Trader / Combat - Was a hybrid we thought about. We really tried to place each of the specialties with a 2nd tree to see how the abilities would play out. We thought it would be an interesting combo. Although keep a couple of things in mind.

As each specialty the optimum goal is the one assigned to you. You can't win the Warlord game as a Trader, since you don't have access to Super Capitol ships. The best you can do is Capitols. Since you can't build a PK (Planet Killer) you are unable to achieve the Warlord victory.

It's in your best intrests to trade with others, because your main goal is to acquire Rare Ore. The more you have the better off you are. The main reason we allowed the trader to build faster was to give it the ability to fend off attacks, just as we gave the researcher the ability to learn skills faster for the same reason. Aside from that the 1 Shipyard / planet should hold things up for awhile. At least you can now see your object counts so you know how many ships you are able to build at any given time (On the build menu, and the ship menus both tell you the counts).

We spent a lot of time trying to go through a ton of scenarios to figure out how the classes would be used, and testing and calculating the abilities. We are looking forward to see if all our efforts have paid off. It has been a VERY LONG several months trying to sort it all out. As always looking for feedback in the suggestions forum if you come up with any thoughts.