Can't say I am surprised to hear this is too radical a change for a mere "feature addition". Something for AI2 consideration is entirely reasonable.
Abstraction is not a bad thing. Most people are not into heavy amounts of detail in a "rogue-like" game. The best I hope for is to discern some logic in the abstraction. That the "most profitable" deal for a sector remains pretty constant would in fact be a way of abstracting "commodity association", which led me to hope perhaps there was some of that going on. But the focus on the high end of the market made me wonder if I was reading too much into it.
I had noticed that buying and selling affected the price of those particular commodities only (they would be the only items that changed price), and found it very reasonable. Of course that I only had 5 available cargo space for most of my trades meant I wasn't seeing the impact of large volumes at the time, but have seen more now that I have upgraded to a cargo vessel. The only suggestion on that would be a timer on how long between those particular types of trade (i.e. how long between one "sell" and another "sell", and another for the "buys") affecting how big an impact. That would be a way of abstracting the amount of "trade" in that commodity, though the player may be having too much of an impact if only their actions affect the timer. And I have seen some evidence that perhaps such a timer already exists.
One more late thought I forgot to add: "perishables". Most of the commodities are either manufactured goods or raw materials, which tend to be less time sensitive in getting to market. Only a few, like "food", and "narcotics" have a "shelf life". (Stim-ware falls in-between.) The longer such perishable items remain on a station, the more their value drops, so they become more urgent to move to their market before it becomes impossible to make any profit on them. Makes for another "trade quest" rationale.
Oh, and I ought to mention that many of my ideas on commodities come from playing "railroad" games like "
Railroad Tycoon" as well as reading.
Looking forward to seeing what you can come up with.
-Dubious-