Ok, drop the bean counting part, and let's do something with trade that allows VC to come into play, and add another element to Roleplaying.
I believe VC is cool with how things are now. We're a powerful corporation, it's been role-played out more times than I can count, the way it should happen.
I've toyed with the idea of a completely different resource system. A system where planets generate money, which can be spent on shipping meters, trade meters, tech assets, exploration, and other junk, but the problem is, TRF just isn't suited for that kind of game.
I wouldn't be willing to modify TRF nor start a completely separate RP based on that kind of stat system without having a tracking script behind me to keep everything in line. And I'm not about to slice off a lot of time to write such a script...
So, while new ideas like this are more than welcome for discussion and dissemination, keep in mind that any major changes to the rules need to be as simple and as modular as they can be. Simple is best. We want people to come here for both the writing and the empire building. We want people to stay for the writing and empire building.
We don't want people leaving when they see that the writing sucks because everyone is busy re-calculating how much empire they have.