Transmution crafting skill to help limit/balance resource supply and demand

TL;DR
Add a mechanic to convert item within a type from one to other at an inefficient rate to help keep all resources having some demand and stopping other items demand running away.

So in this game some raw materials are next to useless and therefore is are just vendor fodder or bank bloat. Now I know that you can argue that new items can come and make these resources useful and increase the demand. This as solution, however has the potential to be very long term solution and even then as the player economy adjusts it is possible that it goes too far the other way.

There is a mechanism that many games use to have a very high level way to limit these things. That is a mechanism to turn one raw material into another at a very inefficient rate.

Now this can be considered unrealistic, but i never buy the realistic argument, i always respond to this with you dont want realistic. Realistic would be unable to move as soon as you have 2 bear carcasses on you.
What is good, is for things to make some type of "logical" sense, as this makes it easier to understand the mechanic.

So what i would suggest is that you can convert within a "type". So for example i can turn maple wood into pine wood, but not maple wood into copper. You also need to a consideration for rares, i would suggest that rares should be rares, so a seperate type. So i turn can turn tungsten into tin but not copper into tin.

The conversion has to be very inefficient, else there is no reason to gather one resource over another. So for example you can turn 5 iron ore into 1 silver ore. You can also add a fuel if you need more gold sinks. The actual number is obviously up to what you want as the limits in the economy, the developers have the data to find a good value, but obviously start high and you can always reduce it later, starting low could break the economy.

So, how would this affect the the economy. Well what is does is allow a very high level regulator on the cheapest and most expesive price of each "type". Effectively in my example of a 5 multiple, it is not really possible for the highest demand item to be more than 5 times the cost of the cheapest, as then it becomes cost effecient to convert one into the other. This then increases the demand for the cheapest (and therefore increases the price) and increases the supply of the most expensive (and therefore decreases the price). This will continue until the supply and demand makes it not cost efficient anymore.


Regards
Spung