Okay, I am what some of you call a "parasite" and what I would describe as a "market maker". In some worlds, including my own, before I added liquidity to the market; it was virtually impossible to get any of the rarer items. This fact has been confirmed by other users on other worlds. I suppose if I were a small fish in a leading felllowship, it would less difficult, but I am the biggest fish in a second tier fellowship. I also could produce Bismuth at tier 3, the very least valuable tier 3 good on my world. I passed on that, as we all do with building with low returns
Also my fellowship produces next to ZERO steel, we get steel by holding onto Platinum that decays into steel. For normal goods, I have offers of ALL 8 normal other commodities ALL THE TIME and I might get one taker every 2 or 3 days - I have gone weeks without ever getting a bite - BTW all of those are 2 star "fair" trades. Being starved of steel doesn't sound fair to me. Those are the problems, if you don't like my solution, I ask how it hurt you? If you think I am the only one that likes and take adventageous trades from your fellowship for rarer commodities, I think you are fooling yourself.
How come there is chronic shortages of goods? In my regular job, I manage pricing at a large fortune 500 company so I have some expertise on how markets should operate. To give an example, the NY stock Exchange has a "Specialist" for every stock to ensure that there offers and bids at all times. They make a profit off the "Bid-Ask spread". "Bid-Ask spread" is the difference between what is offered and what is bid. In my world, the "bid-ask spread" for say Platinum is about 13% as most of the time as I offer 64k platinum for 75k Gum tree while also offering 62k of Gum Tree for 64k of platinum. I am disliked, because most of the time I offer the best price available and no one likes a competitor that sells for less. I know now that many elvenar players hate capitalism. To the good, I get many thank you as well from players who I take their trades, most commonly at say 110 Gum for 100 Platinum. You ask "Why is the 'bid-ask spread' so high?" - because few people are willing post Platimum at fair return of say 7-8%. I ask myself why people are unwilling to trade as market prices and eliminate my profit? The reason is simple, the game offers the concept of the "2 star trade" and people blindly believe that is "fair". What is worse, many fellowships codify that that making 2 or 3 star trades the "ONLY" acceptable trades. The truth is the game is not balanced for goods, but some players pretend that is not true. and/or are too lazy/hesitant to post deals at anything other than the default price (or very close thereto)
I will offer the solution to the issue. This will put me out of business "bid/ask spread" will drop to nearly zero. The game should measure production in the last 24 hours and all goods should be valued relative to their production totals. By totals, I mean the sum of all production of all players. Then the real market price will be identified correctly as 2 starts. This should be the default value when a trade entered. - done and solved. There will be no more guessing The game will tell what is fair rather than defaulting to 1:1 which we all know is unfair outside of perhaps the few and largest fellowships that are perfectly balanced.
BTW, there is another commodity you need to consider when deriding my strategy. It is the most valuable - Time. It takes time to put up and maintain all my trades and sometimes they don't sell. It is a lot of work. Also every player can always, and "I mean always", get a better price than I offer, Place it and wait. Or take my offer and get what you need now. I offer another solution for each fellowship. Only offer the less valuable commodity via the trader and I (and probably no one else) won't take it. The bottom line, my trades only look good because I work at it. It is a better deal than the competition. When you offer a poorly priced deal that is either too low (and too tempting to others beyond me, they close before your fellowship members pick them up) or too high (and no body wants them), who is to blame? Offer bad trades (above the market price) and they will always be available within your fellowship.
Personally, I like fair trades or better yet good trades below the market price and so does everyone else. Trade at about 8% above or below as appropriated and I leave that market as there will be no bid ask spread. I will also add an exception for the 8% rule of thumb. Bismuth, that terrible good I could produce. It is next to worthless. The fair price is more like 12-15% below or higher for Alloy Shrooms. I often have to leave that market as no one will take Bismuth at any price. If you look at bismuth offers, they go on or 80 pages or so.
Fixing the production inequities of the various goods is the solution, or accepting that "market makers" are are good while bidding down excessing "bid ask spreads" or better yet change the game's or your definition to a fair price. All these solutions work. As for me, I got dealt a lousy hand, so played it the best I could. My solution helps others especially compared to the situation where none of the valuable items are offered at all. If I were designing the game, I'd see "market makers" as a good solution to a quite difficult problem. One solution I might consider is fellowship only offers, but it just gives more power to the big guys and hurts those coming up. I am happy that most of you posting here have balanced goods within your fellowship but if you are short on some items I think you might begin to imagine life for most of the rest of us.