The latest CG really highlighted once again how bizarre mining and trade is in this game. We haul back literally thousands of tons of platinum or diamonds, and yet the market never deflates, not really. Other minerals are completely worthless. Stations actively reduce their prices if their supplier has too much stock. Because some minerals are worth vastly more than others, you toss many out the airlock to fit just one more ton of a more valuable commodity.
1. High-Value Goods vs Low-Value Goods: Take them out of competition with each other for cargo space. Change all the 'high value' goods to be 'microgoods', which take 1/1000th of a cargo space per ton. That means you can mine BOTH the high value goods AND the normal goods without needing to neglect one for the other. Plus, mining stuff like cores will become much more fun, because you can do it in even a small ship.
2. Demand. That still doesn't give much reason to mine the cheaper minerals, though. To fix that, we need to fix demand.
To start with, you know these little demand bars?
Those don't really mean much right now, so let's use those.
Demand should be what the station can afford right now. The little bars? Those should be what they want, if they could afford it, but cannot afford right now. If you sell them the cheaper minerals, they'll process them and sell them, getting enough money to afford what they want. Basically, you can cultivate yourself a good market by supplying it with what they need, whether that be water to a drought station, food to a famine station, or minerals to a bust station. When the bars go down, you know you're getting close to maxing that station out, and when they vanish entirely, the station has had its needs met.
3. Rare Goods. Rare Goods should function in a similar way; they should take up 1/1000th of a ton of cargo space, their limiting factor instead being how many you can buy, and how quickly.
4. Market Prices. Finally, this game really needs to fix how prices are calculated. Imagine you have 3 stations that all want 100 tons of platinum. So you go mine 300 tons, only for the first and second stations to pay you a pittance, because YOU have too much platinum on your ship. That's insanely stupid. Stations should pay based on THEIR DEMAND, not YOUR SUPPLY. The trade menu should intelligently reduce the price for subsequent commodities as you offer more and more, BEFORE you sell them. This will allow you to make actual trade routes rather than one-way trips.
1. High-Value Goods vs Low-Value Goods: Take them out of competition with each other for cargo space. Change all the 'high value' goods to be 'microgoods', which take 1/1000th of a cargo space per ton. That means you can mine BOTH the high value goods AND the normal goods without needing to neglect one for the other. Plus, mining stuff like cores will become much more fun, because you can do it in even a small ship.
2. Demand. That still doesn't give much reason to mine the cheaper minerals, though. To fix that, we need to fix demand.
To start with, you know these little demand bars?
Demand should be what the station can afford right now. The little bars? Those should be what they want, if they could afford it, but cannot afford right now. If you sell them the cheaper minerals, they'll process them and sell them, getting enough money to afford what they want. Basically, you can cultivate yourself a good market by supplying it with what they need, whether that be water to a drought station, food to a famine station, or minerals to a bust station. When the bars go down, you know you're getting close to maxing that station out, and when they vanish entirely, the station has had its needs met.
3. Rare Goods. Rare Goods should function in a similar way; they should take up 1/1000th of a ton of cargo space, their limiting factor instead being how many you can buy, and how quickly.
4. Market Prices. Finally, this game really needs to fix how prices are calculated. Imagine you have 3 stations that all want 100 tons of platinum. So you go mine 300 tons, only for the first and second stations to pay you a pittance, because YOU have too much platinum on your ship. That's insanely stupid. Stations should pay based on THEIR DEMAND, not YOUR SUPPLY. The trade menu should intelligently reduce the price for subsequent commodities as you offer more and more, BEFORE you sell them. This will allow you to make actual trade routes rather than one-way trips.