really? i thought it was a problem as far back as the original P&N mod that had resource ships. This is just a slightly different variation on the same problem.
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...the green, sticky spawn of the stars
(with apologies to H.P.L.)
Those resource ships were made before the ability we are talking about was added to the game.
The original P&N is ancient... 2001 or so.
Those resource ships used negative maintenance to gather resources, and that does show up in the maintenance column of your budget