So I'm playing a game of 7.1, and caught myself doing the same thing over and over, that I've often done, but hardly ever think of.
When I am designing ships and technology, I create two techs for every single component design where its new to my current game or a different size/needs than prior parts have. One is just a component like any other, used like any other, to be researched and produced as regular ship components.
The other is a "prototype" part, and under a house rule, is not produced, which I instant research, so it can be used to design with, I put "prototype" in front of the name to indicate that.
This lets me fully design a ship, missile, or turret all the way to the point of being able to produce it, without having to wait for potentially months or years of research to finish before I can find out I'm a dolt and need to rework my design. I simply do not produce them until I have done the research on the parts along the way, but I gain the ability to spot the need to make changes before I have wasted the time researching them.
I'm sure many of us have been here before. You want a new warship with a turreted weapon, lets say, gauss guns for PD. You pick a type, research it. Then you make the turret, research it. Then you go to make the ship, and only one turret fits, two is so close but not quite—the crew (or reactors for other weapons) cost you too much. You could wait for the slipway to be enlarged, in which case the ship will need new/more engines or be slower because its bigger. Or you wait for a slightly smaller turret that will fit to be researched, say by reducing turret armor, or reducing the turret tracking speed by a small amount to shrink it a little bit.
Or you design a gauss gun, get the tech for it, have the tech available as a prototype component so you can design the turret, which itself is available as a prototype component, and see before any time is wasted researching components that it needs to be made a little smaller, change it, and then begin research with a workable turret.
So, the request, if we could get two things:
A new button in the research window, to generate a prototype part from a research project, which would work on any technology which generates a component - so all the racial techs and things like damage control, ecm, fuel tanks, etc. Only current research prjects should be available for prototyping—if all you have is 10cm lasers, then no prototyping 80cm advanced spinals yet, but you could prototype a 12cm laser since its the next project in the laser line of techs, and would be a currently available research project.
When the associated technology completes which yields the component that the prototype is substituting for, replace the prototype component in the design with the real one so players who are just getting started on a large construction project don't have many parts to track down and replace one by one.