So this is kinda a suggestion, and kinda a question. I'll start with the question, and then answer it with the vision of the universe that i see being the future.

Will NPC's and players be subject to the same rules of supply/demand in the new economy? -or- Will crafting effect PC's and NPC's in the same ways? -or- (to put it more bluntly) will the abundance of NPC traders ruin all my routes?

Here's how i see it working out:
All items, ships, weapons, etc. are made by crafting. At the very bottom of the crafting chain, ores mined from asteroids are crafted into trade goods. These trade goods are then crafted into ships/weapons/etc. So it might take 10 ferric ore and 5 xithricite ore to craft, say, an ion core, and take 2 ion cores, along with other trade goods to make one ship. Crafters could either supply the things they have made directly to stations, or they could try selling them to players directly. Most things that people craft are the same as all the other goods of that type, ie. one person's crafted centurion is not different from the next person's. People could fiddle around with the "recipies" and make slightly better or cheaper versions of the product. Of course the bigger the ship, the more things will be needed to craft it.

As it is now, people and NPC's can generate as many ships as they please. In this new economy, there would be NPC's that go out and mine, selling or crafting what they mine, producing trade goods, and ships, etc. Players and NPC's would need to follow the exact same rules to get a ship, or whatever. This would hopefully balance out and make it that so even if a market existed, there might not be an NPC to trade it down, due to lack of resources to make a ship with which to trade. Also a possibility would be that a nation could be cut off from the war by the other nation setting up blockades, or imposing sanctions on trade, etc.

Basically I dont want NPC's to have an advantage because they are following different rules from the ones the players have to play by.

Hopefully that made sense.

Tripped;

It made sense, but there's one problem that we have to worry about. NPCs don't eat, sleep, raise kids, work a real job, or have to take out the trash. They can mine, trade, and do their thing ALL THE TIME.

So I can see some real problems when players have to log out for any length of time, even an hour, in a race to procure a certain amount of ore, for example, in order to produce a certain weapon.

~D.
"Nigel"

Then, why not program the NPC's to need to "rest" a certain time each day? This of course goes along with Leber's persistant NPC post here.

{EDIT} Let me add a bit more info here. Say, Johnny NPC is a miner by trade. He's single and he doesn't really leave his rocks that much(One causes the other and vice-versa, but that's another topic altogether). Every day Johnny NPC needs to sleep a bit[Between 6~10 hours of inactivity] and every week or so he likes to hop into a cargo vessel and cart his ore to a profitable/needy location. After he's done hauling his goods, he tries to pick up girls at the bar[1~2 hours of inactivity], though he inadvertently fails. Disappointed, he visits a local strip club for a while[2~4 hours. He's really sad.] and then heads back to his rocks, hauling some trade goods to make a tiny profit on the way. Once he returns, he starts his cycle over.

{MORE EDIT[I wish my train of thought wasn't derailed today]} Less pictorial and more practical:
Each NPC would have a "class"(Generic NPC Miner #4, Generic Daytrade #2, etc) which followed a certain cycle of inactivity. So, in the entire universe, there may be a good fifteen Johnny NPC's following their cycle[Hopefully offset]. Ideally, there would be quite the large amount of NPC cycles to help in variety across the universe.