Nice! My 2 cents: it absolutely makes sense for there to be a lack of profitable trade routes (race to the bottom, etc) if there is enough shipping in an area. If there's not enough shipping, then imbalances should pop up. Those could be made by an event (pirates preying on shipping, industrial accident...) or possibly by the player (kill all the competition, then run the routes yourself).
Yep, we're on the same page here.
I'm very excited to see what you and David have been coming up with for systems and stories - I'm thinking the atmosphere of the game is going to start changing. 
Just from seeing what David's come up with, it's definitely moving in that direction.
In any case, trading is something to do when my units are too weak to fight stuff. Once my units can fight anything, commerce is only good for getting shinies that cannot be won from combat or acquired any other way.
That's one way to play it, sure. I could also see someone that prefers trade/industry/etc as a matter of playstyle.
Heres a question, will there be multiple ways to handle an event that DON'T involve a monetary profit?
I know you mentioned that if a player has ill will towards a planet they could potentially blockade to stop all supplies coming in, but other than selling mass quantities of food to starving people can we just give them food? I know in a former blog post ( or somewhere) you had mentioned Morality and how that would affect how people see you. But then this might be saying too much of the future.
Depends on the event. Naturally, events in the next release will be more trade-focused, but the system should be flexible enough to handle much more than that.
I didn't expected trade to be like that. This version of trade that Alex show us is actually seems more like a quest system than a trading system. Random quest appears, choose whether or not you want to do it, the quest involve basic "Get things, give them to dude, get money".
Sort of, though I hate calling it a "quest". I think the resemblance is mostly superficial. I mean, you can boil anything down to that, right? Including current combat.
The difference, for me, is that a quest is something that requires active participation from the player and has a scripted way for how it's supposed to go. An event will resolve itself without player interference, and an ideal event has multiple ways for the player to take advantage of a specific opportunity.
That said, you probably *could* get along by taking advantage of these in the most basic/obvious way. Need to see just how it actually plays out!
For some reasons i expected a more 4X mechanic. Player faction set an automated trading route to get resources, other factions can interact with the routes and influence your faction (pirate raid, Hegemony blockade...), you can choose to defend or attacks trades routes to influence the game.
I'm not saying it is bad by any mean, it will be probably very important for the implementation of the rest of the eventual missions mechanics. But to me it's not "real" trading.
But as Alex said, trading would be quickly boring. Some mods already feature a similar mechanic and while being a freighter captain can get you some safe money, it's not as interesting as blowing up stuffs. Maybe later on (or with mods) we'll be able to set AI trading routes that you will manage, not necessarily as a captain but more as a company director, Starsector Tycoon style.
Not sure if this will be the direction Alex want his game to go though. Starsector seems to be more of a SPAZ's like rather than a 4X or a RTS.
I think what you're talking about here falls more under "outposts and industry" rather than the scope trade for the next update. For example, an automated way to make a profit from a "race to the bottom" trade route could work just fine, as long as it doesn't require direct participation from the player. I
am keeping an eye on how a player-controlled outpost would fit into the economy, though it's far too early to actually talk about that in any detail.
In short, what you're talking about 1) sounds good and 2) is precisely the sort of stuff that, I think, can be built on top of this foundation. Whether that's exactly how it ends up, well... need to get this portion done first, and then take a good look at everything.
I approve.
A lot of trading games would benefit enormously from a trading system closer to what you've described than what they have.
Sounds absolutely amazing. But im still looking forward to having my own planet in the future. 
hopefully it will be difficult to "own" one, and even more difficult to maintain more then one. But thats just my personal hope for this game. That said, this whole post made me excited for this game once again.
Thanks, guys
