Filling buy orders from a Hub

Well, not just the closest hub but I do see that placing a sell order will not solve your problem if the buyer you want to reach is far away.

I too like that idea ~~

I agree with everything you are saying.  I'm not sure that global visibility is the only problem.  Removing global visibility allows each hub to vary relatively independently in price.  Which doesn't matter for everything other than basic goods as some traders will start moving stuff between markets to take advantage of the price delta and that will even out prices across Elgea.  But for basic goods, that's neither practical or realistic.  You'll wind up with large price differentials and no tools to address the need.

In respect to the proposal to accept buy/sell town orders from a hub it has the same problem.  You will be very limited in the number of these distant orders you can fulfill because one player has a very limited (in relation to hub trade volume) number of caravans.

Yes, visibility and accepting town orders are both issues.  But if you resolve either of those you will quickly run into the followup issue of limited hub transport capacity.  I think players should be able to rent vans to hub traders.  It can be another market at the hub.  Players post "vans for rent" and select the hourly/daily cost and traders rent them.  Either party can terminate the agreement at any time (after the van fulfills whatever it's currently doing).  If the trader terminates the agreement the van goes back to the rental market.  If the player does it goes back home.  Rented vans get listed in your van inventory just like a van from your city.  Then the devs just need to fix the system so you can lump vans from different cities together into a single unit.

I don't know, that's my thoughts.

I'm confused, because the old city to city trade model allowed players in a variety of places on the map to have access to every resource, everywhere.  If that was a "purpose" of the hubs I think they failed miserably?  By limiting the new goods to only hubs many players haven't even seen many of the goods ever for sale.  How do hubs help people in a variety of places on the map have access to resources?

Rill wrote: Limiting trade visibility for basic resources would make life substantially harder for many people (including newbs) who might not find orders for basic resources they need to play the game at their local hubs.  Sure, a newb with access to Centrum would be OK, but what about a newb who spawns in Tor Carrock or Arran?

Well, I've got several traders and they can't all be in Centrum.  If they turn off visibility and you see a market without a trader send me an IGM.

I am basing my thoughts on this at least in part to economic theory, particularly research that has been done around protective tariffs.  The bottom line is that protective tariffs and other barriers to trade tend to inhibit the overall productivity of a "global" economy.

Inefficiency is not necessarily a bad thing.  If the reasons for this inefficiency are creating a system in which lots of people have loads of fun, more power to them.

There certainly is a segment of the playerbase that likes playing with trade.  More power to them.  But changes like visibility limitations in trade for basic resources may ending up making things less fun for a large segment of the playerbase that must contend with inefficient markets that do not have available goods.

I am not in a position to judge where the balance is in that, I am just saying that there are more dimensions on which to base decisions about the way market transactions should be structured than just what will make the most gold.  Another of the decision factors seems to me to be ease of use of markets and/or availability of goods for players who are not interested in complex market systems.

Personally I think limiting trade visibility now would be a death knell for the market in general, as there would now be no reason at all for the vast majority of players to even look at the market.  As it is, when I place an order for basic resources on the global market, there is at least a chance that I might also take a look at the faction hubs.  (I actually do happen to have a trader at one of them.)  If I no longer could place orders from my city with some expectation that people might actually buy them, I might ignore the market entirely and do all trade within my alliance or on the black market.  I think I am far from the only player in the game in that position.