To make early game and credit earning more balanced and fun, I would:
Reduce bounty rewards across the board, but make rewards scale, as tougher bounty you take on, bigger the reward. But it's to the point of impossible to defeat these enemies alone, while easy bounties have small payout barely covering expenses. I'd go further and have feature to request assistance of fleet in friendly/neutral territory (if present). It already works in such a way, that when you and someone else kill bounty, rewards get shared based on contribution. It would help immersion and not make player feel like a god of war as he can (and must) tackle and destroy everything solo easy-peasy.
Another issue is how fast you can build endgame fleet. When you know what you're doing, you'll have super-armada in no time, which hurts the feeling of progression. I mean it's a sandbox game, we supposed to grind a bit here, a bit there. Have an incentive to roam around the galaxy, do stuff to get stronger bit by bit, instead of roughly be stuck in same cluster, pick closest bounties nearby with best payout and roll them hard...
So it would be nice if we had trading, exploration and bounty hunting as all viable options, while bounty hunting supposed to be hardest and most risky out of three, which is the other way around right now, heh.
Exploration is extremely profitable, probably the best way of making money in the game currently. You just need surveying and salvaging skills and a decent freighter and you can make millions from planet surveys, research/mining/orbital stations, remnant battle stations (if you have the fleet), and drone motherships/survey ships. As long as you are not stupid and check the fuel range on the map, you can always ensure you have enough fuel to get home, and the combat, with the exception of the remnants (which are avoidable), is all much easier/less risky than conventional bounties. The exploration missions themselves are definitely not very profitable though, I'll give you that.
I think trading is going to end up being done on a higher level between outposts rather than by the player. I imagine you will set up contracts from you colonies to deliver goods and gain a steady income source that will free you up to do other things than grind for money. I think Alex wants to avoid the player being a delivery boy which I don't mind at all.
Megas made good points, which I won't repeat, but on the fleet in particular:
Populated space is clustered in the middle, while explorable space is surrounding it and is at quite some distance. So you need pretty small fleet with tanker and freighter, otherwise you'd be suffering serious losses in terms of income if you run giant battle armada. But particular fleet built for exploration stands no chance in combat, especially if you got jumped by something big and scary, since you can't run away from everything, even on sustain burn, thus it means high risk venture. And definitely one you can't get into fresh from the start, while later it gets pointless.
"Trading", in the "buy low sell high" sense, is not intended to be profitable.
The reason for this has to do with gameplay patterns. People, even when playing games, will typically go for the easiest option even if that option takes a lot of time. We often call this "grinding". As a result, unless there is some fun gameplay pattern involved in trading what will tend to happen is that players will want to grind money doing it until they can afford to go fight. What is intended is to go fight immediately. This gets you into the core gameplay experience faster and wastes less time doing boring things.
So while people may say they want it "trade" its actually bad for the game in the long run.
Sorry, but that doesn't seem sensible, IMO. Particular players truly enjoy trading as an activity, and if economy wasn't broken, that would be fun thing to do for us and earn money. Running bounties is the same way of grinding, but if trading would be a thing, we would have at least two options to choose from, instead of just one. Exploration is not all that profitable either and is quite risky, plus requires specific fleet and preparation, which fresh player is not really capable of financially, so making some adjustments to it could make 3 activities, and actual roles for new player. Seriously, this game has awesome combat, but it shouldn't completely revolve around it, it should be a choice player makes.
Would you, absent income concerns, run trading fleets around the Galaxy?
If no then that is a bad design. The core activity isn’t fun enough to justify and rather it’s the efficiency of the income that is driving the activity.
Now, many games, this included, use income as a mechanic to progress the player down the gameplay progression. Some games do this with XP some games do it with money. But the point here is to gate more complex and advanced gameplay behind the lesser so that there is a noticeable progression throughout the game. (And also to ensure players don’t get overwhelmed)
Is trading like that? Where you get bigger transports and the more complex logistical issues provide unique and interesting challenges? Or is it there to get you a big fleet so you can go shoot things?
I don’t believe it’s the former.
Yes, I'd absolutely run trading fleets around the galaxy, that's what I'd like to do for fun. Your whole post just biased towards your opinion of what you think player wants and enjoys in this game. You gotta understand there are many of us with very different tastes. And game has all the premises to have working features those players enjoy, if balanced right. I mean it's already there, just needs a bit of tweaking...