I just had a few idea s to help the player with finance and research.
For research something like a view of the full research tree could be useful. About new ship design it's not possible to know what tech you already researched to unlock a ship design, mabye adding something where you can see what tech you've already reseached to unlock ships.
For the finance mabye add a system where the computer can manage finance if you want by setting priorities that the computer must follow and there is an order in the priorities that you've setted, priority 1 must be respected priority 2 respected if it' not against priority 1, etc.