In order to make a custom style for your own use, where all the core ships are replaced:
1. Design enough templates to make up the new style. You'll need at least one of each hull size. If you won't ever use it for an AI race and don't build core ships, you'll really only need Cargo and Medium to cover the colony, miner, and survey ships you start with.
2. In AI race customization, pick a style (doesn't really matter which), edit it, and save it under a new name.
3. Go to My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar\ShipStyles and open your style's xml file in a text editor.
4. Change the <Prefix> value to something unique, with no spaces or special symbols. Check through the file for any instances of the original style name you copied yours from and change them to your new name.
5. Change the <ModuleStyle> if you like. The number there determines which set of hulls you'll see in-game to build additional ships with. You can see which number the base styles use by looking at their files in DarkAvatar\Data\English\ShipStyles under the location where GC2 is installed.
6. Go to My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar\ShipTemplates, and rename the .shipcfg files for the templates you made in step 1 to match the prefix value you set in step 4.
7. Start up the game, and go edit the style via AI race setup. Pick each item on the left and double-click the template on the right to assign it, then save.
8. Back up to your own race setup, and pick that style for yourself. When you begin the game you should find that your starting ships are using the templates you made yourself.
