Ro'a-lith
Suggestion:

Ships have a new 'mothballing' order. This order can only be performed in starbases with 5 maintenance complexes per ship mothballed. A mothballed vessel uses 20% of the standard maintenance cost for the vessel in patches a week, but does not lose integrity - however, neither does it gain any. The ship is effectively in 'stasis'.

This opens up options of ripping the interior out of old smaller ships and simply stockpiling the husks in case of emergency. Of course, should need for the vessels arise you would have to spend time and resources (patches) refitting them.

Comments?
Clay
Personally, I would never use it. If I had a ship that I didn't think was needed currently, I'd either re-fit it to be more useful or sell it.
Selling it gives me $$ now, and I can always build/buy a new ship to replace the old one.

Also, I might be reading your sugguestion wrongly, but
QUOTE
...uses 20% of the standard maintenance cost for the vessel in patches a week...
Bloody Heck! So in 5 weeks you've paid 100% of the Maint Cost and got nothing for it except a some extra dust? Not even got the ship back to full integrity... unsure.gif
Mica Goldstone
I presume he meant 20% of the normal maintenance cost per week, i.e. if a ship required 10,000 patch output a year (used at maintenance), it would would require 2,000 patch output a year, but paid on a more regular basis.

This though would simply mean that players would build up a massive mothballed warfleet and wheel them out when they wanted to pound your starbase with impunity before going home for tea. If we add this, there was bugger-all point in making any changes whatsoever.