It seems the advantage is that each new engine technology is either smaller, cheaper, or both. That means you can fit on more engines rather than one more powerful drive.

But then it might change when it comes to game balancing.

i think that better engines should be faster aswell i mean its diffuclut to make custom ships that can go far i mean a fighter can only go one space a turn (your lucky its weeks not months or i would kill you guys)as what ugleb said tis a game balnceing thingy so it will be dealt with then! i want BETA4 NOW!

Come to think about it, It does look like they are slightly cheaper..

I would have prefered it that the old ones are automaticly made obsolete though

I'd say that if ship component X has the same function as ship component Y and is equal to or better in all ways, and better in at least one way, then yes, component Y should be considered obsolete and no longer displayed, though I may be overlooking something.

Now, This isn't the same as saying that ship engine Y+1 automatically obsoletes ship engine Y. I'm not sure about engines, but I know for armor at least, there are times when depending on your priority, one of three different pieces of armor would be best. This is because each item has three different stats. Cost, Size, and Effectiveness (On a side note, there may be others that aren't directly displayed, such as maintenance), and in many cases, at least one of the stats moves in the undesireable direction on a new armor "upgrade", especially when you're getting into a new type of armor. Sometimes when a component gets more compact or more effective, the cost goes up. Sometimes when a component gets more effective, the size might go up.

If I only have 6 spaces left on a ship I'm designing, it doesn't matter how much better armor X is over armor Y if armor X takes 7 spaces.

If I'm in a position where I need to make lots of ships very fast, then the cost becomes an issue. I may be willing to give up a point of armor if it means having 10% more ships, so looking for the most cost effective armor is important then.

So, I don't see an issue with the method I described for deciding not to display a ship upgrade, but simply only showing the latest and greatest would be a mistake.

As for the original question, if I remember correctly, all impulse drives have a speed of 1, the difference between them comes down to cost and size. After you've researched those, you get into a set of drives with a speed of two, with varying degrees of cost and size. Another thing to keep in mind is that each of these drives are enabled by seperate technologies, so you won't always start off with all three options.

So, I don't see an issue with the method I described for deciding not to display a ship upgrade, but simply only showing the latest and greatest would be a mistake.

You lost me a bit in there, but the suggestion is that modules which are inferior in all respects should be removed from view. If its slower, bigger and more expensive on all counts compared to another dtive then there is no point at all in cluttering up your display wih it.

Ugleb, yes. That is the best way to sum up what I said. Ryan's message is the only one other than mine that discussed making the old drives obsolete, and he didn't say which "old drives" so I was aiming at being more specific, and true to form, when I aim at being specific, I use a lot more words than necessary. Aren't we all glad I'm not a tech writer

In this specific case, both the Hyper Drive and Ion Drive are larger and more expensive than the Impulse Drive, so should be automatically obsoleted. However, as you and I know, and Ryan doesn't (he states that he hasn't researched any farther), the distinctions aren't always that clear cut.

I'm gonna shut up now before I write a novel on the topic

I like the idea of keeping the older technology an option. It might come in handy to build a few dirt cheep ships latter in the game just as a distraction, maybe just to force the enemy to split its forces. Anything that you can do to force the enemy to react to you rather than you react to it is good.

Toonz, that's why we're discussing what is really obsolete and what isn't. If engine X is no larger, no more expensive, and at least as effective as engine Y, is there ever a reason to use engine Y?

To be more specific: The Terrans start off with the techs that give them the ability to make the base "Impulse Drive," "HyperDrive" and "Ion Drive." All of them produce the same amount of velocity. The HyperDrive costs twice what a base Impulse Drive does, and is 50% larger to boot. The Ion Drive costs 50% more than a base Impulse Drive, and is 25% larger. There just isn't a realistic time you'd ever want to use a HyperDrive or Ion Drive over a base Impulse Drive. This is why automatic obsolesence (or any obsolesence for that matter, you can obsolete ships, but you can't obsolete components, as near as I can tell) would be beneficial.

In my current game, I've researched all drive techs, so I have 14 drives available, enough that I don't always remember what the best drive for any given purpose is. Now, the most compact drive is the "Warp Drive Mk V", and there's also no drive that is cheaper, though many tie with it. So, until the numbers change, this drive would never be obsoleted by the mechanism being discussed here, precicely because there may be a time when you need the smallest possible drive.

Now, except for the "Warp Drive Mk V" there is no other drive that has any desireable characteristics compared to the "Hyper Warp Drive III". Nothing is cheaper to build, only the WDMV is smaller, and nothing else is as fast (by any measure, since the WDMV is half the size but a third the speed). So even if I'm looking at throwing out fodder ships, I'm still going to use the HWD III, since nothing is cheaper.

Oooh... now there's an idea

Picture if you will, a tech tree similar to what we have now, but with a twist.

Each engine tech gives you three engines. The "minaturized" engine, designed to be as compact as possible, no expenses held back, the "cheapskate" engine, designed to be cheap at the cost of space, and a third engine that is a reasonable balance between the other two. Maybe even a third that is expensive, not as compact, but is actually faster. Then, the next two or three or however many techs in the propulsion line are "refinement" techs that improve those two or three engines in such a way that engine X without the refinement is never preferable to engine X with the refinement. Then, when you've finished the refinement techs, the next tech is the next type of drive, and once you've got that, you've got big and expensive engines that don't compare well to the refined engines of the previous level (will beat those engines in one category at most) and you start the refinement process over again.

This would add to the strategy of starship design, because even within a single generation of drives, you would never have a "use this engine, it beats all the rest" situation. You would have to decide on engine cost vs compactness in every case.

That's not what we have now, but I don't think it would be hard to change to something like this. The question is, what does it really bring to the game. I like what I think it will bring to the game, but that doesn't mean that I'm right.