Board Thread:Fiction Universe Discussion/@comment-25309944-20150418222705/@comment-25309944-20150419005918


 * 3. Economically, it makes a lot of sense to just buy from the smaller empire. To go somewhere else and harvest it for yourself, you need to pay for mining equipment, their operating costs, the wages of the people you need to hire, etc. You also need to set up colonies, send soldiers to protect them, pay for their wages and infrastructure, etc etc. That's a large initial investment that is made worth it if you want to collect a large amount to sell on the market. This is a principle in economics called "economies of scale," where it's cheaper to make a good the more you make of it. Then, you might ask, why not just mine a lot and dominate the market? Because those resources you use to mine andasium could be used to do something else, something more economically viable given that nation's strengths and position. That doesn't mean that people won't set up colonies to mine andasium, people have, but not everyone will do it.

10. It already has an atomic symbol, if you look at the first sentence on the page. ;)