Yet more about research...
Could there be added a way to recuse the size taken by components as well as their construction and maintenance costs. Say like each level of "miniaturation" costing twice the cost of former level , having cumulative effect to reduse costs and size by 10% per level (not (-10-10-...), but (.9 * .9 * ...).
So if one would reseach 10 levels of "DUC I minituration", the end would allow build DUC I at ~35% of cost and size of the original. But the cost would be insane, level 10 would cost 512 times the first level
Also, the actual research for DUC I would have different base cost to miniturize, or it would be pointless to miniturize anything.