I have GC2 Ultimate Edition, bought from Steam. I am playing just a sandbox "default" game which is v2.04 of ToA.  I'm new to GC, this is my first playthrough. I'm not using any mods.

I'm trying to understand the shipyard and ship construction. I have read qute a bit here in the forums, found some answers, but still looking for some others.

So as an example... say I have researched a bunch of techs and the game gives me a new core ship design, say the "Phoenix M7". That is, now I  CAN build the PM7 at my starbase. Let's say I now build a few of them.  OK... so now I want to create a custom ship off that PM7 ship. So I go to shipyard, select the PM7 SHIP (not the PM7 core template) and click "update".

Then... and this is what bugs me... the PM7 pops up for udate but it is stripped of all weapons, defenses, modules, everything except the eye candy and hull, obviously. OK... so I slap on all the functional junk I want it to have and save it under a different name e.g. "Custom PM (CPM)", and also select it to be a "custom template" of mine.

I research some more and now want to update my CPM custom ship. I select it in shipyard to update, but again, only the cosmetic "shell" of the ship comes up. I AGAIN have to slap on ALL functional junk and save it again under new name etc etc...  This strikes me as odd. I would expect the game to show me my "fully fitted" CPM from previously, and I could simple take away SOME functional parts and put on SOME others instead.

The result of that is that making a new ship design is becoming an incredible clickfest and very time consuming. Imagine you have a big ship that fits lots of functionals... that's getting tedious quickly...

So am I thoroughly missing something?  Or is this it?  Is there anything in the game options one can set to get a different behaviour? I suspect I may be missing something, but can't find it... Thanks for some help.