Enact bulk discounts for bulk purchases of locally produced goods. Traders get "punished" for selling in bulk (as they rapidly drive down the price of goods), why not reward them for buying in bulk? The stations need the business, and it'll balance out the economy a bit.

Moreover, the fact that bulk selling is treated differently from bulk purchases never made sense to me, and given that you could easily just implement the bulk-selling-causes-price-deflating algorithm to apply to bulk-purchases... I see no downsides.

PS: I'm sure this has been suggested before, but given the current deflated economy and the fact that the algorithms are already in place, I figured we could start a new thread.

Indeed, a sensible suggestion.

Economics mega-fail.

Certainly there is a real world precedent for bulk discounts. My concern would be that the discount be deep enough to make sinking a significant portion of my wealth into an item. As you stated, the profit drop is usually pretty steep- to the point that I usually don't bother selling more than one moth load of non-porn items at a time (xc max). That said, Sedina Chocolates might become a worthwhile trade item if I could buy them for say 6,000cr in bulk.

Edit: In my mind, it comes down to what you define as bulk. Someone like the Good Dr. may consider trading 1 cube as a hard days work grinding out bulk trade, where someone else might call 200 cube bulk trading. I call trading in the realm of 10,000 cube bulk trade, since its not trade to me until I've moved a few thousand cube. Just to be clear, I trade in cube not units as profit / unit is a newb mistake :P

In the current economy though, setting bulk at around 200-500 cube would work. Nothing extravagent. Perhaps 10-20% off of the normal price.

This is merely for discussion though. I maintain that I would prefer a more dynamic cost basis built upon supply and demand and where the price of a manufactured product depends at least in part upon whether the station has been over or under supplied with its components. Done well, and this could create great group projects for guilds to produce extremely cheap high end goods to sell at huge margins. Look at the superlight for a good way to kill this idea.

Edit2: That being said, for purposes of gameplay and player interaction, this should be implemented for items which are only available in a few non connected systems. Of which there needs to be more.

@Lecter: Care to elaborate? I'm not talking real-world economics here... I'm talking common sense. There is currently a disincentive to trade in bulk; adding an incentive to do so would increase trade (and therefore profit if only due to the fact that costs have dropped). I would think that you, as a pirate, are displeased by the disincentives to bulk trading, given that intercepting bulk trades are what make pirating profitable (as traders with lots of cargo either are more willing to pay random, or give more loot when exploded). Increasing trade will help the game. Explain to me where I am mistaken here.

P.S. Yes, I know I shouldn't feed the troll, but when he's wrong (or missing the point entirely)... you get the idea.

@Death Fluffy: I'm not sure I understand your concern. Are you worried that the price of good bought in bulk will be too cheap (since all we need to solve that is a percentage multiplier)? Or too expensive (again, simple fix)? Please do elaborate.

Hopefully my edit has clarified what I meant. If not, my concern is based on my premise that bulk trading starts at 10,000 cube. I realize this is a hold over from when trade was "broken". It was also when I thought trade was the most fun. So when I say I'm concerned about sinking a significant portion of my wealth into an item, I'm talking about 20-50 million credits.

Death Fluffy: Great edit.

Now for my comments:
I completely agree that trade/prices should be completely dynamic. What I'm talking about here is a short-term stop-gap that should be easy to implement. As for what defines bulk trading... I see your point. What we're talking about here is a multiplier to make the bulk discount pretty minimal until you hit a certain number of units, so again, easy to implement. Of course, what that multiplier is is the real question...

But yah, however this gets implemented, let's just do it. Keeping in mind it's a stop-gap to incentivize trading in bulk... let's just do something until the economy is completely fixed.

You can't shotgun-debug a broken economy, Atice. Changing random things in the hopes that it fixes something simply won't work. Presumably there is actually an economy overhaul in the works - making a bunch of small hackish changes that will have nothing to do with the finial implementation will cause a lot more problems than it's worth.

It's not random ladron. Discounted bulk-purchasing has real analogs, and given the patch which deflated the economy (aka nerfing of bulk trading), I see no reason to put a quick fix to help partially inflate it again (especially if there is little dev time involved).

The fix I'm proposing isn't hackish. There are some elements which can be easily tweaked if they prove too exploitable. In leu of a real economic overhaul, let's add a stopgap.

That's like saying in leu of the faction overhaul, let's not remove greyspace FF. It's a hack, but it seriously improves gameplay.

There is currently a disincentive to trade in bulk

No, previously there was a bug that allowed trading in bulk to avoid the real economic effects of the laws of supply and demand. Tough shit.

If you don't like it, sell a few units at a time, then wait for the price to rebound. Let me say this very slowly, so you'll get it: making credits is getting harder and more time consuming to do by design.

As for buying in bulk, you'd have to buy in really, really large quantities. Wal-Mart size quanities--an XC load is just another consumer's tiny load, and consumers don't get much of a price break on their "bulk."

making credits is getting harder and more time consuming to do by design

Agreed. But given that the new economy isn't here yet... let's get more traders out there. I would also submit that there is currently a bug which does not allow bulk purchasers to receive discounts, as they would in a real economy. The bug was two-sided, and one side has been fixed; let's patch the other side now.

