As per this mantis thread and TechSY's suggestion that I post this here...
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=9554In short, it appears that I'm spending money when I shouldn't be spending any money at all, and I believe it's related to having a champion and the offroad scenario bonus ships.
I'm basing the following off of the fact that there are now no required resource drains from power plants or anything, so it should be possible to have no costs whatsoever by simply turning off all your construction. However, I've recently noticed that by an hour or two into the game, it is not possible for me to zero out my costs, no matter what I try.
The one I think I have confirmed (but it's hard to tell) is that the fabricators in the nebulae after you win a scenario are draining resources. It seems like if you have ships queued in one, but you're already at ship cap (so it's not actually building anything), it will still charge you resources even though it's not building anything.
I think there also seems to be something directly related to having a champion, but it's hard to tell. If I had to guess, it's that there's a glitch where building modules on a champion adds a permanent resource drain to your economy, but I really, really can't tell.
Anyone else noticing similar things?