Wow, that is awesome. Why did they take that out?!

I remember bugs persisted of that though! Sometimes ships would just decide not to phase jump, and sub-light to a planet...oh the horror!

my memory of it is foggy but I seem to remember at one point there weren't phase lanes... but that didn't last long. oh and ships used to have a upkeep cost (as opposed to buying fleet supply, and the supply has a cap). that lead to having a negative income easier I think. sadly i dont have many screenshots of the old betas

 edit: found some more and remembered that phase inhibitors used to be phase blockers and prevented any enemy ships from leaving at all (unless it was destroyed)

Theoretically yes. You just need to reduce the cost of upkeep in the game code to 0 and give each ship an ability (do not recommend this for capital ships as almost all their ability buttons are taken and the fifth throws up an error code) that removes resources.