I am reading everybody's comment and...wow
@waresky you have opened the pandora's vase, I almost feel sorry to have second your thoughts!!!
Anyway, I believe that Aurora's economy works beautifully and I still like that most of my Martian economy is run by selling illegal drugs; also, generally, altogether there is nothing wrong with it but (I know everything before the word ’but’ is bs usually) I still would like to recover or balance my debt when you are fighting expensive wars with your shipyards pissing 20 1000t FACs at the time or those 5 dreadnaughts you commissioned during a delusions of grandeur moment are just about to be completed with your expenses skyrocket by 30% or 40% in one go.
I think we should find a solution that can integrate with the 20% increase economy research and the financial centres build. What about an administration building that decrease expenses? Could work by levels same as the naval academy, deep space sensor, spaceport, etc and that could also be a trait in civilian administrators able to enhance that. So this will give me the opportunity of using the administrator with 40% fewer expenses or fleet maintenance, giving even more control over our economy working not only in expanding it.
So you have your level 2 Administration building which gives you a 3% fewer maintenance costs (Level 1 1%, Level 2 3%, Level 3 5.5% etc. the formula is 1+1.5 per level with a max of 10% maybe? so 5 levels I don't know) then you have your Administrator ability which boost that up too, something like 1% extra for each 10% ability? Obviously, I leave the balance up to Steve based on what he does already with terraforming etc.
I think the above will work well because the goal of an economy it is not only to grow but also saving where and when possible, some people does it well some other poorly.