Colony ships, for sale cheap!

[Rlaney]

I love all the ideas for adjusted populations and reproduction etc... But has anyone figured out how to add maintenance costs to facilities so that a larger empire can't necessarily overpower a smaller empire in research and intel? A maintenace cost would force them to be more selective about what they build and would prevent large empires from filling up 20 planets with research facilities and running up the tech tree then wiping out smaller empires. Tech leakage would be another concept but I think that would have to be hardcoded.