Gendal

This was confusing to me too, but I just gave up and designed my own ships as Entropy Avatar suggested. Works great, and it's more fun than picking from a list.

THANK YOU! I knew I was missing something. Did you uncheck the "remove functionnal components" case in the game options ? Nope, I sure didn't. Never even saw it. I agree with Vogar it shouldn't be there but I am very glad it's at least an option, though I disagree with the defaults.

One thing that drives me nuts is when I want to upgrade a design. Lets say I forgot to add a range module to a design. Right now I click upgrade and instead of getting the same ship, I just get the hull and whatever extras I added on. I don't care about extras (no disrespect to those who do), but I want the engines, weapons, sensors, etc layout that I had before. Is there a way to do this or I am forever limited to rebuilding it all over again every time?

Wow, that's pretty much what I was looking for. Thanks for the very in depth response (I read it all!)

Anybody else trying to play the campaign? The mission "In Defense of Drengi" is repeatedly kicking my butt. I play a slow, turtle like game usually, preferring to stay back and marshal my resources till I am ready to steam roll everything. Unfortunately this doesn't work for this mission, since I can't seem to start up fast enough to defend myself from the dreadlords. I have tried expanding fast using the new research tech that involves barren/radioactive/etc worlds, tried producing a