Starfield fans fear a very expensive sandwich threatens economic chaos

The Starfield economy is already being thrown into chaos as fans puzzle over the game's sandwich : spaceship ratio.

Last month, StarfieldDB noted that the value of your first Starfield ship, The Frontier, is listed at 7,350 credits, while a Salami Sandwich costs 75 credits. Put simply, that means that trading in roughly 100 sandwiches should earn you enough moola to take to the stars in your very own ship.

More recently, Reddit user Mr_Twiddles posted their concern that a more gourmet sandwich - the 295-credit Patty Melt, cost the same amount as another spaceship they'd found while researching the game. That ship cost a little over 19,000 credits, meaning only 64 Melts were required to pay for it.

A bit concerned about the in-game economy. 64 patty melts gets you a spaceship from r/Starfield

Confusingly, however, it turns out that the ship in question isn't real. It was pieced together by another Reddit user and posted to the subreddit as an example of what Starfield players might be able to pull off using the game's modular ship design. Borrowing UI elements from the Starfield Direct, it's a fairly impressive recreation, until you notice that it's called the 'Ass Fleet Ranger', after its creator.

While this particular sandwich:spaceship ratio isn't that accurate, another user points out that it's not outside the realms of possibility. In its recent presentation, Bethesda showed off a number of ships ranging from 13,000 to 47,000 credits in price - that's a value of anywhere between 44 and 160 Patty Melts, depending on how fancy your ship is.

While that might sound like a bad deal, Starfield fans have been working out how likely this situation actually is. One user notes that the listed in-game price of a sandwich is unlikely to be what it actually sells for, given the history of Barter systems and Speech skills in Bethesda's previous games. Many others point out that the economies of those games have always been somewhat flawed - it's hard not to be a functional millionaire by the time you reach Skyrim's endgame, as the open-ended nature of the games allows myriad ways to exploit merchant systems. 

One user even highlighted a real world comparison - while you won't find $1,000 food everywhere you go, it's not hard to find YouTube videos assessing the value of high-priced steak or sandwiches. Couple that with a number of listings in the $30-40k range on leading aviation site Aerotrader, and it would be possible to argue that you could take to the skies for the cost of a few dozen (very expensive) sandwiches.

Speaking of inventing ships, one Starfield fan spent more than 4,000 hours perfecting their skills to make this excellent ship creator.