Basically. Your ships won't show up until you've researched all the techs required to create them. There are some hulls that, though small or tiny, are unlocked by doing additional hull research.

I've taken to building a "hull only" design of a ship before attaching ANYTHING to it...that way it immediately becomes available to me when I research that hull size.

I do wish there was a way to load a custom ship even though you haven't researched all the tech yet. I have some cool ships I designed in a game where I had really advanced missile tech, and I don't have a save for that game anymore, so I can't re-use that design until I develop all that tech again and save it without missiles.

I also wish you could save a ship that's over its weight limit. That would allow me to build a ship that I can't use quite yet until I miniaturize the technology farther.

Yes, your custom designs (and the core designs) will only show up again when you've once again researched all the techs required for the component parts that were used to build them. This probably also includes things like Miniaturization (since it allows you to cram more parts onto a ship).

Edit: *chuckle* Talk about accidental overkill! (I kinda wish this forum had a preview function so you could check for that sort of thing before posting...)

Peace & Luv, Liz

Thanks for the help.

You have to have the right race design though don't you? For instance, a Terran's base hull is different to that of whatever the hell the other races are called.