I just played my first game of Twilight of the Arnor, and I love the new automatic upgrade feature of the game.  However, I've noticed an anomaly:

I played the Iconians, and I researched larger ship designs before I researched most of the better weaponry.  What I noticed was that I had destroyers that used Phasors VII, even though the best technology was Phasors II.  When I got dreadnaughts, I saw my ship had THREE of the best beam weapons mounted on it, and the rest of the ship was loaded with the best beam weapons my technology allowed!

So, because of this, I was unable to replicate any of the predesigned ships.  Even though virtually the entire galaxy was running beam weapons and mass drivers, it was still more efficient to just blast past their shields using the mega-powerful beam weapons than use sub-par missiles.

Is this by design, or was it some kind of fluke?