I originally started thinking about this when I heard rumors that the cap ship would require minerals and scrap metal to create. I thought, why not extend that idea to all ships, or heck all weapons too?

Essentially, the "buy" button would be replaced with a "manufacture" button, and in addition to credits everything you bought at a station would require certain ores and trade widgets.

Each ship and weapon would have a recipe, for example a vulture mkI could require 30 units of silk steel, 2 cooling systems, 2 phase arrays, 10 units of premium vanazek ore etc...

Higher level items and equipment would require more rare and complex manufacturing recipes, and they would cost more credits to manufacture.

I'm not sure if this is a good idea or not, but I think it would help tie things together a little. Mining and trading would suddenly become vitally important, not just for earning credits but for bringing widgets to the right stations for manufacturing. Miners who knew the location of rare ore used to manufacture high level ships would be in great demand... they could sell their ore to those who didn't want to go out looking for it themselves.

Also, consider how this would tie in with the upcoming Hive update. If the Hive started taking over sectors with valuable ore in them, it would be bad since that means a source of ore used in crafting high level items would be cut off, therefore players would have an added incentive to keep these sectors cleared of the Hive.

I have to say I disagree. Sorry. What about pilots who want to become fighters only? I've always been against forcing players to take up multiple roles. It's rather unrealistic for anybody to have that many skills and be good at it. Some people can manage taking multiple careers, but it just seems silly to force a player to become a jack of all trades for survival purposes only. If the game wants to encourage roleplaying, there needs to be an emphasis on specialized roles. Each career should have more depth to it, so it would be more of a skill rather than just another task you can learn in ten seconds.

A while back I made a suggestion regarding the implementation of some type of career mode, where the role you pick gives you some type of steady salary when you're hired by a nation, faction, or guild. This would allow players to pick a role, stick with it, and make a living off of it. It shouldn't stop players from picking up multiple roles either, if they truly want that. But as in real life learning each skill would take a lot patience and work. The point is to simply let the player do whatever he/she thinks is fun in the game, and advance that career however he/she pleases.

I agree that traders and miners should somehow be more important. I'm not arguing that at all. And I think that will come later on when money and resources will be more scarce and have more meaning. However, what I don't agree with is requiring players to trade or mine just for the sake of survival. I think that sort of discourages or breaks the idea of roleplaying in one way or another. It also seems to contradict the very description of the game, as written by the devs.

It's a good suggestions, just should not be "required".
Having the option, to manufacture the different parts and such would be nice if it saved money. I don't see it being used too much except by the noobs. Unless you could manufacture a TON of parts with ores and it would drastically save money... Also if you manufactured your own ship it should be slightly better... This would be reason enough for me to have a go at it.

It worked perfectly in EnB. Miners mined, crafters crafted, warriors bought ammo that was better then stock ammo....

/givemoney Devs 2c