Regarding the maint reduction comp taking the place of the life support. You aren't by any means the only one to disagree with that. Although I can't for the life of me understand how anyone would disagree.
It jsut seems totally natural and obvious to me that a comp that reduces maintenance would have something to do with life support and nothing whatsoever to do with crew quarters.
Since I decided to call the comp an engineering comp, it made even more sense since nobody would sleep in engineering.
IIRC my engineering comp didn't totally replace LS, except in the smaller ship, which would have less of a need for LS, but still need CQ, unless the crew would be sleeping in the halls.
Now, to more of an on topic comment. Requireing additional components on the smaller ships? Even though they are small ones, wont that decrease the usefullness of an already small ship? And nine different maint reduction comps? It will certainly work, but personally I think it will make the ship designs a little cluttered. What about instead using a mount based idea similer to Pax's engine idea to limit each maint reducer to a specific hull size. Then each ship only has one new component to worry about.
Geoschmo