I would love the option to change the default membership Dues value from linked gift amount to base membership value. It would be great to have these defaults as a setting available in Config with the other membership options. This would save us from a lot of human error when entering membership transactions, as our organization uses membership base value consistently.
I think what you want to use is the "Other Amount" in the default setting of Configuration. That has worked for us. I just entered the base membership value.