Ideas/Suggestions for improvement.

[Neogambit]

First of all, I absolutely love this game.  I accidentally came across it recently while looking for a new game to get into.  I can't believe I had never heard of it, this is exactly what I've been looking for in a game for such a long time.

Now for my ideas for improvement.  If I manage to figure out how to mod the game, I might work on the trading system.  Perhaps the devs will read this and go with it.  Either way,  I feel that the trade system needs some love and polish in order for it to feel as fully fleshed out as the rest of the game.  Right now, it feels like the trading system was just kind of a rushed in feature, and it doesn't make any sense as to how the economy is ran.

1. Bases with a purpose.  Ideally, each base would have a primary import/export that they deal with.  Secondary goods would also be in demand as well. (Food, water, medical, etc)
  A. Mining outposts would deal with refining ores into metals used in other outposts (armor, weapons, electronics, etc)
    Export: Refined materials (Metal parts, silicone parts, etc)
    Import: Food, Water, Fuel
  B. Shipyards / Military outposts / Outfitters would deal with making ships, weapons, and upgraded parts.
    Export: Ships, Weapons, Upgrades
    Import: Metals, Electronics (also Food/Water secondary)
  C. Agricultural Outposts *NEW* These are the farmers feeding the bellies of the sector. 
    Export: Food
    Import: Water, Dirt/rock
  D. Science Labs - These people are the brains of the operation. I would like to see these setup as medical facilities. In the event you die, you respawn at the closest one.  Perhaps there are medical experiments they can perform -for a fee- to enhance your character (boosted learning, faster reflexes, etc)
    Export: Medical supplies (needed everywhere)
    Import: Alien artifacts, food, water, electronics
  E.  Fuel Arrays (borrowing from Cores Gas Collector mod) will collect
hydrogen from the sun.  Need water to keep everything cool, export fuel cells.
  F.  General outposts carry a little bit of everything, ideally I would think that quest givers would gather here.

The list goes on and on, but I realized I'm writing a book here.  This is enough to give you an idea where I am going with this post.  Every good space trading game needs to have a "food chain" like this in order for it to make sense.  People who have played games like EVE Online, or the X-series games know exactly what I'm talking about here.  The groundwork has already been laid in the game, it just needs to be tweaked a little bit in order for it to really shine as a positive feature. 
I really love this game so far, and I hope that the word gets out about it.  Like I said before, I barely just stumbled across this game, and its exactly the style of game I enjoy.  I feel like there hasn't been enough marketing to really push how great of a product you have here.  I plan on starting to stream it on Twitch, and will try getting the word out where I can.  Thank you again, and if anybody wants to collaborate or expand on this, please do so. 

[Silberspeer]

Woah, thanks a lot! It would be great if you help us spreading the word about VoidExpanse.
About bases with a purpose: the bases are already with a purpose, they have different kinds of officers and inhabitants, also the shop goods variety is different and specialized. And, actually, there is no big deal to make it a bit deeper, but for this another thing needs to be done. Even two. First - new, really rich economics. It is a task for maybe (at least) three months of designing, implementing, testing. And it is definitely not the thing we are up to do right now because we are really busy with a creating of the content update. And to create new economics we need to consider (or even maybe recast) another feature in the game architecture, which obstructs implementing of the trade as you see it. We don't really like to talk about it, but to fix this we'll need to reassemble a huge (almost all, actually) part of the game. Which we are definitely not going to do.
Howerver, everything is not that bad and we are looking for the ways to improve the game considering the ideas of our players and you will be able to see it quite soon. We almost finished our first content update. I don't want to really spoil, but we made something really close to what you described in your post.

[Neogambit]

Wow, I see what you mean by that being a huge undertaking.  I think I kinda have the trading thing figured out to a degree.  I see in the Store menu, items have a "Default" price set, and then you can see what the product is being bought/sold for.  This gives you an idea of what is/isn't profitible.  The only thing I don't get, is what affects the station prices.  Perhaps some more description could be put into the tutorial, to help out newer players? 
That being said, and having to re-think my idea to a simpler concept, perhaps something like this would be a little easier, since its more of a quest-type script.
I have seen terminals in some outposts, but they never seem to do anything.  Perhaps having an option for Trade News like the following:
      ===Outpost Scion III in the Trabula system is in dire need of Medicine===
  Then have that particular outpost be paying higher for medicine, until it reaches "X" amount. 
On the flipside:
    --==Outpost Sojourn I in the Vega system is overstocked on Electronics==--
  Now players know where a good source of cheap electronics are. 

Taking it a step further, perhaps there could be trade contracts offered at these terminals, as traders do not get XP as per pirate hunters and miners.  They could grab a contract like "Deliver X amount of X to the Denub III outpost in Hanzo sector, offering X amount per unit".  Then it leaves them to find out where to purchase that resource for cheap, and they can predict in a sense what the profit margin is.  Once the product is delivered, they can receive a certain amount of XP, like a miner / hunter would.
Would something of this nature be a little easier to implement?

[Silberspeer]

No, because actually it is easier to design and develop a large system from the scratch. Those little "cherries on the top" usually cause a lots of bugs, unpredictable game behavior, re-balancing, tuning and really may take more time and/or effort. Right now we cannot afford to start any rebuilding of the economical system despite you are giving us really reasonable and good ideas.

[Antonovus]

Perhaps giving a function to the planets would make the game more interesting (similar to station quests). I understand this would be a large undertaking, but it certainly could improve the game experience. Or--perhaps giving a function to the suns in each system--being able to extract specific energy/resources/fuel from them with a special tool.

[Silberspeer]

Or--perhaps giving a function to the suns in each system--being able to extract specific energy/resources/fuel from them with a special tool.

Hm, this is a good idea and we already have a mod like that: http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=324260&browsesort=mostrecent&section=readytouseitems

[Antonovus]

Thanks, I'll have to check it out.