So I disagree that the goods should be condensed: having multiple types is a net benefit to the game.
I 100% agree with everything in this post. Having fewer good types would not improve the game.
I've made small fortunes by capitalizing on inter-faction conflicts by buying low and selling high, and that requires carefully managing your plans so you make stops at the best buying locations while also minimizing travel time, because shortages are something other trade convoys will absolutely fill if you take too long to make your runs. This adds immense strategic depth to the game for me, even if the goods themselves do nothing for my fleet.
The game may be mostly about the combat for some folks, but to me it's just as fun trying to optimize cashflow and taking risks with timing, faction reputation, and maneuvering. Knowing I can get a ton of organics cheaply in a distant system vs. not quite as cheaply (but still profitably) in one nearer to the destination with a shortage means I have to make some strategic decisions about where to buy. If the destination with shortages is also low on a lot of other stuff, I have to decide which of those shortages I want to get at minimal cost based on my current location and other factors.
Existing relations with various factions also play a part. Do I take these drugs/organs/heavy weapons and sell them in-system to an independent station who won't care about my transponder being off, or do I risk going somewhere more heavily-defended with a shortage and trying to sneak past patrols to sell on the black market for maximum payoff without taking a hit to my rep (if I can sneak in and out successfully)?
It's also interesting to me that various goods tend to come in different quantities. You can make a lot more money while using a lot less cargo space selling illegal stuff than you can selling food or organics, even though the profit margins are usually more stable for the high-volume (but boring) legal goods. The illegal stuff can be extremely profitable, but only if you make your runs skillfully and beat other sellers to the punch, and the markets aren't consistent. Meanwhile, there's always somewhere to buy food and organics super cheap, and there's usually somewhere to turn a decent profit off of them too, but the best money comes from the riskier deals -- if you can get quantities large enough. Sometimes you just need to make
any profit to pay for something you need, and sometimes you hoard stuff until a rainy day hits another planet and you can swoop in to capitalize.
I do agree that it would be a huge benefit if you could actually utilize all of those goods yourself, too, though -- with or without a colony. This would add more interesting "hmm" type decisions, like do I use this stuff now for immediate-but-small benefit, or hold on to it for possible major profits?
Using metals to bolster ship repairs, using volatiles to produce fuel in small and inefficient quantities but enough to help save your ass if you burn too much, using organics and food to create new supply packages for the crew, etc. Stuff like that could be really interesting. And then of course using stuff like drugs and luxury goods as ways to improve morale (i.e. CR recovery rate bonuses by pumping everyone up with space meth) could be too, and organs to help reduce crew losses, or something along those lines.
Even in its current state, though, I really like having the variety of goods there are. There's a few that I could do without, like the ores, since those require immense quantities to turn a profit. It's hard to find Atlases for sale (let alone blueprints), so hauling them isn't usually worth it despite the extremely high profit margins (buy for 1, sell for 10 isn't uncommon with ore). Volturnian lobster is OK, but it's never available in quantities large enough to justify going out of your way for it. But with guns, drugs, and essentials sold to unstable planets, there are a lot of ways to make solid cash and you just couldn't get that to work if you condensed the resource list much more than they already is.
I'd actually really love to see
more kinds of unique vendor trash items, like lobster. Even here on earth -- even in a single city, let alone country -- you'll find thousands of varieties of specialties bought and sold throughout the area. On a galactic scale, it only makes sense that there'd be immense varieties of goods. Cultures would be radically different across planets, and inhabitants would absolutely be coming up with their own specialties to try and stand out; it's human nature. Some of them would make it big, becoming planet-famous or system-famous. Of course, going far enough to make trade diversity truly realistic would eat up all the system resources you could throw at the game and make it extremely time-consuming to handle... but, well, a few extra unique (or uncommon) items wouldn't hurt.
It could be cool if you could play a hand in turning some local phenomenon into an intergalactic sensation just by buying up lots of it and selling it everywhere, spreading the word to drive up demand. It would also be really neat to find caches of old Domain-era products in distant ruins, sellable for huge profits for their rarity. Unless you took them home to a colony and learned how to produce them yourself, that is... lots of possibilities.