Currently rare and medium rare (!?) commodities are a bit of sitting duck for wikiisation and perhaps that makes them a little too much of a soft option for making cash (although I do notice locations are not aways stocked to the gills, which is good). There is nothing wrong with looking at wikis, of course, but if they make things a very much easier option than is available just using in game information, then they detract from the developers planned challenge progression for the game, I think.
Perhaps a solution would be to make the locations that are supplying rare or uncommon commodities at any particular time move around a lot more, so that if you pick one off of a wiki then more likely than not, they will be out of stock. And then on the contacts menu you could put a "rumors" option (say after black market). When you choose that option you would see rumors that would vary in specificity according to how far away you were from the commodites - for instance if you are in a different area it might say: "We had a supply of rare fish guts from the coalsack recently", but as you get closer to the source the rumors would be more specific, so that if you are in the coalsack area you would be pointed to a particular system ("we got fish guts out of Altair just a few hours ago") vicinity and if you go to the wrong station in the system that has a supply you get pointed to the correct station by a rumor - after all local knowledge of an area is much more specific than gobal knowledge.
And as the game dynamically moves commodities about, according to supply and demand, then the rumors in the rumor section would change, based on incoming ship traffic from the areas concerned.
I realise, of course, that this isn't exactly a minor feature
.
Perhaps a solution would be to make the locations that are supplying rare or uncommon commodities at any particular time move around a lot more, so that if you pick one off of a wiki then more likely than not, they will be out of stock. And then on the contacts menu you could put a "rumors" option (say after black market). When you choose that option you would see rumors that would vary in specificity according to how far away you were from the commodites - for instance if you are in a different area it might say: "We had a supply of rare fish guts from the coalsack recently", but as you get closer to the source the rumors would be more specific, so that if you are in the coalsack area you would be pointed to a particular system ("we got fish guts out of Altair just a few hours ago") vicinity and if you go to the wrong station in the system that has a supply you get pointed to the correct station by a rumor - after all local knowledge of an area is much more specific than gobal knowledge.
And as the game dynamically moves commodities about, according to supply and demand, then the rumors in the rumor section would change, based on incoming ship traffic from the areas concerned.
I realise, of course, that this isn't exactly a minor feature
.