Often times, I will end up with vassal states that I integrate which (of course) will have different designs for their various ship classes. Currently, when I go to upgrade them to my current tech level, the computer just randomly selects one of the available designs for that ship class and puts all the upgrading ships into that design. This is especially annoying for me, as I tend to use multiple designs per ship class for covering a variety of threats.
One option would be to simply have a window where I can have my selected fleet on the left with each of the current designs lined up by rows with quantities next to each, and on the right have each of the available upgrade designs with quantities next to them. For example, I have a fleet with 13 destroyers of one older design and I want to split them into 7 of a new design (anti-corvette) and 6 of another new design (PD-heavy). On that row, the old design is on the left with 13 next to it and the two new designs stacked on the right. I could click on the + or - buttons or just click in the number field and type what I want for each new design, and the number on the left would drop accordingly. I could even choose to only upgrade 4 of the destroyers, because that's all I can afford right now, and the total upgrade bill would show up at the bottom of the window. Links on any of the designs to the ship designer would also be highly useful.
I would like a similar window to be available for splitting off quantities from one fleet into a second. Especially with big fleets, scrolling down repeatedly using a mouse wheel is boring and also wearing on the mouse (and I'm having difficulty dragging the scroll bar without the window going away when I release my click). Like above, have the current fleet's designs and numbers running down the left and the target fleet's numbers down the right.
Another option for upgrades might be to (automatically or on-demand) generate an upgrade design for an existing ship that you didn't design before (integrated vassals, captured raiders/frigates/etc.). It could either lock out any techs that you don't have yourself from even being on the upgrade design, or it could gray-out the items where the techs are unavailable to allow you to keep them as-is but still allow you to fill any gaps or even override the unavailable tech items (e.g., get rid of warp engines if you're running hyperdrive). Classes that are unbuildable might only allow the design to be used for upgrades, or you might be able to dismantle one of those ships to open a special project that would unlock an always-available tech to research unfettered building.
One option would be to simply have a window where I can have my selected fleet on the left with each of the current designs lined up by rows with quantities next to each, and on the right have each of the available upgrade designs with quantities next to them. For example, I have a fleet with 13 destroyers of one older design and I want to split them into 7 of a new design (anti-corvette) and 6 of another new design (PD-heavy). On that row, the old design is on the left with 13 next to it and the two new designs stacked on the right. I could click on the + or - buttons or just click in the number field and type what I want for each new design, and the number on the left would drop accordingly. I could even choose to only upgrade 4 of the destroyers, because that's all I can afford right now, and the total upgrade bill would show up at the bottom of the window. Links on any of the designs to the ship designer would also be highly useful.
I would like a similar window to be available for splitting off quantities from one fleet into a second. Especially with big fleets, scrolling down repeatedly using a mouse wheel is boring and also wearing on the mouse (and I'm having difficulty dragging the scroll bar without the window going away when I release my click). Like above, have the current fleet's designs and numbers running down the left and the target fleet's numbers down the right.
Another option for upgrades might be to (automatically or on-demand) generate an upgrade design for an existing ship that you didn't design before (integrated vassals, captured raiders/frigates/etc.). It could either lock out any techs that you don't have yourself from even being on the upgrade design, or it could gray-out the items where the techs are unavailable to allow you to keep them as-is but still allow you to fill any gaps or even override the unavailable tech items (e.g., get rid of warp engines if you're running hyperdrive). Classes that are unbuildable might only allow the design to be used for upgrades, or you might be able to dismantle one of those ships to open a special project that would unlock an always-available tech to research unfettered building.