Well, I gotta agree with Kinslayer at some points. Let's just face it: trading is the only way if you're looking to buy even a cruiser. To all those making parallels out to real life: this is a sci-fi game with wormholes, ftl speeds and so on, yup, that's real life in action, very real. If you want it be super real - just log out and have it. This is game, this is form of entertainment, no need to make it extremely boring just beacuse someone thinks it should be a bit closer to real life. I, for one, came here partially because knowing that I will not need months of boring raid runs to have some fun then, that I had in World of Warcraft and hated it for it. I did those boring trading runs, I bought cruiser, bought battelship, several fighters, several transports. Thing is: none of them were bought on money I got for completing missions. I did missions (and aborted them too) for only one thing: fixing reputation. Personally I'd love to see difficult and rewarding missions which may require several persons completing it. At least it would be another good way to bring entertainment, that's what the game is about.
