I've played on maps where metal becomes more scarce than crystal, its all in the dynamics of the races and what you are trying to do. I.E. Research and planet improvments need different levels of both metal and crystal and some items are more metal heavy than they are crystal and vise versa. It just forces you to think instead of makning mineral gathering a non issue like in Star Craft. And Star Craft is an game awesome but minearls are hardly used in stratgey other than you need it
wirefire2
Carrier Hull Type - Huge Logisitcs Cost - 15(at least) Fighter loadout - 10? - The fighters would typical fighters you build them seperatly but they would be a carrier variant. This would be so the fighter could not stray from a certain distance from the carrier so you can not just run a load of fighters out somewhere and leave them to do whatever. That removes the engine and life support issues and leaves you to your own devices with weapons. Anything that small doesn't need arm
I believe you can raise your score by having more technology, influence, population, ect. when you win. I could be wrong but I'm sure all the factors that give you a score are factored together at the end and you can look at the score scree.
The "trapeziod of doom" was my biggest irritation I'm glad they finally got it fixed. Now if I can just get the game to stop randomly crashing that would be nice.