So right now the whole company name for racial tech is utterly cosmetic, but it hit me that it does not have to be;
What if instead of having your researchers deal with racial techs (which quite frankly is more engineering problems than research ones) you issue contracts on said systems. That is, you specify the specs on the system and civilian companies design systems and for contracts on that basis. Now, that alone would not make an interesting addition to the game, but imagine what else could be done with said system. Imagine that there is various companies, and all the different companies bid in with different solutions as different companies have different strengths, weaknesses and specialties and so on.
So there will be variation in their solutions, they will all follow the minimum specs you defined, but one might be cheaper than the other, or designed faster, built faster, maybe it perform better in various specs than normal, maybe its really cheap but in the specs you did not define it suffers terribly. Maybe one is extremely well made but take longer to produce or is more expensive in terms of wealth. So many possibilities!
And its not just limited to variation in system specs. The way you issue contracts could have options too! If you are pressured for time maybe you offer a contract where the first one finished gets it. Or maybe you have specific time limit and only those offered before then is considered. Maybe a bonus if its finished before a given date (which causes all relevant companies to finish it faster) Or maybe instead of a bonus they get a exclusive contract for a given time to produce for your ships. Or maybe every company can produce the design but they get royalties. Or maybe you make it an open contract and any of the systems that fits the specs are used and its whoever that can provide them at the time. Would work well with my hull based ship system that I suggested
here All of these things could give bonuses or penalties to the speed, cost and qualities of the resulting systems that they design. One could take it even further and have contracts on hull/ship designs too.
And every company could have things that they are know for doing, and things they are know for doing well or poorly. And it would reflect into what they bid into. The more experienced with a particular system they are the better systems they produce. Of course, companies rise and fall, a big company might have more resources to design a system, but a young, small and focused company might just have the edge with some genius employee over a bloated company. It would also make a healthy and thriving economy more important, take good care of your civilian sector and there is more companies that can make bids and you are more likely to get better systems.
Of course, when not building systems and ships for you they build for the civilian sectors with the knowlegde they have. Of course, unless its classified systems. But that would likely cause it to much more expensive since they can't recoup their losses in the civilian sector. Or maybe they figure out how to make a civilian variant without the classified bits.
Food for thought. I would love to hear what people think about the concept, and feel free to ask question if I did not make things clear. It was just something that hit me today and I felt I had to write it down before I forgot
Cheers!