since it's impossible or extremely complex to apply a tariff per commodity, I did the second-best thing it came to mind... when markets cant meet the demand of multiple commodities and have these in deficit these progressively lower the tariffs on that market, as a normal government would do.

Main features

📉 Dynamic Tariff Scaling

The mod monitors every market(planet, station..) known to the player, when a market has deficit in a commodity, the local authorities will slash tariffs to attract independent traders. The table bellow shows the impact that each commodity has on the market tariffs when on deficit, they subtract from the default of 18% until they reach the minimum value of 3%.

New Global Tariffs Range:

Min Tariffs

Max Tariffs (Default)

Ships and weapons prices boost

Currently, in-game you have an economic demand for ship hulls and weapons, this can get into deficit as any normal commodity but doesn't affect ship or weapons prices in any way.

As I was addressing the tariff values and intel, I also decided to boost ship and weapon prices based on market demand and any ongoing factional wars (excluding terrorists and pirates). Selling ships and weapons doesn't reduce the deficit, though.

I haven't tested these values enough to determine whether the price boost gives the player too many credits. However, since selling a ship in-game often doesn't provide a big economic incentive, the impact still shouldn't be too significant and the values can always be adjusted by the player in rt_settings.json.

1 - Does this work with Nexerelin ? 

Yes, from my limited testing it works as intended due to telling in mod_info.json to run after nexerelin, nexerelin also modifies tariffs but as this mod runs after it nullfies nexerelin mod changes.

2 - Can I disable Tariff Rebates and Factional ship buybacks? 

Yes, just go to the mod folder -> data -> config -> rt_settings.json and set the "isExportRebateActive" to false and the same for "isFactionBuybackProgramActive" ..

3 - Can I change tariffs values and other settings in this mod? 

Yes, there is a number of settings you can change just go to mod folder -> data -> config -> rt_settings.json

4 - Do I need lw_lazylib or MagicLib to use this mod?

No, you dont need it !

5 - How do I know my current mods will work with this mod?

If your mods don't alter commodities, tariffs and ship prices it should be fine, but the best way is to start a new game see if new intel notifications are created about market deficits, buy and sell a faction design ship to confirm you get a reputation boost once, buy some commodities see if you get a rebate and if a market with at least a commodity deficit has less than 18% tariffs.