It would be nice if we could sell ships.



For example, if I could make lower tier ships very fast, I could sell them to interested empires that cannot build ships as quickly and/or are behind tech.



With this option, I could focus on economic/industry exploitation by becoming a weapons merchant; with huge dusts from ship sales, I could buy-out improvements and even highly advanced ships for my own defense.

I don't think that it's good idea, because with growing of your empire the amount of trade paths will great increase and you will not have any motivation to deal with all of that sell ships.

Instead of trading ships, what about trading population instead ?

I guess it's the only "resource" you can't monetize when trading with other empires.