It is really hard to figure out the controls/how to do things in MoO2. But I've struggled along. I finally learned one CAN redesign ships and add new technology, and have done so before.
Though I could not figure out how to remove weapons past 1 of them once added.

But I am in a game where the redesign button is grayed out. I thought maybe I needed the military academy or something, But nope, turn after turn it won't let me redesign my ships and add new technology. Any idea what might be going on?

There is at least one thread about this already but here we go again:
You must have chosen Tactical Combat as one of the starting parameters.

You can also downgrade the computer and/or the shield, if you want to. (EDIT: When designing ships)

So if I don't choose tactical combat, I can't upgrade my ships to new technology or upgrade existing ships?

How would i downgrade?

Correct, you just need to build new ones and hope they will be decent. This only works if you can design ships but you click on the shield or computer class and then you can choose something less than the best. Can occasionally be worth it mainly for missile ships.

EDIT: Seems I was totally wrong. See post below.

We need strikethrough text.

Thats not how Strategic Combat do work. All info about ship design player see there is purely for abstract reference. Every time ship enters battle there, it redesigned to best possible design in relation to player's tech during the moment of battle (so even all new researched or stolen tech acquired this turn are included and fit for free too, say, even if it armor or a new gun; they act similar to Fighters or StarBases of Tactical). Yes, that mean they do refits totally for free, en masse, and not even require a colony for it. Thus its absolutely other way than "Correct, you just need to build new ones and hope they will be decent.". Note, that does mean "best possible" in a way game's autodesign see it, and player need very special skill, not related at all to Tactical Combat designs to tech right way (getting actually more effective tech instead of ones games see as them) to force game to design better ships. The Combat itself also have other rules, so its wrong to see Strategic autodesigned ships as bad. While such ships would be horrible in case of Tactical Combat indeed (more actually wouldnt let player abuse Combat AI), they do fine under Strategic rules, as they fight other ships built same way, and acting the same way they act (thus not performing cheap tricks of AI abuse, that some human players mistook for "skillz"). You need to chose "No weapon" for this slot by clicking on it in list of weapons and change it to it.

I should have installed the game to check how it exactly was and not rely on bad memory from four months back for fine details. Well, I stand corrected then. In my bad defence I think I have played a mere half a game twice over the twenty-five years since the game was released using strategic combat. Should teach me to say I do not know if not sure. Explains why you defended the non-tactical combat in another thread.

I know you dislike people how are too quick to open their mouths. Maybe justified in this case.

i dislike people keep chewing same and same and same stuff, while doing it wrong, despite its been explained way better in many other places. That mean those people not only speak about stuff they dont know about, but also about stuff they didnt give a shit to know, yet they speak about it still. Strategic Combat is not something from this kind, basically there is only few posts about it, you can search Spheriumnorth for them, so i cant see anything bad in not knowing how it works, as its not something really possible to understand from player's perspective, the Game itself would do more misleading than help there (ofc point "why talk about stuff one dont know about" is valid still to some extent, but in totally less magnitude).

In very short: no, i dont think you wrote anything bad there, i just tried to write how it works in very few words.

Again, to clarify, i dont see anything bad in not knowing very obscure stuff about some old game. For stuff i dont like (to compare), you can refer a shining bubbling ignorance of some reddit, or steam, or (brr) facebook discussions bout moo2. You're nothing close to it, really, you're sorta fine, actually.

Strategic is sadly not something of usable still, despite patch efforts, its hard to understand whats going on there from player's perspective still, basically its just "tech better tech, and build ships" there (thought, probably, its what game designers are tried it to be). But possible subtle tricks are not really visible from Game GUI, it will need a good article about how it works, and we know people do not read even about Tactical.

I cant see how a way i cut it would imply you said that (maybe my crappy English again). Yes, you didnt said it, and also its not true by coincidence (if you will add that "all" into, i mean).

UPD: rofl, i iust checked, and Steam do have very this thread, and it just exactly the way i described it, without any need to actually even see it first (with that moron linking to useless Strategywiki and "explaining" about "poor" ships).
Hmm, should i check reddit and facebook (brrrrrrr)?

UPD2: no, nothing new on reddit & facebook, only a few days old gleaming bullshit from that retard "cotss2012" aka "d36williams" aka "Richard Johnson". This guy is probably indeed having a highest ratio of [words_written_about_moo2 : skills_and_knowing_about_moo2] in a known history tho, so something impressive still. To make things slightly more worse, he is also editing aforementioned Strategywiki.

Wow, some really awful edits happened there over the last 2 years. Will start effort to restore the old texts where needed.

> Wow, some really awful edits happened there over the last 2 years. Will start effort to restore the old texts where needed.

> StrategyWiki for MOO2
Contains a helpful leaders overview.

> It's important to distinguish between abilities that benefit only the Leader's ship and abilities that benefit all ships in a fleet that contains the Leader's ship.

For ones who possible wouldnt immediately got the joke: second line is Rocco's advertise from his own site for the pile of garbage that Strategywiki is; third line is (just one of) example from this particularly horrible article there (funny enough, there is way better written articles there, just one about Leaders is particularly bad even by low standard of place). And no, this promoted edit is 13 years old, not 2.

UPD: StrategyWiki had some odd useful purpose afterall, as now we know what Rocco is still only vaguely know how game is actually working, despite years and years around. It do explain why he promote that site (and some other ones).