Im watching yard sizes climb, but nothing like maximum speed possible. The closest thing to a 'yard rush' was the CC. Besides, much past size 4 or 5, yards are mostly a vanity project - the payoff time is quite long.
And they paid for that yard rush by NOT investing heavily in tech, and being a bit behind because of it. Which kept them from doing several things I wanted to do with them.
Tech progression this time may have been a reaction to my play of last time, where I found (due to RNG) that any money I spent on research was literally wasted money, cause dice.
Yeah, we need some breathing room for droppers, next time.
WRT Maintenance - Im considering, if I do this again, simply making maintenance a factor of displacement, with a 250kt ship costing 1/4 the maintenance of a 1MT ship. This leaves the big boys cost efficient for firepower to BUILD, but leaves them at the same place, maintenance wise, as their displacement in smaller hulls. Current maintenance setup makes it very hard to justify anything much under 500MT, due to the large flat cost of the KF core. Similarly, current maintenance makes collars, ESPC Collars with LFBs, almost cost prohibitive. If you only paid the inflated cost ONCE, rather than paying it in full every two turns, we might be more eager to slap collars on things (though if your burn rate on ships is high, you still dont want them).
Ultimately, though, I think we run it as it is, for however long it lasts, and then take any lessons learned onboard when the players and or GMs collectively decide to call it.
Speaking of - looking down the road, to avoid burnout, we should probably start thinking now of who we could on-board as GMs. Idea would be (ideally) to rotate a new GM every so often, to replace one of the sitting ones. Just a thought. Im not burned, Smegish isnt burned, but people get tired of things in time, and the energy and brain investment in this thing is... way more than I realized. So best to prepare for the future.