[raynor]

If you click on the 'Recycle' button when your ships are at a shipyard, you can 'Mothball' certain ships. Mothballed ships do not require you to pay maintenance, and the cost to un-mothball them is approximately the same as you would pay every turn for maintenance.

By the way, maintenance is 25% the cost of the ship. So, every four turns you pay the entire cost of the ship again.

One of the most important things you must do in this game is decide how you are going to spend your resources. It is a balance between spending resources to maintain your ships vs. spending resources to build new ships vs. building facilities, etc. A very good way to defend your empire without paying maintenance costs is to build units such as fighters, mines, satellites and weapon platforms. Units don't require maintenance...