Also ask the to interject some instability to the market in random places. Right now the market is too flat. Its not very varied at all.
In a lot of cases you would have an extremely high demand amount in some systems where you'd see 200% prices until a certain threshold is met. Even generating missions in the bulletin board for people to acquire the stuff they need.
There also needs to be desperate sellers - meaning volume is so high they can't sell enough so they sell it dirt cheap at a loss to get some cash flow.
Think of it as me providing an overabundance of raw materials to a station that produces a good like synthetic fabric. Their storage space is limited on the station and they are full, meaning production needs to stop until they clear some space. This means people would be laid off work. They need to move product so they offer a "sale". They advertise this sale in the local GALNET feed. Synthetic fabrics are 50% off - limit 100 per customer.
This adds a random chance you hit a station that has a sale where you can score a major profit.
Right now its boring and difficult finding a decent profit even with the trading tools. I'm not looking for home runs all the time but we should encounter random stations with high demand and pricing that is ABOVE what we see right now.
We rarely see a profit even at long distances on regular goods beyond a 10-20% range. There needs to be those occasional 50%-100% profit runs that are hard to find. (that are not rares)
I actually think this would be a really good idea... just last night i was docked in a station with over 2 million tonnes of tobacco... and they had it down as a medium supply at just 300cr below average.... Best station i could find within 50ly of this one was buying them for 250cr above GA and was a medium demand. the market is just too flat, supply and demand is almost stagnating at medium everwhere you look and there is no "deals" to be had or lucrative trade runs to be found, be it low volume or long range.
I really like your idea of stations that have a large supply running sales and offering discounts to get stock out of the cargo bays, that would be a really cool feature and would give trading that little bit of immersion and depth that it sorely needs.
they should also fix rare trades to make them useful for anyone with more cargo space than a hauler.
I have suggested it a few times over the weeks and i will suggest it again right here.
Rare trades are confined to 1 station and i quite rightly believe that they should have a low resupply, BUT they should build up over time, if i have not visited Eranin for a week i should be able to call in on the way past and fill up my hold regardless of size.
Rares should not be limited solely on production. I believe that rares should also have a demand cap, so for instance i fill up my hold with Eranin whiskey and head out over to empire space, as we know those imps like a tipple on a night after a good slave drive.... i call in at a low pop industrial world to sell some wares, they are willing to pay me 18k per tonne but they only want 12 tonnes, thanks for the trade, see you next week.. off to the next system, over to a high population high tech system, they love my rares but they use their population to wrangle a better deal, i can sell 35 tonnes right now, but they are only willing to pay 15k per tonne, i have the option of a higher volume trade for lower profit or more leg work and higher profit trades for lower volume sales.
This happens in trade and marketplaces all over the world right now and will definitely still be a way of like in 3300, it also should not take that much work to change. Would stop gravy run, A to B @ 150ly = profit and repeat runs and force people to head out and search for places to sell and chose between profit or volume sales. It will give another dynamic to trading and make trading interesting for those of us that can not bring ourselves to grind station to station loops for peanuts all day just to allow us to undock in out pride and joy for 5 minutes.
