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Was waffling around while playing gladius with a friend and we started asking ourselves, what would necorn economics look like? Is there anything about that anyway?

I really have very little idea about it considering how the codices talk little about it. So I'll let you enlighten me.

They don't have one. They have no need for currency or trade.
Territory is taken in conquest and the enemy is subjugated or destroyed.

In the last Loremaster episode they talk about one of the Necron lords trading tech upgrades for more experimental subjects.

 Gert wrote:
They don't have one. They have no need for currency or trade.
Territory is taken in conquest and the enemy is subjugated or destroyed.

That doesn't necesseraly mean they can't have some form of economy in their relations between crypteks, dynasties, flottillas, serfs whatever.

Obviously we're mostly talking newcrons on that on because oldcrons won't have any since they are essentially slaves to a task which doesn't need one rather than a full blown society anymore.

Territory, favours, and allegiance then which isn't really an economy.

Individual Crypteks trading secrets or information to gain favour with another Lord isn't the same as the T'au or Imperium having interplanetary trade.

The tragedy of the Necrons is that their Lords are trying to rule their kingdoms and subjects like they did in life but can't because their subjects are all soldiers now. That's why some Lords seek mortal subjects to rule over because then their kingdoms have the rough semblance of "life".

I'm sure WAAAY back before the war in heaven and the advanced tech of the Necron'Tyr they used some form of currency. That's the easiest way for the nobles to show they are elevated over the servant classes. Maybe it's just the media like Star Trek that presents a future world where money isn't needed (granted, use of replicators for whatever you want or need helps), but I like to think the Necron'Tyr had some sort of currency - even in credit/ internet form up to their metallification.

 Gert wrote:
Territory, favours, and allegiance then which isn't really an economy.

Individual Crypteks trading secrets or information to gain favour with another Lord isn't the same as the T'au or Imperium having interplanetary trade.

The tragedy of the Necrons is that their Lords are trying to rule their kingdoms and subjects like they did in life but can't because their subjects are all soldiers now. That's why some Lords seek mortal subjects to rule over because then their kingdoms have the rough semblance of "life".

Some good source on this latter part? I'd be interested in finding out more on this potentially tragic side of the necrons. As far as I am aware it was just a couple of characters being mad robots of sorts and doing silly stuff like that while most of them are well aware of there new nature. After all, they've foought the war in heaven in that very form.

Anyway, on the one hand, trade might be of more use as a system of favours in their current form.

But on the other hand, we know necrons to be really conservative and to make use of raw ressources (granted, ore is dug out by slaves and canopteks). Maybe that would let room for something style, if anything to uphold their older ways.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Some good source on this latter part? I'd be interested in finding out more on this potentially tragic side of the necrons. As far as I am aware it was just a couple of characters being mad robots of sorts and doing silly stuff like that while most of them are well aware of there new nature. After all, they've foought the war in heaven in that very form.

That's just the background for the awakened Tomb Worlds. The Lords and Overlords rule over their worlds in the same way as they did in life, holding court to manage disputes of the minor nobility and the "affairs" of state as they were.
Some are perfectly happy ruling over a kingdom of the dead while others actively seek out squishies to rule over to get a crumb of that old feeling back.

Anyway, on the one hand, trade might be of more use as a system of favours in their current form.

But on the other hand, we know necrons to be really conservative and to make use of raw ressources (granted, ore is dug out by slaves and canopteks). Maybe that would let room for something style, if anything to uphold their older ways.

I think you really want to find something that just isn't there.
Trading favours between various nobles and Crypteks isn't an economy, it's court procedure.

If you want some hard evidence of a lack of economy, you need look no further than the disdain most Dynasties hold for the Nihilakh Dynasty.
In life, the Nihilakh were the wealthiest Dynasty of the Necrontyr, something that fostered great jealousy among their rivals and even allies. But after the Biotransference and the War in Heaven, the new Necron race saw no need for material wealth. Only the Nihilakh remain proud of their immense wealth and their soldiers and war machines are bedecked in gold. They guard their great treasure hoards with jealousy and retreated into isolationism for many years after the first awakenings to keep their wealth secret.
But the other Necron Dynasties don't care. The Nihilakh treasure troves held no value for them as they had moved beyond the need for such material wealth.
Even Trazyn the Infinite's great work to preserve the history of the galaxy is often regarded as a waste of time. The Necrons don't care about what happened while they slept and don't care about the races they will subjugate or purge when they retake their place as the rulers of the galaxy.

