I haven't searched the forums to see if this or a variation of it has already been mentioned, so forgive me if I end up wasting a mod's time. 

  In ES1, if I recall correctly (I'll be honest, it's been a while), players could find out an enemy ship's loadout and stats whenever encountered. This allows players to immediately design almost perfect counters to such ships and field them in a few turns. This, in my opinion, makes wars much easier to fight as your ships can, after some initial difficulty with obsolete models, handily defeat encountered ships of the same type (in some cases any ship an empire fields), and removes some tension from a war. This also exacerbated the problems with hard counters, since designing almost perfect counters for ships is much easier. 

  What I propose is some sort of delayed "ship loadout knowledge." What this means is that when a ship is encountered (Seen on you empire scanners/map? In one of your owned systems? Only when ships are engaged in combat with yours?) you know very little about it, maybe only ship class (How many health points a ship has might be important to also include for gameplay so you're not completely in the dark. Actual numbers could still be unknown, however, perhaps only represented by a percentage. Also ship travel speed could be known, as their movements could be analyzed before you ever encounter them.). After the initial encounter, you can gain more knowledge on the enemy ships by engaging them in battle (Or also by having friendly elements like planets or ships in-system with them?). Obviously, how much knowledge you can gain from each encounter should be limited to avoid the problem outlined earlier, but what information discovered could be randomized and how many pieces discovered could be randomized from 1-3 (I also think some basic ship information and modules or module types should be weighted in the calculations to be discovered first. It would make sense for you to know what kind of weapons they're shooting you with, for example ). 

   Victories or defeats could also factor into the calculations. A victory could make it much more likely to discover more than one aspect of a ship, as scientists could analyze wreckage (If it's in one of your systems, maybe even have it appear in the improvements list as a one turn improvement named something like "Wreckage Analysis"?), weighing the calculations towards two or three pieces of information. If defeated, there's not going to be as much of a chance for information to be recovered but some could be retrieved and it could be used as a learning experience. This could mean the calculations are weighted towards giving only one piece of information, rarely two, and 3 (or more) being nigh impossible. 

   Different ship types present a problem, as a new ship type (including just upgraded models, which I don't think are going to be treated differently aside from automatic naming conventions applied by the game) could theoretically be a blank slate and you'd have to start all over again and slowly gain information (which could be exploited). As a solution to this, there could be an overall percentage that slowly ticks up as you spend more time interacting with and fighting a different race that is applied to the discovery calculation to make it more likely to discover more information from ships. A different percentage could also apply to ship classes (of a certain race), skewing it in the same way the aforementioned "global race" percentage does. These two make sense, as your empire's scientists would get knowledge of how the other race's ships are constructed over time and thus could analyze more efficiently. Analyzing the hull types of an empire ships means they could get even faster analysis done, but when a new class roles out this percentage would be 0%(as the ship hasn't been encountered before), but the knowledge of the other race's construction techniques still apply. Also, any ship you encounter using tech you've discovered on your tech tree could get a percentage bonus on any modules they have equipped that you've discovered, seen as you should have intimate knowledge of the discoveries, or the effects/uses of the discoveries. 

   If this is implemented, there would need to be some time to work out the numbers for the calculations so it doesn't happen to fast or slow. It would also need to be tweaked so a prolonged war with enemies doesn't become a chore as new ship variants and classes are produced in the same conflict.

   This system would be put in place to hopefully instigate a sort of "arms race" between empires. Obviously the mechanics and limitations of the game make this much different from an arms race in real life, but it gives a new facet of fighting in wars. Previously, the "arms race" would consist of clicking on an enemy ship and designing around it, with most of the time spent passing turns building the ships. This system would extend this process and make the beginning of wars an almost unknown quantity as you don't know how effective your ships are (remember the enemy doesn't either, which makes it an unknown for all belligerents). As the war progresses, so does your knowledge of the opposing sides forces, so the effectiveness of your ships would increase as you begin to counter what they use. Conversely, your enemy is doing the same thing, which makes this "arms race" a more drawn out and realistic event (Speaking of events, those might even be factored in as well, along with quests. Perhaps a small quest or event could appear while you're at war where an entire ship class's loadout is revealed to you.). This system would only apply to each individual player/AI so your enemies won't ever really know how much information you know about their ships (until you start blowing them away with ease ) 

   This system could be an entirely background system, using only hidden calculations and values to determine when and how it appears. This means it does not have to add any other management system to the gameplay, which fits into the way the game is currently (with most, if not all, of the primary mechanics already outlined and in-development or completed), and preserves what I see to be one of the visions for the game. 

   Any and all criticisms or suggestions are appreciated and help make this a better, more thorough idea!

   Edit: Grammar and spelling