What does ship design need?

In another topic I started on how to build ships someone said that ship design gets boring as your always designing the same ships. Sure jewelry adds fun to the game but most people are not going to spend hours designing a new ship whenever they get new technology and end up liking the design they did origionally just adding upgrades. To me upgrading from proton torpedos I to anti matter or whatever else when you upgrade gets boring. Their should be more in the game as far as that goes.

I remember in Master of Orion 2 ship design was great, their was so many things you can dow ith the weapons as far as upgrading them goes. Not only was each new technology unique but many had a LOT of special abilities you can give to them. Not only that but their were many more utility componeants in the game that added flavor. Maybe if we had more of those even it would make things more interesting. Their were many in Master of Orion, of course, that were in due to the tactical combat but many of those ideas could easily transfer over to this, especially the weapon upgrades that were in the game.

Adding more jewelry, like what was in a recent poll, IS a good idea as it gives peopel more options on appearance but eventually people will be settled in what they want their ships to look like and will get bored when they realize that their Space Raider MKI is the same as Space Raider MKVI in all ways except what level of the same weapons in on board it.