Then as far as freak robots overlords I wasn't mistaken that's not a race spanning thing, still a good part and it let's you bring back the robots showing up to kick your arse without reasons if you wish.

Otherwise no, i'm not looking for something in particular, mostly just pushing hypothesis around to see... As in, you know, having a chat, more or less...

Trazyn's fancy collection would be despised not as a matter of material wealth but simply of arrogance and lack of interest for non necrons to be fair. By a little stretch that could argue against necron hierarchy having interest in "luxury goods" as apparently only trazyn loves going to the zoo. As would the lack of interest in plundering the nikhilakh treasures.

Guess in case of need for ressources they can't acquire for some reason they'll borrow from someone else and tie themselves into repaying the debt or service of some sort, in which case yes, they'd replace economics with court agreements in a way.

Has any writer settled how aware of one another the necron dynasties are supposed to be in that time of the setting btw? Could it be that the nikhilakh are largely ignored because not many of their peers know they even awakened?

They operate as kingdoms do so when the Phaeron of a given Dynasty awoke, they would have sent emissaries and the like to keep the peace. Plus the Triarch Praetorians are ever present in the Necron courts to try and prevent inter Dynasty wars as much as possible so as to preserve their forces for the Great Awakening.

Trazyn and Orikan both got in trouble for using such resources for their own machinations a few times, with one timeline even having them both sentenced to death for it.

The old territories were recorded and any change would be noted by those who were periodically awoken over the millennia.
Indeed it is not unheard of for a rival Dynasty to take advantage of or even cause "natural" disasters to secure new territory and troops.

The long and short is that, yes, the various Dynasties are very aware of where the others are and what territory they own.
The Nihilakh isolationism meant that their forces were kept largely unharmed which also serves as a deterrent to those rivals who would seek to claim their territory.

Necrons are made from stuff, repaired with stuff, and use things made from and repaired with stuff. The stuff uses energy. Their technology is sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic, but importantly and conspicuously is not magic in the 40k sense. So everything Necrons use is from real, our-dimension stuff.

As such, Necrons must have some kind of economy to extract raw materials, turn these into finished products, and move the stuff around to where it is needed (incl. energy). It is clearly almost exclusively a centrally-planned economy entirely controlled by a small ruling echelon, with essentially no internal market, but an economy nonetheless. Obviously this is heavily focussed into a war economy. Given the ludicrously advanced nature of Necron tech, the "stuff" in question could be as basic as raw energy being used to create the required matter and teleported into its desired location, so the actual processes involved may be quite simple in concept and in short supply chains.

I don't think Necrons are truly post-scarcity or they would not have had to go into hiding and awakening tombs would only be defeatable before they had really got the infinite-warrior production lines going. There must be some logistical constraint on their available combat power, although their logistical capacity for war is clearly monstrous.

The comparatively tiny amount of trade between different Necron dynasties and even smaller amount of trade with none-Necron entities would logically be managed through barter, as mentioned upthread. Barter is the ideal system of transfer of goods between groups that trade very infrequently and do not have any other good rules for governing that trade (like treaties).

Could soldiers be used as currency? Your basic warrior is abundant, finite and fairly interchangeable. Various territories and facilities could be measure their value in how many soldiers they're worth. There were times in history where slaves were used in place of a standard coinage.

Necron tech can teleport broken bits of warrior selectively away off the battlefield. They also have scarabs acting as sensor platforms to inform whoever needs to know whatever is there to be known. They have momentumless physical space drives. So they have the capability of finding resources and remotely bringing it to whatever processing facility they need effortlessly.

They went into hiding because they were going to lose agains the other post scarcity war machine, the eldar. Eldar can conjure stuff out of the warp. Pretty sure the Necrons can conjure energy and/or matter out of some other dimension if they wanted to. Don’t Deathmarks muck about in extra dimensional space?

The whole point of the Necrons is that if they wake up properly then they will again be a post scarcity juggernaut that nothing in the galaxy has much hope of facing, except maybe the tyranids. It’s just that they have gone all parochial on awakening and haven’t got their act together yet.

 Gert wrote:
That's why some Lords seek mortal subjects to rule over because then their kingdoms have the rough semblance of "life".

Oh, interesting. I didn't know that.

Genuinely curious what life looks like under the Necrons. I suppose it depends on the individual lord.

