New NPC Merchants
A New NPC "Merchant". QuarterMaster would be a better name, but that name is already taken.
Add a "Preview Mode" window to the item creation process. Thereby allowing players to create the items they need themselves and see the requirements for making them, etc. Then when they are done they can press an "Order" button that creates a container that they can place resources in and then place for "sale" on the merchant. However, the "sale" is not for cash, but for the Item itself. The "payment" is in cash and optionally resources to the person completeing the order.
The player will have to pay a 10% non-refundable fee to the Merchant. This fee will be based on the greater of 10% of the order value in coin, or 10% of the "game value" of the resources included in the order. As many crafters actually craft for free, if you include the resources. And as many items require special resources, there should be a method for paying for the items using those special resources, but that payment method should take their value into account in the fee process as well. For instance if a player wants a peice of armor, he might include 50 bars of metal as payment. The armor required 15 bars, and the other 35 bars was the profit for the crafter filling the order. The fee in this case would be based on 10% of the vaule of 50 bars of metal, or about 30c if we are talking bronze.
The crafter who fills the order will have to pay a 10% non-refundable fee for purchasing the order, and will have 4 hours to fullfill the order and return the merchandise to the Merchant, or the order is voided and put back up for sale to the next crafter. Any crafters will be limited to 10 orders at a time, and any order they default on will ban them from further orders for an additional 4 hours.
Additionally, once every 4 hours, the merchant will compare his list of "cash only" orders to the avialable goods on "public" pawnbrokers and "public" consigners and purchase any goods from those sources for which the order has sufficient funds (and matches exactly in the case of techs and colors). The player will not receive a refund for the cash difference, instead the merchant retains this difference as additional profit. "Public" would mean, any pawnbroker or consigner that is open to shopping by the general public. This would allow persons to purchase "100 gold bars at 25c" without having to visit every consigner in the world. However this convienience would cost them an additional 10%, 250 copper for a total of 2750c instead of 2500c. The crafter on the other end would receive the normal 2500c, but had to pay 250c to put the bars up for sale on the consigner, thus ending in the same 20% total fee as if they finished the order directly with the merchant. If however the merchant found those bars on sale for 10c, then the merchant would get to pocket 1500c for his NPC self. And if the NPC merchant buys from a pawnbroker, egads, the two of them will eating high on the hog for sure. NPC's have to make a living too!
