I think tariffs could be reduced and price fluctuations be higher, if trade was more dangerous. This would promote the "Combat Freighter" lifestyle.
How?
- Simulate trade routes through harsher and more varied hyperspace terrains
- Trade route blockades
- Interaction with Pirates and Mercenaries
Hyperspace Terrains!
What could be changed about them? First, there could be more types. Unstable Hyperspace Clouds to more severely deplete your CR to make you take path around it. Collapsed space that slows your ships tremendously or vice versa, massively increase your fuel usage. Either of the space mentioned reduces the ship's profile significantly, allowing them to go around blockades more easily. Neutron/Black Hole blasts antimatter waves into hyperspace knock ships back. These terrain effects could force trade routes between constellations and even nearby stars.
Trade Routes? How would we view them?
On the intel screen, there could be a map of commonly used trade routes, mapped out by other traders. If you are in a faction, you can access their military routes and blockades. You could access a broker on a planet to access commonly found hyperspace routes around the star. In addition, interacting with other independents or certain factions, you can trade access to their navigational data.
Trade Route Blockades!
Speaking of them, factions can set up fleets at commonly found routes for military or trade reasons. For example, fleets can be inspected or forced to turn on their transponder as they pass this trade route to search for smugglers. Of course, the military cannot project all around their designated star system, so smugglers or terrorists can sneak through the aforementioned harsher terrains.
Interactions with Pirates and Mercenaries?
Let's start with Pirates. Foremost, no pirate should ever have their transponder on. Straightforward. Next, these pirates should not always have to pick a fight. Let's say a giant pirate fleet occupies a trade route and you are really short on fuel. The pirate armada comes by and demands a toll for passage. You pay the toll and there is a good chance they'll let you go and not back stab you.
Now Mercenaries are more complicated. You can go to a bar or make contact with a mercenary fleet. You pay for their services, which could be 10% of the base value of their fleet plus 10% the base value of your fleet and the time requested. The mercenary fleet would follow you closely at all time for the specified duration. However! If the mercenary fleet finds itself super threatened - aka pirate armada comes by, it may back off on your contract and leave you to die.
OR! You could find yourself the target of mercenaries. Labelled as privateers, these mercenaries put on the flag of their employing faction and attack you for your cargo and head.
So what do we have now?
- More difficult to navigate terrain leading to higher commute costs
- Military blockades limiting your trade routes leading to higher commute costs
- Pirates tolling every fleet that pass by forcing you to have spare cash or a stronger fleet
- Having mercenary protection at a cost or having them hunt you forcing you to have a stronger fleet
These combined effects increase the costs of trade and make it more difficult, especially if you have a high fleet to combat ratio aka civilian merchant fleets.
What does this mean for trade? Well tariffs should be lower. Now that it's more difficult to reach certain planets, certain factions may want to lower their tariffs to guarantee profits and make sure their people can be feed and have a job. Of course, I am in favor having most tariffs scale with the relationships. The higher your relations with that faction, the lower the tariffs (as found in Nexerelin mod).
Furthermore, there needs to be higher price fluctuations. Because certain trade routes could be caught in conflict, pushing all the traders away, planets may put a high price on certain goods. Currently, the game has few instances of very high demand that would generate great profits. I don't think there necessarily be a change in the way the economy works but more along the lines forcing loss of trade to certain planets. If anything, all planets should have more traders willing to put in goods for the planet than the planet needs but interactions in hyperspace would limit a significant portion of them, leading to a higher demand.
These are some ideas I put down so trading could be more fun than just going from destination A to B.