I've been following this thread since the moment it only consisted of a few posts and I must say that I like the way this mod is developing and the enthousiam with which you update it with new ideas. I'm probably going to play it when I've seen enough of the original game and when this mod is in some stable final version (if you are ever satisfied

). It looks really good already (from all what I've read).
The newest addition is going to add units from the WWI-WWII era. I don't exactly know what you're planning, but I wouldn't very much like a naming convention of the sorts WWII battleship, WWII destroyer, WWII submarine, etc. It's always difficult to come up with great names for the units, but there are some experts on this forum which can give you that many details of naval development that you wished you'd never asked...
I'm not one of the experts in naval history, but what you could do for a surface ships upgrade path would be something along the line
Frigate - > Ship of the Line - > Iron (hull) frigate - > Destroyer -> Missile Destroyer
Seperate line: ironclad - > dreadnought - > battleship
Separate line: ironclad - > Cruiser - > Aegis cruiser
(The ironclad has 2 upgrade paths which makes it look more complicated than it really is)
Destroyer, battleship and cruiser would in this case be the WWII units.
The Dreadnought is a very heavy battleship type unit, one of the major steps in development of the battleship type ships which became ever more heavily armored and got ever bigger guns. It is a unit from the early 20-th century (1905-1910).
The ironclad and the iron hulled frigate are also from the same time period (1860).
This is a picture from an ironclad and
this is a picture from an iron hulled frigate. The Iron hulled frigate was faster, ocean going but weaker in defence. The rest of the ship types are probably better known. The aegis cruiser and the missle destroyer would be modern ships.
Now, I understand that this is a very large number of ships and maybe too much to add all at once for this mod. But there are some advantages to creating a technology path with many units. You can let the individual steps between the various units be small so that an opponent who is one technology ahead of you will not automatically destroy you and you cannot easily destroy an enemy who is one technology behind. But if someone is 2 or 3 steps behind in technology, then he's a goner because a few smaller steps in development can mean a huge step in strength.
So a Ship of the Line can lose to a Frigate, but an Iron hull frigate will very very seldomnly lose to a frigate and a loss from a destroyer to a frigate is almost unthinkable. This way the balance between units can be better fine tuned. It's quite a lot of work to do this for all the units througout history, but there are a lot of experts for each time period on this forum.
Good luck with the development of this mod and may it become better with each version!
