I thought it would be really cool to have a building or technology that would lower by 10% the cost of fleet maintenence. But it doesn't appear to be a moddable value.
Also I was thinking it would be neat to have maybe 1 tech and/or building type that would be unique to a particular party, IE some sort of Trade Union for the Merchant party, a "raider" fast attack ship (like a slightly beefier corvette) for the War Party, or a civilian consulting firm that would boost social production by 5% for the populists. Perhaps these would only be available if your party were in charge of the senate. These techs could come mid-late game to not throw the balance out of whack or make a party's existing bonuses overwhelming. But I don't see that the game has the capability to make anything party specific. Any chance of ever seeing this kind of thing in the game?
Also, it would be nice to have some sort of structure or tech that would reduce your building maintenence. Maybe make all power plants free (privatization?) or reduce by 1 the upkeep on research buildings, or even just reduce a planet's total building upkeep by 5%. Is that even possible, or would the devs have to rewrite stuff to (as Picard would say) "Make it so"?
Is negative maintenance possible ? If yes having some negative maintenance facilities will have the same net effect ... It can't be a proportion of maint costs though, only set numbers.
I don't see any maintenance facilities of any type, military of social, so I'm thinking that was never put in the game as a moddable value. However, using your idea, it might be possible to make a ship that would act as a "Fleet Tender" that could have a negative upkeep value. But that would be hard to balance as even if they were very expensive, you could just crank them out, until they were making you money, instead of just reducing the hit on fleet maintenence. Doesn't seem to be a way to limit how many you could have either.
Still I think Fleet/Social maintenence would be a fun value to be able to tweak. Maybe in the expansion pack? Any thoughts from the Devs?
I particularly like the maintenance reducing tech idea, but all suggestions will have to be brought up in a meeting before we start implementing anything.