I tried selling some Hull Panels at N2 this evening. This is something that a player should be able to make a huge profit off of by selling to trident builders, however, after selling and rebuying multiple quantities, I did not see any indication that demand for an item has any impact of the future buy price and that only the quantity on hand affected the buy price decline.

Perhaps my simple experiment was not large enough to have an affect, but for dynamic trading to be worth my time, one or a combination of these need to be in place.

1) Buy price of an item affected by the demand for it over a period of time
2) Allow players to set the sell price for items that are not stocked by the station
3) Allow players to sell items on commission, allowing them to set their own sell price and giving a percentage to the station for the service.

Edit: I selected hull panels because 1) there were none currently in N2's inventory, 2) they are a high demand item for trident building and 3) they are a pita because the only source is Verasi C4.

Edit 2: Along with this, the station should have a limited number of credits with which to work that should grow over time as it makes successful and unsuccessful trades. This would add to the dynamic aspect of the station as well as keep players from overstocking the station with excessive inventory.

+1 to item 3

+1 to number 3. See theead: https://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/30426

+1 to a smart combination of all three

#1
Assuming you are talking about player demand here, it would really help if you provided some details on how you expect the implementation to work. If the metric were based on how long the items were up for sale, that would be hugely exploitable. A player shouldn't be able to drive up the price simply by buying back their own items seconds after listing them. That would just be silly and artificial.

I'd say having the price determined by the supply is sufficient. It still allows for a player to corner the market but keeps things from getting out-of-hand. In the case of the hull panels, the problem is that the base price is set ridiculously low and not inline with the amount of effort to make them.

Now if you are talking about the station's demand for an item (e.g. the station needs plasteel in order to manufacture some widget that it wants to produce), that could work too. Naturally, the station will want to minimize the down-time of its manufacturing factories.

#2
Allowing players to specify sell prices for items the station doesn't normally sell would really clutter up the station commerce tab. Either multiple listings would have to be made for every item at varying prices, or if just the lowest price were shown, it would complicate buying items in bulk.

Player-set prices and commissions (i.e. auction house) are really something that belong more in player-owned stations anyway. In any case, such a feature should have it's own tab in the PDA that's separate from the existing station buy/sell tabs.

#3
Ditto above

#1 Right now selling an item to the station that it does not normally stock or have on hand appears to have a ceiling that is the maximum price it will buy the first item for. After that, it buys each item for slightly less than the last in the same or a similar way to which the economy has done since the last enhancement or bug fix rather.

What I would suggest is that a station log be kept of items that are in high demand. If I sell 10 units and buy them multiple times, then each time the station inventory is depleted to say 1/2 or less of the inventory needed to fill the expected orders that the price it is willing to buy the items for would increase slightly.

If the average demand over the course of a week or month is met or the station has a surplus, then a sharper reduction in it's buy price should occur. So if I try to sell the 11th unit to the station or more, I would potentially be selling at much closer to my cost and possibly at a loss as I over supply the station.

Something like this would have to be tweaked to work out problems I would expect.

#2 I see this as working hand in hand with #1 Obviously a player should not be able to sell for a ridiculous price, so there has to be some sort of control in place. If the player wants to sell something like say an RBA then obviously the station isn't going to be able to give them a fair price for it. At this point it should go to commission. But if we use my hull panel example, I paid extremely generously to buy them from people who had them staged at I8- 1 mil per XC load iirc. It might have been 500k, but definitely not less than that. And it was worth it!!

I disagree that this belongs in player owned stations. I just played for the first time in months yesterday and the main reason I can't be bothered to log in is because trade just plain sucks. I'm not here for the pvp- though I do occasionally enjoy it. I'd probably do it more frequently if there was a ready supply like we used to have before b8 was killed a number of years ago. But I prefer other aspects of the game, aspects like trade that have long ceased to be fun for me.

I do like your suggestion that it be in a separate tab.

Edited the OP to add limited operating credits for the station.

Also, case in point, I just bought up 600 units of hulls at N2 for just about double what I would have had to pay for them if I had bought them in C4. A huge bargain since I won't have to move them myself in the future. For this, I would have paid well over 10 million for another player to deliver to me.

Edit: Just to emphasize my point, it took me less than 2 hours to make back the 2 million that I spent which is probably close to the amount of time it took the person who stocked the station with those 600 hulls to do so. I did this with minimal work running 10 escort missions while playing suduko and plants vs zombies on my cell phone and browsing the web. Near zero risk the entire time and none of the frustration of loading and unloading 6 XC's from my dent for about 3 full round trips to make the 600 units. In fact, I would be surprised to find out that I did it in less time.

Definitely a +1 to #3.

While you are at it, make the profit that player A gets when player B buys the item that player A had put for sale at the station count towards the trading badge. Exiting player to player trade needs to see some reward.

-1 to allowing players to set station prices for items in any way, shape, or form.

If the value of credits is wrong in the game for specific items, the devs should address that problem. If players want to charge a different amount than what the stations offer, there is and always should be the option of doing it the way we have been doing it for years: under the table, unregulated, and unsafely.

meridian already did a fantastic job of pointing out a number of problems that would arise with the OP's suggestion.

Near zero risk the entire time and none of the frustration of loading and unloading 6 XC's from my dent for about 3 full round trips to make the 600 units. In fact, I would be surprised to find out that I did it in less time.

I don't think game features should ever be adjusted or prices set based on the value of a player's time spent exploiting a design oversight...

"I don't think game features should ever be adjusted or prices set based on the value of a player's time spent exploiting a design oversight..."

I would have made at least 4 times that in one hour if I'd actually been trading with the current butterfly method the game promotes. A system that I can't stand.

It would probably be simpler to just adjust the top price for specific items, but I don't see that as an ideal solution.

Apart from a commision system, I lean towards my first suggestion which is to allow the demand for a given item to affect the pricing. Option 1 creates a more realistic free market atmosphere rather than having an arbitrary fixed maximum price. Ideally there should be a ceiling set slightly above what the price can be expected to rise to. Demand for items is going to fluctuate over time and I think that the price should be corrolated to it.

The biggest factor that makes trading fun imo is finding a lucrative route that has not yet been exploited. What my suggestion does is add more uncertainty to the trading process. Yes, there are 1000 hulls at N2, but it could still be a profitable route to run yet. Or there could be 33 hulls stored there and it's not worth the effort because no one is buying. The player who wants to trade has to do some homework up front to find out what is currently in demand. THIS is what made the pre bug fix trading period so much fun. It wasn't the constant back and forth between stations and rediculous profits. It was the traversing the universe to find the sweet spot and then milking it for all you were worth all the while hoping like crazy that no one came and sold something while you were still stockpiling. Yes, the bug needed to be fixed, but in fixing it, it killed what made trade fun imo.