Well I don't see it as "punishment" I see it as "reality"...it is more expensive to have a bigger anything essentially. The infrastructure costs of large empires are historically what tended to cause their collapse.
In starfire the cost of say the CFN, which is the only thing that seems to exist in terms of infrastructure is just a purchase cost unless you use bases with CC. So that means that effectively the "infrastructure" to running a big empire costs the player 0 MCr per turn. Look at ISF: where every planet needed either a PDC with a space port or a space station with cargo handling facilities, where you needed imperial freighters, where you had delays in income use (it wasn't one big slush fund), where shipyards cost extra maintenance rather than being maintenance free, where the shipyards and workshops had to be upgraded, etc. All of these were things that cost you more and more money the more of them you had. So bigger empires tended to have a bigger cost associated with them.
Paul, I see these as two vastly different things. I see the "bureaucracy" idea as grossly punishing because it's sort of an anti-success tax. I will not countenance such a rule in Cosmic.
But what you describe above in your comparison between the CFN and ISF's requirements is what I suppose you could call infrastructure... just the cost of doing business for integrating a new planet into the empire's commerce system. Honestly, I never had a problem with the way ISF handled things in this regards, but no doubt some people did. Otherwise, I doubt that things would have changed as they did in SM#2.
But I'm not sure that we can reasonably expect to be able to drop back to a situation where there's no CFN, and you had to use Imp FT's to move all MC around the empire, for all colonization, and so on. In a number of ways, it'd be a pain, at least for some people.
Also, I'm not sure that it really should be necessary to use FT's to ship "money" around the empire as if it was bulk cargo. Look at the modern banking system. Money is just data. Why would it be any different in the future? Now, if one suggested that it should only be possible within an empire and not between 2 different empires, due to the lack of a common currency, and all sorts of other details, that would be a strong argument, I think. OTOH, I suppose if two empires had a trade treaty (or M&T) or were partnered, they must have the ability to do currency exchanges, so transferring money wouldn't be difficult ... possibly. OTOOH, if you've invaded some planet and want to pillage a bunch of MC, well, you're probably pillaging actual goods and stuff that you'd need to ship as cargo. But I think you get my drift here...
As for things like cargo handling and space ports, I don't think that those things should be really necessary as explicit tech systems. Generally speaking, I tend to think that it's best to keep this sort of thing as abstract as possible. What could be a reasonable alternative would be a fee to incorporate the planet, moon, or asteroid belt into the empire's CFN, possibly one based on the economic potential of the body in question. OTOH, one could just increase colonization costs a little under the assumption that you're having to build these facilities as part of the colonization effort. I suspect that there are many different ways to do this that don't involve creating annoyance to the player.
But regarding your examples in general, they all seem like relatively minor costs that didn't occur all that often, except for shipyard and machine ship maintenance, which would, of course, be ongoing. Minor costs like that may be more of an annoyance to track than for the actual cost involved or the actual "value" of the cost to the game.
Income is proportional to size. Available income is that less maintenance. So it is clear that the bigger you are the better off you are under the SM2 system.
This is probably true regardless of whether you're talking pure ISF, SM#2, or 4E, though perhaps with some slightly different caveats.
As for no income increase with EL...didn't they do this in 4thE with increases to planet population limits?
No. In GSF+ (GSF, Ultra, and Solar), you get an EL Growth bonus when your reach a new EL, which produces an increase in income, though not as severe and with some annoying limitations. The idea here would be that there would be no increase in income linked to an increase in one's EL/TL under the broad and simplistic assumption that any increase tied to an increase in productivity (due to increased EL) would be offset by increases in inflation (hence, costs).
It is something that I'd have to playtest to see how it works...though Proycon might have some comments from his game. I can't make sensible comments based on the idea without seeing hard numbers I'm afraid...or better put I'd rather not comment on what I don't really have any hard data on.
No prob. It's only really an idea at this point.