I'm not really sure how well this would suit the game. It would be yet another series of calculations that the game would have to do and the feature wouldn't be one that was immediately obvious to new players; we could end up being bombarded with bug reports of ships randomly being "damaged" and the like. It would also be illogical that current design and scrapping techniques would still be used in Trek times either - i've never seen starships simply throw away old components for instance. Everything is recycled.
We are *intending* to change the way old ships are handled though. Instead of scrapping them, you will be able to mothball them. Mothballing will return a percentage of the build cost back into your resource pool, and the ship will lie out-of-use in your mothball yard. If an emergency situation arises and you suddenly need a fleet of ships, you can then spend resources on bringing the ships back into use. This would be far cheaper and faster to do than building a fleet from scratch afterall, even if you end up with a fleet of outdated designs. But those outdated designs could end up being the difference between you and assimilation...
