Two new tech tracks that allow for more refinement of existing techs.
All tech that produce ship equipment (basically everything except for biology) would have two new tech tracks: Miniaturization and Automation. These would apply only to the tree they are researched in; Power Plant miniaturization would not effect devices from the Defensive tree, for instance.
Miniaturization would decrease the size of ship items. Miniaturization I would decrease the size of items in the tree by perhaps 2%, without effecting performance or other statistics of the equipment. On the other hand, the demand for special manufacturing equipment and particularly fine materials would result in the cost of the equipment increasing. In the case of actively designed equipment such as engines and weapons, new miniaturized versions of the equipment would have to be designed to take advantage of the research. Weapon classes already have techs like this, with tradeoffs such as decreased fire rate. This would be different, making all elements smaller by relatively small amounts.
Automation decreases the crew demands of an item in much the same way as a miniaturization decreases the size. Some items or classes of items would have minimum crew demands- at least one crew member per fuel tank, or one sensor control crewman. Construction equipment ships like asteroid mines and gate builders would most likely have very high demands. A useful spinoff of this section would be having a colony structure automation tech that allows colony buildings to function with smaller populations or else to partially function even when unmanned.
