Forming Alliances to create new Ships or weapons

When you form an alliance with other factions, there could be an option of who you want to merge/share technologies to create a new and improved ship or weapons based on the combination of the factions. This combination could be for 2 factions in the alliance.

Say for example United empire is with an alliance with Hissho, Horatio & Unfallen. There could be tech/ship sharing alliance as well so that if United Empire wants to share their tech with Hissho, the two races could get an advanced military ship or an improved weapon. 

A combination of new and improved ships or weapons can be created based on the factions creating this tech/ship sharing alliance. 

A penalty can be imposed if a faction does this(the improved ship  has increased creation time due to complexity) or tech/ship sharing can be done only once in a game.

It would be fun if you could do this more than once and get an assortment of improved ships or weapons with unique traits of the various factions.