[Phoenix-D]

For slowing ships down- perhaps the "random movement" ability?

You couldn't do the Zone storms, nor the effects on the Transence and higher levels of the beyond on how tech actually works, but..perhaps the maintance decrease ability? Can you apply that to a system? So as you get deeper, that ability starts to get weaker, making your ships more expensive.

Using combat sensor abilities would probably be a bad idea. It would affect all ships evenly, so the low tech ships would be at a disdvantage no matter where they were.

Phoenix-D