Let's just say that I can't recall ever seeing a communist industrial that doesn't have them on the market then - the legality aspect is what matters. Are the local high-techs dicatorships or communist?
Microbial furnaces are not produced by mixed high-tech/refinery economies, in my experience. I've never noticed a pattern with HE suits.
This is why I used Microbial Furnaces and HE suits as the example; both are only "meant" to be available from pure HT systems, at least, according to this god-awfully-out-of-date thing.
But to contradict your statement about Microbial Furnaces and HT/Ref, from that system 19LY away...


Let's just say that I can't recall ever seeing a communist industrial that doesn't have them on the market then
That's correct enough... I went to the nearby Industrial system owned by a Dictatorship and they had Battle Weapons in stock. But one of the HT systems (not Cramer Gateway) I was referring to before was owned by the same Dictatorship faction that owns the industrial system, and they have demand, not supply for battle weapons. However, they've had supply previously, as I've bought from that HT/Ref system before.
As mentioned as well, Performance Enhancers are *meant* to be supplied by pure HT too, but there's HT/Ref nearby that stock them too.
BTW, I'm not trying to be intentionally contrary. I'm just telling (and showing) what I can observe around here. The "rules" you mention I've applied all round the place, but in this particular 40-odd LY bubble they've never held. And that's interesting.
tl;dr I don't think the economy behaves as simply as we think. In general it does, but there's gotta be some exceptions there that we don't know about.
Last edited: