Comment 21 for bug 895223

I actually really like that idea, and it's an idea I have had in my mind for a long time for a game of my own.

And since it can be coded to "destroy" the unit and then create a new upgraded version, we won't be doing any of the wacky "modifying unit properties on the fly" stuff DCoder was warning against.

That isn't to say, however, that this wouldn't be a large amount of work, because to facilitate a system like this, we would need a whole new system for defining unit upgrades. The game would have to know what units can enter at what times/under what circumstances, and it would have to be able to tell which unit it should create after which unit enters. Not impossible, but it would be a major challenge.

Unfortunately the work investment also brings up the issue of support and necessity. This poses a major question of "is the nonsense of 'all units globally getting an upgrade as soon as it is researched' a big enough issue to warrant forcing the player to do this much extra work to get their units upgraded?"