Great campaign going on here, Steve, and I'd love for it to prosper. But I'm not sure it will. A major issue I'm seeing it coming up hard against is Gallicite.
Gallicite has always been critical in Aurora. Can't fire missiles or close to beam range without it. As determined by Steve, and represented in the revised supply costs, you need very roughly as much Gallicite to build typical warships as you do Duranium. So, now the Empire also needs bunches of Gallicite merely to maintain a fleet.
We're not just running into a issue for a specific run, but rather into some long-standing game design features.
1. Gallicite is no more common than other TN materials, Duranium excepted. More generally, supply and demand of TN materials has always been at least somewhat out of wack. Gallicite is systematically the worst offender, followed by Duranium.
2. Mines produce a set amount per TN material, and don't specialize. A world with abundant, high-accessibility reserves might well be worthless if it doesn't also have sufficient reserves of other TN materials of interest. I have always felt, and here again propose, that this is a major misfeature hurting the game in multiple ways.
3. Mining and transport doesn't produce and move materials based on need. The mines produce some of whatever's available and - barring explicit (manual) orders, the game doesn't attempt to first satisfy current and near-term consumption before toting all that excess Boronide around.
4. Civilians don't pick up the slack enough for most TN materials. They need to be heading out, especially to small bodies too tedious for official miners to mess with and digging their little hearts out, - getting paid by (a little bit of) Wealth. Right now, they're all about the Duranium and Sorium, and not laser-focused on whatever's most needed and lacking - and therefore profitable. Conversely, if an empire has abundance, prices paid to civilian miners should automatically drop and their efforts should diminish.