One thing I really wish we had
 

A change in Maintenance cost calulations.

I wish there was a line in each component, enhancement, facility, and vehicle that allowed us to set a maintenance value between 0 and maybe 999% and each turns maintenance cost total was the sum of all the individual values.

Ah well.

Re: One thing I really wish we had
 

What's wrong with adjusting the initial resources cost? Maintenance is a fixed percentage of that, so increasing initial cost will increase maintenance costs. Mounts can also increase component costs.

Re: One thing I really wish we had
 

One example: What if you wanted to create a maintenance free component that had a high initial cost? Or an almost-free component that had a very high maintenance cost?

Ancient technology would probably fall under the first Category, and anything done primarily by people would probably fall under the second.

Think of a psychic weapon: Spend 10 minerals to build the room, and then maintain a crew at 500 organics per turn to use their powers to attack the enemy.

Re: One thing I really wish we had
 

Ya, there are lots of uses for this sort of thing. Armor, for one (most armor should not require a lot of maintenance, though it might be expensive to create in the first place).

Also, power-using components like engines and shield generators could be given extra maintenance costs in rads, leading to a fuel-like situation.

PvK

Re: One thing I really wish we had
 

In some respects the idea of qualitatively different costs for construction and maintenance doesn't make much sense. S-J, to use your example, surely the intial cost for a psychic weapon like that would need to include some organics to represent the cost of (breeding/training/growing) the psychics, and a smaller amount to maintain the group (provide replacements etc). The cost of building a component has to take into account all of the individual costs, no matter where they come from (presumably the cost of crew quarters takes crew training into account etc)

However, I would like to see maintenance tied into the age of the component (probably impossible with the current game code). Older components should cost more to maintain, with the clock being reset every time the ship is retrofitted.

Re: One thing I really wish we had
 

If your population has natural talents, you don't need to do much training.

PvK's examples are better; use the armor (no maintenance) vs engines (fuel maintenance) idea.