i guess you had to make some sort of "crafting" in this game, but come on, no progress info at all???
its annoying enough to have to go to the sol system, buy the beam arrays mkII, fly up to memory alpha, trade them in... but then you dont even know how many trades you have to make untill the next trader is activated!!
there is not even a message, when you unlock the next trader...
you have to walk over and see for yourself. if you are lucky, you unlocked it, if not.... well, back to sol system, buy another stack of beam arrays, fly back up to memory alpha and try your luck again...