Yet another noob question -- using outdated components?

Unfortunately there is no way to select outdated components once they become obsolete.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

A work round would be to copy an existing design and then manualy upgrade those components which you realy want to do this all the time with population trasports to upgrade cargo and engines as the other components are secondry to its role. The only problem here is that you retain the old hull size and cant do any thing about it

I am not sure, if I understood corectly.
But to upgrade your ships:
-Ship design
-select a ship/unit/base
- click at the button "upgrade"
- bingo: your ship and components with a level increase are going to the new level, plus you can add or take same components.

For the use of old components: Why?
The new one cost normaly the same then the old ones, but are better.

Another use for ships with outdated components is when you're planning to give or trade a ship to another empire, but don't want to give them the opportunity to analyze it for your cutting edge technology. (Not a common situation, but it does happen occaisionally.)

"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it /is/ a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.

The main reason you can't use obsolete components in Space Empires 5 is because all components are generated by formula, unlike in Space Empires 4 where each component was a separate entry on the table. It saved Aaron a lot of space on his definition files, but limits the system to showing only the newest components currently in your build table. I know that people are already asking him to allow a "show all" component list, but this hasn't been implemented yet.

The only reason I can think of to keep old components or not upgrading all the way is to save money.

Another reason would be if you're selling/giving the ships to another empire & don't want to let your best tech out.

That's true in a multiplayer game. I don't know if the AI is smart enough in single-player.

As TrajanX has said, if you retrofit a ship with ALL new component, it will take more turn before it get ready (repair time...). Another reason is that upgrading engine will lose all supply on that ship... it's annoying if you are in a solar system with only a small domed colony with only one Supplt Depot...