I want these things too, but the virtually non-existent economy is far more of a barrier to a business simulation than just about anything else I can conceive of.
I'm not really sure how you could have the simulation you want, while at the same time trivializing asset acquisition even further. I mean what the hell is the point of a business in a post-scarcity society? You want to make 500 million credits an hour mining minerals, without devaluing those credits...but where is the demand for these minerals coming from? Who is buying millions of tons of LTD or void opals at top dollar, where could they possibly get the capital to do so without run away quantitative easing, and how could the fallout from that be differed indefinitely? Massively inflated money supply, artificial demand propping up prices, simultaneous with broad price fixing, makes exactly zero sense and completely eviscerates any sort of verisimilitude that is the ultimate goal of any kind of simulation game, in my view.
"I want to simulate being the owner of a business in a setting where money is free", is a subjective desire that cannot be wrong, but it's damn surrealistic.
The best experience I had in Elite for that kind of thing was during Alpha 4, when Frontier introduced their economic sim. Ships had operational costs, commodity supplies were much slower to recover unless their production demands were met, and a good mix of commodities could net you an average of 700 credits/ton, compared to the 1000 credits/ton for gold, which only produced at a single station at a rate of a few dozen canisters/hour.
Sadly for those of us who enjoy being virtual business owners, a player discovered a
literal gold duplication bug. When they were online, they would shower T9s worth of canisters of gold upon any woo would meet him behind Azaban City. It was that crowd who persuaded Frontier to take a chain saw to their economic sim to increase credit rewards.
And those increases have been accelerating ever since, while prices, for the most part, have remained stagnant. That's why on-foot equipment costs more than the price a small ship, while they cost a thousand/ton if bought as a commodity.
If I could go back in time, and do one thing for this game, it would be to give Frontier this message:
"The problem isn’t income. Your testing environment is tiny, which puts artificial pressure on the markets to reach equilibrium. When it comes to luxuries, supplies have been depleted, demand has been satuated, and production prerequisites aren't being provided. That is why the luxury market has crashed. And this is a good thing. Markets
should crash in such an environment.
"Once players have access to a few hundred markets, let thousands, carefully managed trade routes will see profits that will far exceed the current 'gold standard.' If you’re concerned about the pace of advancement, consider reworking ship and module prices. Currently, prices increases exponentially, while capabilities increase mostly linearly. A ship that can carry twice the cargo, or is twice as potent in combat, cost ten to twenty times their smaller variants, with fuel and repair costs increasing proportionally.
"It is this combination: markets quickly reaching equilibrium due to a very small pool, and increases expenses far outpacing increasing capabilities, that's causing larger ships to lose money trading in many cases. You've done a great job balancing the income and expenses for small ships. Rebalance the price of larger ships and their components to match."