As for buying in bulk, you'd have to buy in really, really large quantities
As per Death Fluffy's comments, I'm fine with 10kcu or so being "bulk". No matter how you spin it, it's still an easy fix that does real good for the game.

The problem with 10kcu, is that I am now saddled with all of this stuff that I am stuck sitting on, because I'm not going to start flying halfway across the universe just to make a sale and come back for another round. This is why I next to never trade porn. There are more profitable methods to trade both in terms of profit and time spent.

I do find it hilarious that we accept cartoonish aspects like damage not inhibiting a ships ability to perform in combat, yet something like the economy had damned well better be spot on realistic.

The problem with 10kcu, is that I am now saddled with all of this stuff that I am stuck sitting on

That's part of the reason someone would give you a bulk discount, moron: they don't have to store it any more.

That's like saying in leu of the faction overhaul, let's not remove greyspace FF. It's a hack, but it seriously improves gameplay.

This is a truly epic case of Missing The Point (TM). Removing greyspace FF is a step in the right direction along a iterative path toward a better faction system, which also makes gameplay more livable before the entire faction overhaul is implemented. Adding bulk discounts is a step in the wrong direction, which really won't make gameplay any more livable than it is currently. Bulk trading is not something that a single person does, anyway - it's what a large company does.

On another note, bulk discounts apply to things like toilet paper, disposable napkins, and canned soup. They make economic sense because most of the cost of buying a roll of toilet paper is associated with packaging and transporting said roll, not in actually manufacturing it. The kinds of things that are commonly traded for profit in VO are usually expensive to produce, so it doesn't really make much sense that bulk discounts would be offered on these items. If you want to buy 100,000 cu of Purified Water at 5c per cu though, go ahead.

Adding bulk discounts is a step in the wrong direction, which really won't make gameplay any more livable than it is currently.

You are wrong on both counts. The fix here better simulates what the real economic redux eventually will have, and moreover it will increase trade, which is a boon to both traders and pirates.

On another note, bulk discounts apply to things like toilet paper, disposable napkins, and canned soup. They make economic sense because most of the cost of buying a roll of toilet paper is associated with packaging and transporting said roll, not in actually manufacturing it.

Again, you're wrong. Car dealerships buy "in bulk" (so to speak), and therefore they buy the cars from the manufacture at a reduced price. I'm under the impression that cars are not too easy to produce, and that most of the cost of buying a car is associated with things other than the packaging... so you are dead wrong on this point as well.

Well, his concept is sound enough, Atice: the degree of bulk discount varies to some extent by how much the seller's costs are reduced by not having to keep that stuff around waiting for a full-price buyer.

Allow me to try to add a bit of perspective on trade. We have all been impatiently waiting for the completed version of the dynamic economy for more than a year now- since the first series of key changes sent shock waves through the active player base. I think most folk can agree that much of the changes were needed. 200,000 cube of free storage space on every station was silly.

What is going to matter, and what some of us are holding out for with hope and faith in the developers vision. Is a trade/economic environment that offers diverse opportunities to play a capitalist role, while balancing the reward / (effort + risk) to an enjoyable level. The idea that "trade must exactly mimic the real world" is just as absurd as saying a player that takes damage in a fight loses some ability to compete. To do so would completely ruin combat and is why none of the games I've personally played impose a penalty for taking damage.

That said, if the finished product does not satisfy, people will be disinclined to trade. Much like the low interest in the half finished Deneb battle missions. Also, players will continue to gravitate to the easiest method of earning credits. Which currently is the much nerfed but still easiest way to make loads of credits at zero risk escort missions. I can make a few mil just doing hive skirmish of a weekend, or border patrol for that matter.

My reason for so much earlier hostility towards the economy changes was that they killed the part of VO that I most enjoyed. The quest for a route that paid well at each end. This took a lot of hunting through UIT, Serco, Itani and Grey space. And once I found one, your damned right I made the most of it. Usually investing every credit I had by the time I was done. I would spend a week or more of intense grinding to move the freight. And at the end of it, I would enjoy a nice emotional high as the fruits of my labors registered on my hud.

In the end, if the finished economy doesn't offer adequate rewards, your not going to see more people trading. All the pony tricks in the world designed to force players into Grey aren't going to make the world better for the pirate community. You'll still have mostly newbs doing proc missions till they can get away from them all together. And assholes like me wormhole mining Latos in an Atlas X, while waiting for the devs to add a little cartoon animation back into trade.

Edit: I'd also like to take a moment to challenge the silly mindset that if one is not a pirate, then then by default they should be trading. When at any given time, you have people divided between mining, 3 hive wars, the deneb war, playing the various missions, just sitting in a station bullshitting with people they like, pvping in b8, "doing the fucking tutorials", serving other players in a repair role, or playing the anti pirate. To expect a huge constant stream of traders with our current active player base must be extremely frustrating.

"bulk discounts apply to things like toilet paper, disposable napkins, and canned soup."

And ammunition, film, film canisters, memory cards, spark plugs, fuses, batteries, 3 months of VO, 6 months of VO, 12 months of VO, 24 months of VO, knives, prints, lens filters... actually there's too much to list. There's also the many stores that sell in bulk at discount and of course wholesalers sell to retailers at discount.