Blocked Unit Upgrade Paths are Obnoxious

[Jamey]

First I encountered problems with ships.

Now I'm encountering it with tanks:

Problem 1: You have to scroll down to look at the manual upgrade button tooltips to even know that things will not upgrade. The Upgrade All button showed up. I clicked it. No warnings or errors occurred, but nothing got upgraded.

Problem 2: All this does is require a clickfest on my part (my army is roughly 1000 Battalions, and half won't upgrade). Not only that, but I'll probably want to split it up into multiple upgrade passes so my entire army isn't missing its support troops and inviting an attack by another GP.

In short, this is not fun. It does nothing to enhance the gameplay experience. All it does is irritate me. Fortunately, there appears to be a mod for this.

 

[GreyOgre]

First I encountered problems with ships.

Now I'm encountering it with tanks:
View attachment 1335756

View attachment 1335757

Problem 1: You have to scroll down to look at the manual upgrade button tooltips to even know that things will not upgrade. The Upgrade All button showed up. I clicked it. No warnings or errors occurred, but nothing got upgraded.

Problem 2: All this does is require a clickfest on my part (my army is roughly 1000 Battalions, and half won't upgrade). Not only that, but I'll probably want to split it up into multiple upgrade passes so my entire army isn't missing its support troops and inviting an attack by another GP.

In short, this is not fun. It does nothing to enhance the gameplay experience. All it does is irritate me. Fortunately, there appears to be a mod for this.

Apart from the horrible QOL, it just... doesn't make sense? Once ships are "units that can be built and sunk, bought and sold" it'll make sense that you can't upgrade a sailing frigate into a monitor (CSS Merrimack was a rather unique case), but even today, there are still armoured and mechanised units that carry "cavalry" or even "hussars" in their name because they were, indeed, "upgraded" from those.
And please don't tell me "you have to build a new barracks because you can't use a stable as a tank garage".

 

[Helmut von Dandy]

It’s pretty dumb. The troops themselves can theoretically use the new equipment, so why do I need to fire them all and build new barracks? I don’t need to rebuild power plants to switch them from coal to oil, so why do new barracks need to be? The need to produce new equipment is already covered by the need to build and staff War Machine Industries and supply the units with goods for upkeep.

Instead of preventing upgrades entirely some should just impose a timed Organisation penalty to represent units being retrained to use the new equipment. It would still take time but it wouldn’t require the busywork.

 

[Jorlaan]

This is one of my single biggest remaining QoL thing that needs to be changed. This turns upgrading armies/navies in to unnecessary and painful (for me with nerve damage anyways) click fests that make me not even WANT to bother upgrading.

Simply allowing them to upgrade would be a massive improvement. The current system is not fun, realistic, engaging or immersive in any way. At the end of the day this is a game.

 

[exi123]

And have you ever tried to upgrade conscripts? They are even worse as the button does not even work many times, you click it and nothing happens. And that is for units that do not even exist until you start the conscription before a war or during it.

And is there an (VISIBLE) indicator that fleets can not upgrade because they are not in an HQ? Sometimes you just miss it because the fleet is idling on asea node on the other side of the world.

(And please fix the ai unit upgrade system, it always heart breaking to mow down line infantry in the 1910s from other industrial powers (I think those are also mainly conscript battalions), as the ai most likely also fails to upgrade them)