If you do it without even thinking about it then it is not relevant. 20% for a game changing system like fighters isn't even anything you spend a second thought on. It becomes relevant when you have to save money for 3 turns to afford it and think about if it is worth doing in the first place.
As I said, the player isn't likely to have any more difficulty managing an economy with more than MCr, it is the game designer who suffers the complexity. I don't like games that end up being min-maxed and then you have to do stuff I don't think is sensible just to stay competitive. Whether that is heavy IU investment, exploring with EXs, or whatever...when I have to do "insert thing" else I am dooming myself then a game has "epic failed" for me. There should not be one true path to success.
The Starfire combat system is actually extremely good that way, no matter how wacky the combination is, you can make it work. Unfortunately there are some combinations that don't work for some generic tasks (WP assault, WP defence) that are critical to the game.
But to me, what is important is not "simplicity" or "complexity" but player choice. An easily min-maxed, gamed, exploited or manipulated system, regardless of how complex or simple it is, is what I am against.
Paul, I guess that we have very different outlooks.
I think that paying 20% of one's income to develop a single tech system is extremely "relevant". 20% is 20%. In the example you cite, if there's a problem, it's not that Steve paid 20% (i.e. 200K MC) to develop fighters. Rather, perhaps it's that he had an income of a million MC.
And for me it is about the game having simplicity (to a degree). I could make Cosmic be full of "player choice". It could have "player choice" coming out its ears. And it might end up being a rulebook that was over 500 pages long that a lot of people wouldn't bother opening due to its size. At some point, one has to say "enough's enough" and take a stand on the game not becoming too bloated with "player choice" features. Ultra is over 370 pages long. Solar is over 420 pages long. I don't think that I aspire to creating a rule book that reaches those lengths, though it's possible it would happen in spite of my best efforts. Boring weapons aside, you sound like someone who'd like Ultra or Solar because they have bucket loads of "player choice" with long optional rules sections, etc.
As I said, i think that we have very different outlooks. I view Starfire much the same way as Dave Weber did ... as a wargame. I'm not interested in a Starfire where the point of the strategic game is my empire's balance sheet and the order of battle is little more than an expense on that balance sheet. That sounds really boring to me.
Also, Paul, please don't take anything I've said above as hostility. As I said, we clearly have different points of view on Starfire. But there are areas where we do agree, and
I always appreciate your comments. If I've taken a long time to reply to your last post, it was because I didn't want to sound hostile.
Moving on...
BTW, I agree about that TRPTD. PT is one thing. It's simple enough. (See a weapon of a higher TL. Develop it yourself.) But that TRPT thing is bogus to me because some of the counters (in SM#2) are really not obvious ones (at least to me). And even in Ultra, I can't fully agree with the counters. GB's as a "counter" to fighters? Really? Fighters should be the counter to fighters, or in 3e, Di or AFM's. GB's should only be viewed as a counter if your race can't use fighters for some reason that's sort of outside the purview of the game's rules.
TRPTD requires a judgement about what the appropriate counter tech is, and quite often, I think that the supposed counter simply isn't particularly obvious. I mean, why should Overload Dampeners be an obvious counter to E-beams? Are there any other beam weapons that have a similar energy siphoning defensive tech that would lead one to think that "O" is such an obvious counter? If anything, it seems to me that the more obvious counter to E-beams is better shields. The only reason that "O" is an "obvious" counter is because we know that it's on the list of tech systems.
Regarding PTD, I think that it should actually be more difficult and take more time than it is in ISF. The difference in TL's should be reflected in how long it takes to develop. And if anything, it should probably take more time to do PTD, depending on the TL diff, than regular development, because of the TL difference issue.