- Most resources usually cost more at the places where they are produced than at the places where they are needed. I know there is some fluctuation, but this rule applies to most goods no matter what. They are cheapest at the Trading Stations, also cheaper than at the factories that they produce them, and most expensive at the places where they are created! Even if you manage to catch them at a rather cheap price, the difference to what you can sell them for is minimal. Pretty much the only exceptions to this are energy cells, argnu beef, ore, and silicon wafers. Silicon wafers are the only really profitable good to trade until deep into the game. Without them, the game would be pretty much unplayable.
- Investing in factories makes little sense as well. Those that I tried do not produce goods of higher value than what the stuff costs that I have to supply them with. Silicon mines may be an exception, but only until the price for silicon goes down galaxy-wide because you keep selling everywhere. And in order to profit from silicon, you do not need to set up expensive factories complete with freighters. You can as well buy cheap silicon and sell expensively and make at least as much profit per time.
I started with two silicon mines in ore belt. These had the positive effect that I got silicon wafers without having to pay the 227 credits/each. The downside was that they needed tons of energy cells, which were not free. Still there may have been some profit left.
I decided to add a power plant right besides in order to make my own energy cells. However, I found that crystals were a primary resource for my plant (while being only a secondary resource for every other plant). I got more than enough energy cells to supply both silicon mines, but every few minutes I had to allocate another 100000 credits for new crystals. The energy cells that I produced were hardly worth more than I had to pay for the crystals. Still a slight profit here (although nothing that would have justified the investition for the power plant and freighters).
I finally decided to add a crystal fab. This appeared an exceptionally smart move to me, because I could provide it with silicon wafers from my mines and use the created crystals for the power plant, finally ending the constant money drain through crystal buying. I planned on selling the surplus crystals for good profit.
However, the crystal output of the crystal fab was so pathetic that it barely sufficed to power my power plant. There was no surplus. The whole output of one crystal fab is needed to power one single power plant! The whole galaxy economy would break down if the CPU plants also had to obey this rule. Okay, I no longer had to pay for the crystals, but I found myself needing huge amounts of cahoona meatsteaks! These were hard to acquire (I needed to regularly visit several surrounding systems in order to get enough of them to the crystal fab), and they cost me so much that my whole profit (which came from the surplus silicon wafers) was eaten up. In fact, the crystal fab caused my whole economy (which had never been convincing compared to the cost to set it up) to become completely unprofitable.
Okay, I could shut down the crystal fab and do without it, but that does not solve the basic problem: The whole economy system of the game is majorly messed up!! It does not seem wise to buy any factories at all (unless factories other than the ones that I used do a whole lot better - in comparison to the cost of the resources that they need).
X2 is not primarily a space combat game like Freelancer. Instead, it has its priority on space trade and buildup. And if this core component is messed up, what is then left of the game???
And it would be so easy to fix that, way easier than fixing other bugs. I mean, how hard can it be to set price standards so that resources are usually cheaper at the places where they are made than at those where they are needed? And how hard can it be to make a factory that needs expensive resources produce enough of its output goods so that running that factory is worthwhile?
, I am but the sum of my experiences… and today I am more than I was yesterday. 
, is the question was for me because of my reply before
That's a bit hard for me to swallow. So yeah, I think the economy was designed that way on purpose without realizing this would break the economy and turn the whole pyramid scheme upsidedown.
So sue me.