newb question regarding economics and trade

[aprezto]

Hello all;

Just some advice about how you get information about how your trading is going with a bit of granularity.

The kind of things I'd be interested to know is:
What am I actually trading? I can find this at certain planets where I see reserved quota for other empires, but I'd like an empire view: I am a major trader of lead, carbon fibre and vodkol, and my main trading partners for these are: ??

The amount of stock I have of strategic resources, and its relevance to building I'm planning (the impact of my 10 new dreadnaught class capital ships). I like the new ship building shortcut - nice one place stop to build my ships by the way - but I often wonder whether my ship building expansion program is going to drop me dangerously close to a strategic resource crunch when I order it. The only way I find this out is after the fact when the ships can't be built because they're waiting on a resource. Maybe a warning beside the 'purchase' button on this screen?

So potentially colour coding in the resource screen where the computer extrapolates recent state, and especially private, building and highlights this trend. Automatic trade and mining should look after it, but it would be nice to have them highlighted.
I know there is the whole private economy, and such a sudden drop in resource would create demand which would in turn cause trade with other empires or the building of more mining capacity. But when you're the evil empire and trade is difficult, a lack in buffering like this can slow things down.
I find the trend of resource use opaque, or even mystical.

Maybe even a little arrow beside each resource saying you're trending up in stocks or down would be informative.

[Data]

big fat +1