The problem with the Q. style cheaper for the rest is it really does poorly affect the people who buy it first, all catch up styles will harm the older players.
Competitively speaking, yes it will bring the lower players closer to the top players at far less cost than to those first players. It will also not change the cost to the players with the highest MS's, so if they want to upgrade further to keep their distance, they will have to pay extreeme amounts, and again make it cheaper and easier for everybody else.
Is it a good or a bad thing... well that kind of depends how you look at it. It will be good for 90% of active players. Allowing them to catch their MS's up to the "ridiclious" MS's that are out there. But something of this nature may well make some old and very large MS players wish to quit after they wasted all that naqudah just to be out-done by an update. Though this is common place in SGW, many updates have crushed the power of the few to increase the hopes and dreams of the many. It usually works out okay.
In Q. though I dont think it works very well, expecially with UP, as Q. is based on 3 months of hard work, building and saving for the final build, and if you do any of this work first you get your lead eaten away by other players for less cost or effort and usually taken over. While this can be precieved as "competitive" I think it also is stagnant, whereby everyone is waiting for someone else to shell out full price to build something so they can build it cheaper. I personally hate the Q. UP system, it was much better the way it was eons ago, just like it is in main. But would it work for MS's where their is no "growth" factor, having a huge UP, and making other peoples UP cheaper e.t.c e.t.c and all the cons that go with it, is bad as UP will be screwed, eventually everybody with enough naqudah will have 999,999 and people "quick ascending" only having to build "small" up's of 100k, will take hardly any naq or effort. Where as now, atleast it costs something.
MS's however are permanent and well ... only usefull so far, they dont affect growth, farming / raiding can be done without a MS, if you rely on MS boosting strike to farm you can rely on more Attack planets instead easy enough. Simply, MS's are the play things for the rich and powerful to mass with and destroy things, all these nasty habits, is enabling the poor and hopeless to access such luxury a bad thing? well in principle no.
Would it work out, comparatively to the update of "the planet" I would say yes, but it would be changing how things are done and well no one likes that.
But I think all in all a MS "cheaper for the slower" update would work out OK. So long as thats as far as the Q infulence spreads, I think introducing it into anything else would be a mistake. Theirs already enough "limits" on those who have had longer to play. This really does depend on how many people would want / think its a good idea to have a bigger MS than they do currently, and well, its probably going to be more than those who have the massive MS already.
Though one thing I have ignored is Admins favourite players the $ payers, well if they are spending less on their MS's, it does stand to reason, they may be spending more on USS's. So it may favour with Admin.
Tiering that is, i'm suggesting it for MS and UP only(or MS at least). How would it work? Prices would be tiered and would warry depending on highest accounts. My english is a bit weak here so not sure how to explain, but prices on lower end would be lowered depending on top UP/MS slots and would be tiered accordingly as you progress up. Something like this is for UP in chaos and (i think) Quantum, but now that SGW main is kind of unbalanced, this would IMO introduce a nice addition and way for more accounts to join the top ranks and make things more competitive again.
