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 stage:

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. Sometimes extremely rare White spice can be found on gas giants with alien colonies. It is likely this is just a glitch or an accidental leak of an unfinished part of the game.

Note: Your Homeworld is it orbiting a Yellow Star, but it typically mining Red Spice. 'Sometimes it is Yellow Spice, instead. 'Oh really whoever edited that, i will just highlight your stupidity.

Selling Spice
When you first make contact with a alien colony, a price will be presented to you that will remain the same so long as you only visit your own colonies to collect spice and that single alien solar system to sell it. If you even zoom into another solar system the price will change automatically, even if it is of the same alien empire. This may or may not include solar systems calling for assistance. However, depending on you spice production and the speed at which you can produce each variety of spice you may want to reset on occasion to sell more expensive spice. For instance, red spice may be the primary source of income selling for as much as 1.2 million sporebucks per 99 collected, but if you have more than six colonies producing other spices as feverishly you could sell as much as 2.4 mil per visit could be collected. Also, it is important to note selling to your own colonies will not affect the asking price of the single alien colony. 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. Early in the game, 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 with less time wasted on zooming in and out. (Though this ceases to be a good use of your time once you have a large enough empire.)

Normal- and Hard-Mode Prices
So wrong... Well not really, these where gotton off the GENERAL guide, which was quite incorrect on this matter, you see green is worth MORE than pink, unlike the guide, and now this, both leading SOO many people astray, got it wrong.

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 from shopping or trade routes. 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. (Highly recommended for all empires to grow and prosper)

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 visiting your endpoint of the trade route (typically the closest planet in your empire, but not always.).

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 Homeworld 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, but you don't have to.) 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 (not a good idea), steal spice from them by hovering over their colony and using your Abduction Beam on their spice crates and fly away. Stealing from a space stage empire will give you negative Relation Bonus.Stealing from a pre-space or non-spice collecting (cell, creature, tribe) civilization doesn't. Stealing 50 crates in any number of games grants you the Thief Achievement.

Pirate Attacks
Occasionally Pirates will try and loot spice on one of your colonies as few as three squadrons. When this happens, you cannot automatically 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). In some instances, as is the case with the tribe stage and raided food, addressing a more pressing issue may be worth more than the price of the spice lost. Interestingly enough, fully upgrading a colonies defenses (especially Uber Turret) will entirely prevent pirates from plundering. This may convert some of the "Spice plundering" missions into full-fledged attacks by the pirates with two or three more attack squadrons. If you try to attack the pirates using your proton missiles you might get one or two shots before the pirate starts running away. To get another shot in, you must leave the ship alone until it slows down. Once it has slowed down, you will be able to fly up to it really fast and shoot it again.

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.

Especia