.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:

 Gert wrote:
They don't have one. They have no need for currency or trade.
Territory is taken in conquest and the enemy is subjugated or destroyed.

That doesn't necesseraly mean they can't have some form of economy in their relations between crypteks, dynasties, flottillas, serfs whatever.

Obviously we're mostly talking newcrons on that on because oldcrons won't have any since they are essentially slaves to a task which doesn't need one rather than a full blown society anymore.

Pre-5th ed. Necrons were shown capturing members of other races for a variety of reasons, gathering knowledge, collecting material resources and energy reserves, developing new technologies. Lords and sub-factions had their own agendas.
So there's no reason that they shouldn't have been maintaining some sort of trade.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:

 Gert wrote:
They don't have one. They have no need for currency or trade.
Territory is taken in conquest and the enemy is subjugated or destroyed.

That doesn't necesseraly mean they can't have some form of economy in their relations between crypteks, dynasties, flottillas, serfs whatever.

Obviously we're mostly talking newcrons on that on because oldcrons won't have any since they are essentially slaves to a task which doesn't need one rather than a full blown society anymore.

Pre-5th ed. Necrons were shown capturing members of other races for a variety of reasons, gathering knowledge, collecting material resources and energy reserves, developing new technologies. Lords and sub-factions had their own agendas.
So there's no reason that they shouldn't have been maintaining some sort of trade.

Pardon the pun, but weren't pre 5th ed Necrons quite literally a monolith? I don't have the codex, but IIRC they were very much a united faction with even the lords being little more than more-cognizant / powerful robots still utterly beholden to their prime directive of eradicating life and serving the whims of their C'tan.

Yeah they'd take prisoners some times, but it was purely for experimentation and implied to use them to create more necrons, such as the Pariahs.

You're quite right, but maybe pariahs could have had some value in a trade or to pay a favour?

Pre-5th Necrons were more than just their 3rd ed. Codex.
Imagine thinking that more than a decade-worth of background material could be reduced to a single book...

Necron rulers are some of the most tyrannical, nepotistic, and mentally unsound leaders in Warhammer 40k. I don't think there is any extensive trade network barring the Cryptek guilds. Lords and Overlords would try to exact rent/tributes from their subjects or invade and pillage other dynasties instead.

I imagine we could reliably say that trade is not really a thing between dynasties because of this, instead, paying tribute/allegiance or taking by force of what you need, or exchange of favours, could be the norm.

However, regarding the crypteks, maybe some form of economics could revolve around them. They provide services, and the fact necrons are immortal and neither drink nor eat has got no influence on this.

This services are paid in some way - the codices stated iirc that they were paid for their services-. You can't just take over the cryptek and subdue him because their cast it just that powerful.

Then there would be some sort of trade agreement to regulate an economy of service versus ressource, could it not?

Haven’t you seen the new Cryptek Investors on the necron social media platform Cryptok?

Booooooooo. I hate that I liked that terrible joke

In the grim far future of the 40k universe, blockchain has a very different, substantially more literal, meaning

I haven't, my dynasty is stuck with C'tanbook

Surely you mean, Phasebook.

Oh, did it change name in the meantime? Damn, I'll have to fix that chronometron

Surely Necrons are still using MySpace

What are these books you are going on about?

Phasroll is where its at!

 Haighus wrote:
Surely Necrons are still using MySpace

I knew a lord of mine trapped using Skype. Their tumb word awoke so badly damaged they couldn't run anything newer.

 Gert wrote:
They don't have one. They have no need for currency or trade.
Territory is taken in conquest and the enemy is subjugated or destroyed.

Economic conquest is, historically, the most powerful and efficient form of conquest, though.

This discussion isn't unlike the "why doesn't Batman just use his billions to reduce systemic poverty instead of beating up poor people and the mentally ill in a bat suit" meme that's been growing more popular. Yeah we know that the answer is "because it's a comic book about fighting crime" but the logic of the question is technically correct. So sure, we know that Necrons don't have an economy, because this is the 41st Millennium and there is only war, but it would certainly make sense for them to have an economy, if only because destroying the galactic trade economy by using their billions of robots and other amazing technology as free labor that doesn't get tired/sick, have wages or rights would achieve galactic dominance far faster than any conventional military campaign ever would.

tldr the thread OP is not "do necrons have an economy", it's "what would a Necron economy look like". The answer is "cheap, unlimited labor flooding the galactic economy with borderline free crap and driving all its competitors out of business".