I know. They dont care. But I do and this is the only place I feel comfortable posting to.

Procedural maps. Enlarged map sectors to allow planets and stars.

Communication:
Coms officer+Coms station; Offers options of diplomancy(terms of surrender;player or npc), economic pursuits(trading).

Trading requires physical locations

Crew members: Space Marines
-Hire Mercenaries. Give them suits like any other crew member or buy armored space suits for a better chance of survival.

-Become a pirate through dastardly deeds and be accepted into pirate stations and bases.

-Slaves: Capture or be captured and either pay a ransom or spend a few months in a bad way. Sid Mier did it in Pirates on NES. This shouldnt be difficult in 2023-2024.

Ship stuff:
-Small drone fighter craft.
-Auto pilot systems. Docking.
-Tractorbeam systems. Pulls in loot. Short(cheap). Midrange(higher cost. Top tier(low power and long range).

Ship disabling:
-Damage to internal systems; Energy producing systems that shut down more than 50% of a ship can allow for the disabled ship to be boarded.
-EMP weapons. Knockout energy systems in a ship.

Boarding options:
-Crew can fight invaders
-Crew can surrender;
1)Be enslaved and bought/sold in black markets
2)Pay a high ransom

Salvage
-Dock and tow a ship
-Teardown vessel(whatevers left of it).
-Derelect ships can be boarded and sold as a entire vessel or parts can be boxed up and hauled back to primary ship
-Scuttle; use explosives after boarding to blast the ship. Crew and drones can then collect scrap debris.
-Scuttle by manually firing upon a vessel without becoming a pirate! As nobody would know your actions and anyone knowing would be there doing the same thing.

Items: Quest Artifacts
-Science Crew members can be sent to away mission sites to search ruins forancient artifacts and clues to an ancient alien race. Find out where they went. Find unique ship parts and unravel a tale across sectors in search of a long forgotten people from the past that could shape the future!

Planets. Bases and other factions:
-Pirates.
-Robot race.
-Groups and factions. Which can be a cause of trading between locations that have specific trade items another place requires. Creating an economy and driving a bounty system when pirates strike trade lanes. Instead of artificially forcing fake resource traffic. Planets and bases/stations would work to create all resources.

Mining. Farming. Equipment to perform these resource creating tasks. Locations with a poor ability to create resources, such as a desert planet, may result in a high primitive tech level piracy.


Technology tech levels:
Items and resources should have a 0-100 quality rating. The better the quality, the higher the demand and price.
Better production conditions= higher quality
Higher Tech level= higher quality
Happy population= you guessed it, higher quality
Lower crime in region= higher population contentment
Illegal drugs could be a toss up. It harms morale, but adds a denomination score, of ignoring contentment.