I have been enjoying the game thus far but the "comerce skillis VERY lacking. There needs to be ways of players being able to mine minerals and process those minerals into parts or straight into equipment(wepons,engines,batteries,ammo,ect) which because they are player made have slightly increased quality and effectiveness. This may include also repair parts to fix players ships mid-flight, administered via a repair unit that can be equiped in a wepon or extra device slot.Also to get the minerals for these aplications a player would/could (whichever is easier) Blow apart an asteroid and use a special pice of equipment equiped in a wepon or extra device slot to pick up and process the pieces into whatever type of ore that the ateroid contained. The scanner currently use to scan for minnerals could be used in the same manner to determine (loosley) the contents of the asteroid. The forementioned ore could be taken to a station or posably a capital ship outfitted for industrial purpouses and processed into the also forementioned parts/components ment for use in the manufacture of items and or ships. oh and by the way it would be nice to add some extra color and/or an emblem to the currently drab and boring ships. Thats my peace. ^_^ hope to see good things once public.

I think a crafting system centered around building new weapons and armor would be a mistake.

What I would rather see is crafting done on a more realistic, personal level. Shops that sell good like that don't make sense given the game's backstory. The Serco are military, so their weapons will be heavily subsidized by the government. The Itani live in some marxist utopia where some monks do everything for them, and the NT are corporate driven, so if anyone sells something, it will be the huge corporations.
It would make more sense if crafting revolved around upgrading your own ship. Being able to slowly swap out your engine for a new, slightly better one. Being able to coax another point or two of autoaim onto your targetting computer with modifications, etc.

Anything of the sort will be far far in the future of course. Way after the initial P2P release.