Ok, Ill chip in with this
Trade In Materials & Data
We can collect various smaller commodities from planet surfaces, such as Sulphur or Chrome, and some of these are pretty rare. Who knows you may have an insight into where some very rare materials can be found. We can also get special data from various scans.
So lets open this up to trading both on stations and player to player (ideally). If we need material or data X, and someone out there has it, and is willing to sell it. Then I cant see why we can trade between us.
So lets have a board on major stations that shows us ALL of the items that are currently on the market. Think of this as a kind of E-Bay, for sale of smaller items (not measured in tons). It also allows us to nominate assets we have, to put them up for sale.
When we nominate an asset, we have to choose a quantity from our stock, and price per unit (global averages for such are shown). Then that material is removed from our ship, and is stored. If a buyer pays for it, the money is credited to us, wherever we are, with a message sent to confirm. The buyer is then able to get physical stock from the station the item is stored on, or pay for delivery to their station for $$ + the usual delay. Data items can be transmitted to us, wherever we are. Think of it as an attachment to the receipt message. Sold data is removed from our store once transmitted. To avoid duplication and repeated re-sale (game breaking).
The Galaxy map will have a marker type created, which shows us stations where we have items stored for sale. Hovering over the marker, will list the items, quantity of and their sale price. Once sold and no more items are stored on that station, the flag disappears.
