Anyway...
When you guys are finished with all that, we can get back to discussing potential changes. I'd much rather chat about the economics we have here than the armor changes 
Sure.
Anything that removes conversions causes headaches for me. The more lopsided units are, the more headaches are caused. Meaning if everything was 50/50, it would still cause headaches, but having varying units would cause more headaches.
These changes need to part of a larger goal. That something becomes better. Really better. More opportunities for unique units. Or something. Something that can only be unlocked because of all these changes, something that cannot be used with the current system.
If it can be shown that the headaches generated is overcome by increasing the toolkit of the player, then I'll be considering it. If it simply just makes things "less good", via difficulty, bookkeeping, nerfing, constraining, etc, then I won't like it.
By removing conversions, I'm guessing you don't mean merging metal and crystal together? IE, a fighter before cost 100m, 100c, it would then cost 200m, the current crystal asteroids would become metal, and crystal would be handled in an entirely different manner?
In any case, I agree with Chemical_Art's opinion of the change. There needs to be some benefit to the player when adding a capturable or some other resource. Limiting access to higher-tech units or starships isn't the right answer, in my opinion (we have caps, Fact IVs, ASCs, Knowledge, and energy for that...if we need more, I think we are overlooking some fundamental problem or making an assumption that we haven't checked). I do kind of like the original idea that Keith mentioned of a builder that grants special units, with the only caveat being that the mines should be indestructible/rebuildable, and should work like Spire Shipyards for 'special unit caps'. That said, there were quite a few other interesting ideas as well.
Perhaps we should give it a bit more thought (probably a few weeks...enough time to actually play through a few full games), and then treat it like the best/worst ship polls: brainstorm, nominate and review for a few rounds. Then create a poll with everything that survives the dev check, and see what ideas come to the top. Does that seem like a reasonable path-forward?
