[Pax]

Physical strength can usually eb bottomed out to 50%.

In games with fewer players, Political Savvy can likewise be bottomed to 50% (however, in games with LOTS of players, political savvy becomes more useful).

Farming, and even Refining, can often be lowered to 50%-75%.

Repair can almost always be lowered to 50% (in fleet battles, either everythign dies, or, you lose a bunch of shisp and have ONE or TWO damaged ships).

If you don't plan on OFFENSIVE Covert activity, bringing cunning down to 50% is a fairly safe bet (with Counter Intel 3, someone would have to devote three times as many intel points as you produce, to break your "nothing but defense" output ... which means they probably have at LEAST 50% more FACILITIES making intel points -- if THEIR cunning is sset to 100%! And that's if they're not defending at all. To match your defense, they'd probably have 2x as many Covert facilities, empire-wide.

That should be a decent start on mining for "free" and/or "cheap" points. 8)