Well, I appreciate the arguments here, but I've been through this discussion in the past, and am not keen to go through it again. I will say that a simple option of "show ARS unlock" would not be very valuable, because all ARSes in a map game unlock the same thing, by design, until you unlock one ARS. What I mean is:
1. At the start of a map, there are five ARSes. They will all unlock (for example) space planes, no matter which ARS you capture first.
2. Now there are four ARSes. They will all unlock (for eample) tanks, no matter which ARS you capture next.
3. And so on, through the five unlocks.
That's fundamentally incompatible with a quick option to just show what each one would unlock, and seeing what the "next" option is also wouldn't be useful because you don't know what the "next next" option will be, etc.
From my line of thinking, I've already put in a compromise here in terms of adding fabricators and other capturables -- this was discussed at length in the past -- and I'm not keen to go through a second round of compromises as I feel like the goals have been met. I understand that everyone's not to agree, but that's going to be true of any design decision to some extent. There's not a lot more I can add on the subject beyond what I've already posted, I think, and I'm fairly certain that there isn't an argument that's likely to convince me to change this core mechanic, either.
superking, your example makes sense, but speaking to it specifically: if you can just tailor your entire core force to exactly what the AI has at any given time, that's an enormous advantage and really changes a ton of the mechanics of the game. Just refer to your spreadsheet and figure out the best unit to capture for dealing with the most threatening enemy, and then you're done. Instead it's randomized and you have to figure out to work with that stuff in the scenario as it currently stands. However, recognizing that that might sometimes lead you to a brick wall, there's a lot of supplementary stuff that you can directly see (starships, turrets, the DEF tab, fabricators, other capturables), and which lets you avoid that brick wall while not completely removing the challenge of figuring out clever solutions based on the unique current ship mix. That's why the supplementary ships, are the ones that are visible, rather than the core ARS techs.
