Title says all.

it is dumb that you can make a million without leaving the sector
+1

+1

But that requires both adding more goods and spreading the existing ones even more. And make that "Station's Wishlist" in welcome tab of PDA only display rare items not produced in nearby systems, and its nearest location... and pay per distance/scarcity...

And the existing trade plugins only worsen the problem, not that visible with default game UI.

You'll solve this problem by nerfing gat prices straight up, there are a few other value tweaks. It's funny, this isn't really a feature suggestion when you think about it, because the features are programmed - but nobody has sat down and reviewed the price ranges should be and where.

Sounds like a job that could be outsourced to the PCC, along with ship balance tweaks. I know I'd be willing to contribute to such things if given the opportunity.

the trade goods should sell between greyspace borders and should take no more than 4 jumps, this way the trade good prices don't need to be upped to create incentive.

Also nerf static weapons traderoute so the price drops sharply over the first 50 units sold, it would be really cool to see a price reduction in said weapons sold at the station when you saturate the station market with certain guns.

"But that requires both adding more goods and spreading the existing ones even more."
No it doesn't require adding any new goods. Just twiddle the prices of the existing goods, and maybe play with the distribution a bit.

I don't think anybody even needs to go over all the price lists as the first step can be done automatically given that the devs (and any guild with decent info sharing) have a full price list, so detecting which in-sector trades are too profitable is easy.

Economically, the price difference between a good in two places is maximized to the full cost of shipping between those places, including all risks and reasonable profit on capital. If the price difference is higher, traders would jump in and get filthy rich while reducing the price difference.

So, what is the full cost of shipping? The economics are impossible to figure out exactly as we have no idea of pilot's wages, but we certainly know that price goes up which each jump, each WH, each grey sector traversed, etcr. Each price difference for a good between two stations should be capped at a function using these variables.

Just to pull some numbers, suppose the following max per-cu profit:

50 -max difference within the same system
100 - max difference within the same system in grey
+100 - for every worm hole within nation space
+500 - for every worm hole in grey

So, if I run an XC within the same system, my max profit is 200x50 = 10k for a risk free run. Running the same moth from Odia to Initros, I can net 200x(100+4x500)=200x2100=4.2M profit for a quite risky venture.

These numbers certainly need tweaking and also need to take the price of the underlying good into account, but the profit of a trip should really be made dependent on risk and effort.

(obviously, it would be nice if some for of contraband were introduced like it was back in the elite days, with itan outlawing slaves but itan mining stations being quite fond of them, and having space patrols with cargo scanners as an added risk...)

What makes me sad is that none of this requires real programming (in the sense that no new mechanics are introduced), but probably still too much work to get implemented quickly...

Actually, it SHOULD require some tweaking of availability in that some stations should produce a good and others consume. Right now, most of the stations are pretty self-sufficient. The items going into the "rare" category would then effectively be that which the station needed but was low on supply for. (which is what it seems to be, but isn't actually) Would be interesting to see water or other seemingly common item come up as rare. Admittedly, my preference has always been to create a true consumer economy, in that all items are produced as processes (not necessarily missions) by the stations to create items from either raw materials or components, but even if you just adjust the availability and make things the station consumed be available as rare, you'd achieve much of the same thing.