[iaen]

Yes, intel does get way too complicated, very quickly. The only essential thing I think the SE3 intel misses is specific targets like in SE4. I don't know how much SE5 intel will be like SE3, but I doubt that feature will be lost.

A completely unrelated, and much simpler, thing I thought of are secondary explosions. If a component is destroyed, extra damage occurs. Could be easily implemented as a component ability. Chance of explosion when component is destroyed, and amount of damage.

And about SE3 style construction, when a ship appears in SE3, it's components are marked as 'Under construction', instead of 'Destroyed'. The only difference is the picture shown, but what if only spaceyards can 'repair' components marked as under construction, and repair-thingies can only repair destroyed components? If you then also make constructing components cost resources (and repair some percentage thereof), with limits how many resources a spaceyard or repairthing can construct, you'd pretty much have everything SE3 and SE4 do, combined, wouldn't you?
You could also mark emergency pods as 'under construction' once used, so you can't just repair them as easily underway anymore.

Hmm, the explanation is getting a bit long. Maybe it's not as simple as I thought...

The above also kinda implies that repair is also based on resources used, instead of a number of components per turn.
And unles you use a fairly high cost percentage for repair, or a seperate repair and construct rate, spaceyards would repair very quickly.

-edit-

Oh, and you can't base the cost purely on what 'repairing' components that are 'under construction' ofcourse. The cost of the hull can be quite a big part of the ship, sometimes.