'Trade commodities' as in free-form trading mechanics (stations, long distance hauls for bucks etc). I may have worded it poorly. You can still trade stuff with other entities.
Well, the tradeable entities definitely exist in fixed localities that you definitely haul between. I'm not exactly hung up on the concept of having a specific trade station, so it's all the same to me. There is definitely a trade run involved in trading with these peoples.
How far are you in the game? Does it expand in any way later on?
I'm wrapping up the endgame now. The core game loop doesn't really change in any real way. You fly from planet to planet scanning to find "interesting" things, which mostly involve increasingly unnecessary resources since your ship will have hit max-width by that point, and more research points. I hear some people make their ship even larger, but I can't honestly imagine what I'd put on it, especially since I can't install any more engines once I pass about size 45 or so, so at that point your ship's speed starts to tank massively and the handling becomes unbearably bad. You should regard size 45 or 55 as basically max size, really. MAYBE 65 if you can tolerate it, but that's pretty much the limit at which every useful thing has been installed and the ship is just getting unbearably clunky cuz you max out at 15 engines. I suspect I could reclaim some space if I removed the ram bow from my ship. I mean, I don't REALLY need a big armor-plated nose anymore...
I'm at 3rd-4th column of research upgrades, and I see that there are some hidden branches there. Any new mechanics? Mucho different modules? Something interesting?
You eventually discover some weapons that will finally work better than simply ramming your enemies, at which point you will probably reduce your usage of ramming. Much like oldschool dreadnought design, the urge to continue to equip your ship with a bow for ramming will persist for some time after you cease to actually ram anyone. The weapon progression appears, as I reach endgame, to go from "Ramming" to "Missile Spam" to "Sniping With Your Yamato Gun".
The cannons you start with remain firmly worthless and once you have the point-defense system that will automatically kill all the debris objects for you, or maybe even the Yamato Gun, you will cease to use those stupid things entirely, no longer even carrying the one used to bust rocks, cuz it sure as hell does fuck all to enemies. As I said, it's worse than no weapon at all in a fight: PREPARE FOR RAMMING SPEED!
If the game does not expand in any way, I will be really disappointed - the game is really simplistic right off the bat, and gets only slightly more complex during the next few hours.
BE DISAPPOINT. The story winds up in a cool direction, but the game ends in kind of a whimper. Did you expect things NOT to be shit? Omnia Merdae Sunt.