This needs to happen sooner rather than later, so that trade has more meaning. Also for weapons trading, scarcity etc. For starters, perhaps a per character limit instead of global limits. Perhaps global limits on some things like Neutron Mk3's, depending on how much xith was delivered that week?

/me goes and buys 1000 of everything

Per character limits on purchasable items are a bad thing.

Would you prefer unlimited?

When I say per character limit, I mean per week or per day. Same with global limit.

I am 100% in favor of scarcity. However, it needs to be implemented in a way that does not diminish the appeal of trade as a game career path.

-1 for character or global limits.

It should be set-up so that once a station exhausts its supply of an item to sell, that a delivery of the requisite materials to produce that item are needed to replenish stock levels (e.g. delivery of ore and/or various base-level commodities). Not only does that make trade vital for a station to maintain stock of its sellable items (therefore blockades would have a meaningful impact to supply), but it also allows for dynamically adjusting to the the number of players automatically.

If global limits were used, then they would constantly have to be tweaked as the game population increases and decreases. Not to mention hard limits would also screw over people who play at the end of the day right before the station stockpiles magically replenish themselves.

+15 meridian

Some stations should just "magically" restock themselves since they could be considered to be self-sufficient. Such stations should have a soft-cap on their inventory, meaning they won't automatically produce a commodity if they are at or above that level. The trade guild procurement missions could then be used to actually get items that a station needs (though the standing rewards for procs still need to be reduced).

+1 draughath and I would tie it into the escort missions as well if a procurment hasn't been fulfilled after x amount of time.

Saturated markets should sell cheaply. Markets that have been starved should sell at higher prices. The system should be set up in such a way that no player activity in procurments and no activity destruction of escort missions result in a stable but moderately higher priced selection of goods. Player activity via proc or other trade missions would serve to generally lower the cost of goods at a given station while destruction of escort ships destined for a certain station / faction ; nation would cause the cost of goods to rise.

Also, items sold to a station that does not carry that item should be made available for sale at a 20% markup on the buy price.

+1 for the whole idea. It should be noted though, that the station replenishment could be an incremental thing, occuring every X minutes, for a very small quantity. This would eliminate the ability of players snatching them all up, though it would not eliminate someone from parking a bot there for 24 hours snatching them up as they became available.

+1

Death Fluffy, the price of goods should not in any way be directly connected to the success or failure of any mission. Rather, prices should be set according to basic supply and demand dynamics.

I agree that a direct corolation should be avoided. However, I still think player activity should influence price direction as part of the supply / demand dynamics.

Yes yes. But this is all much too complicated. I say we start small... like this:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/28617

Fluffy, I think what draug meant is that it should be based on selling/buying stuff, rather than requiring that you specifically use a mission in order to "deliver" the goods. The missions should tie into it as well, but if somebody just sells the station whatever items it's lacking, that should work too. Whether or not the station actually consumes that kind of item and the station's current supply of the item would determine the price it pays you for it.

You would need a system where each station has production and consumption, causing prices differences dynamically, which triggers NPC traders and miners to supply the goods whenever the price difference is larger than a threshold based on distance and danger; and consumption of raw goods would determine production of finished goods. PC profit in mining and trading would be in seeking trades/roids that the NPC don't touch, e.g. too far, too dangerous, or unknown.

I think this is fiendishly complex to get right. It requires setting useful values for production and consumption and getting NPC behaviour right, both when observed and not observed. You probably need to actually simulate all NPC convoys in order to get disruption from parking at WH's etc in. Ideally, you would need to monitor NPC information on prices and asteroids as a sort of 'rumor' system as well to avoid giving NPC's too much of an edge and drive PC traders/miners from the market. And although you can simulate a world with NPC's only to see if it reaches a useful equilibrium, it will require a lot of tweaking to make sure that PC behaviour can (a) meaningfully influence this equilibrium without (b) completely destroying it, while (c) making the game still fun (ie pvp becomes no fun if you can't buy any weapons at a station or if is determined by whomever has the biggest stockpile)

If this is a serious direction for the game for devs, I would start with a very limited set of resources (e.g. two of the rare ore types) and link those to some advanced weapons and/or ship types in non-core stations, so some part of gameplay can be meaningfully changes (ie specific mining and trading, and equipment availability in border barracks) while keeping 90% of gameplay intact to minimize problems. Maybe even limit it to ore prices and NPC mining/trading and leave the whole equipment part alone until the equilibrium feels right.