For starters, I think remote miming would be a great addition to the game... consider it an intelligence attack; thousands of elite attack-mimes decend from invisible staircases into the midst of an unsuspecting population, and begin their soundless campaign of 'mind-numbing' against the hapless citizens. Uncertain as to what to make of the chalk-faced denizens of uber-droldom, the population stares in stunned silence as the mimes unexpectedly run into invisible walls, get trapped in invisible shrinking boxes, and rise and fall on invisible escalators (Edit - and in Mexico city, direct traffic). The population, utterly mesmerized by these feats of incredible irrelevance cease to tend to their lives, resulting in production loss, maintenance failures, research blunders and eventually mass die-offs as untended crops are left unharvested (Edit - and car accidents in Mexico city)...
... perhaps Remote Miming should be it's own racial tech tree
Anyway, for remote mining, I personally like to use level two bases (or higher). This is because the satelites do indeed have no maintenance costs, but you can only shoe-horn on a few remote miners/farmers/radioactive thingies per satelite (1 or 2 I can't remember). The level 2 base can fit
13 mimes... er, mines. This gives a very good short term return on investment, but is even better for long term investment - here's why. Every turn the value of the planet or asteroid decreases due to remote mining, but it
doesn't matter how many actual mining components are present!. So a single component on a single vessel will degrade the celestial object 1% each turn, as will 13 components on a single vessel. So to get the most from a celestial object - go big! Oh, and the most fun I've had with this to date is in the P&N mod, playing the nomads because they have recycling units that decrease the maintenance on ships/bases even more.
(IMHO only)