Spice

Spice is the primary commodity of the Spore Universe. It is used for power, building, consumption, and occasionally as a floor polish or sleep aid. There are many different types of spice which vary in rarity and price. Spice can be collected from your own mining colonies, stolen, or bought from other empires for Sporebucks. The spice is the sold on for a higher price and, depending on play style, is one of the primary sources of income for a player.

Note: On this page, costs in italics have not yet been verified in-game, but are instead calculated based on what is known about Spore's "economy". These values should not be off by more than a sporebuck or two, but please correct or de-italicize any you can verify.

Spice Types
There are 6 different colors of spice available in the Space Phase:

Planet Types
Each planet produces one color of spice. According to the strategy guide, the color of spice that it produces is determined by the color of its star and the temperature of its surface (indicated by the color of its orbit trail). Moons need not match the spice color of their parent planet.

Selling Spice
When you first make contact with a colony, and at irregular intervals afterward, Spore randomly determines the prices that colony is willing to pay for each color of spice. A colony never wants to purchase the color of spice it produces and will only pay a tiny fraction of its value. Additionally, two other colors are chosen at random and also purchased at minimum price. Of the three colors that remain, each is randomly assigned a price between one and five times the "buy price" of that color, as per the charts below. Finally, the Normal and Hard difficulty levels have their prices reduced by 20%.

Other than colonies never wanting the same color of spice they produce, there does not appear to be any weighting to the randomization. That is, all spice colors seem to be equally likely to be wanted and all potential prices seem equally likely. Additionally, although the length of time between price adjustments doesn't appear predictable, the prices do not ever appear to change when you are zoomed in to planet- or system-level. If you have a system which contains both a colony paying premium prices for a particular color and another which produces it, you can keep flying back and forth indefinitely. (Though this ceases to be a good use of your time once you have a large enough empire.)

Normal- and Hard-Mode Prices
Note: Most of the higher unverified numbers in this table are off by one to six sporebucks.

Gaining Spice
There are a number of ways to obtain spice. Your ship's cargo hold can contain up to 99 units of each color at a given time, after which no more will be picked up.

Friendly colonized planets can produce spice that the player can purchase. The places where spice is produced often offer the spice for a low price; you can sometimes re-sell the spice to nearby systems for much more. Trading spice is a nice way to start making your first Sporebucks fast.

Setting up trade routes with neighboring empires is a good way to get a variety of spice that may otherwise be hard to obtain. Trade is collected when when visiting your endpoint of the traderoute (typically the closest planet in your empire).

Once you have cash to spare to place colonies, terraform, and build factories, your empire can begin its own spice mining operations. The amount of spice storage space available depends on the number of colonies on the planet. Each colony can hold 5 units; however, placing a Spice Storage doubles the amount each colony can hold. Except for the home planet of each empire, each planet can hold up to a maximum of 3 colonies (one per T-Score level). The amount of spice generated is rated in each colony per-hour, based upon the number of factories and the links between factories and housing. For example, a planet with three colonies, each listing a production of 120 spice per hour, will generate approximately 6 units of spice per minute. For a fully equipped colony planet (with maximum colonies and a Spice Storage device) this equates to reaching maximum capacity in 5 minutes.

There are methods for acquiring colonies that have a spice storage capacity of greater than 30 in a star system. There are two common methods, depending upon what philosophy of species you are. The start of this is the same for both. First, raise the planet you want to a T-Score of 3. Next, place a monolith on the planet to uplift one of the species on that planet to be a spacefaring species. (Note: It is significantly faster to uplift a planet that already has a sentient species.) Once the species is spacefaring, there are two methods of acquiring the planet for your own empire. For trader species, the most common method of obtaining the colony for your own is to establish a Trade Route and then use the Cash Infusion ability to enable you to buy their star system immediately. For all other species, it is usually quicker to simply militarily take over their planet. (Note: It is advisable to save before attempting to take over their planet militarily, as an accidental overuse of force can destroy a colony, which will then lower your spice storage capacity after you have taken over the entire system.)

Visiting your colony in the solar system view will automatically pick up the spice waiting for you, if there is no current crisis (pirates raiding, enemy empire crashing the party, etc). While you are in orbit or in the atmosphere, spice will continue to be refined. You can collect it by leaving the planet or system, and then re-entering orbit; opening communications and 'purchasing' it (for free! There's no charge for this service) through the trade option; or, alternatively, you can practice your pirating skills by hovering over a colony and 'abducting' the crate.

If you don't particularly care what your neighboring empires think of you, steal spice from them by hovering over their colony and using your abduction beam on their spice crates. Stealing from a space age empire will give you negative Relation Bonus. Stealing from a pre-space civilization doesn't. Stealing enough crates grants you an Achievement.

Pirate Attacks
Occasionaly pirates will try and loot spice on one of your colonies. When this happens, you cannot automaticaly pick up spice, or "buy" the spice in the trade menu. However, while on the planet you can 'abduct' the spice and therefore stop the pirate raid (pirates cannot loot the spice if it is not on the planet).

Reference
Spice may have been inspired by either the spice trade of human history, which involved the trade of edible spices, or Spice Melange, a rare but valuable resource and drug featured in Frank Herbert's Dune series.