I know that the game is still developing, but I have a suggestion for the corporations in the future of the game. Corporations could actually be competing with each other for profit (creating and selling goods or something, perhaps this could go hand in hand with a crafting system, e.g. have corps produce and sell crafted items between each other, and make crafting exclusive to each faction). You could have production bonuses or something for the corps controlling the sectors in the center and even add technology for the corporations to research (perhaps based on allegiance, e.g. federation, empire, jericho).
Anyway, just some ideas…
As much as I would enjoy a thriving economy - I believe the devs have stated that for now there are no plans to add player-to-player trading of any kind. The game as a whole isn’t really designed for it anyway - it would unbalance the economy and player progress a fair bit.
If trading was in right now - I’d buy utterly useless modules from my friends just so I can transfer them millions of credits and speed up their ship progress. Whereas some of the active/more skilled members of the top corporations have 50-150+ million credits each, the other players might be counting their pennies and we could easily speed up the progress of an entire corporation overnight.
Just for that reason - right now it’s not a good idea. It would require a major overhaul of the way the loot, economy and progress work as to not upset the current balance.
What I was suggesting was corporate trading (have corporations buy items from corporations of another faction and distribute or sell the items to their members), rather than player to player trading, but I see your point.