Yeah i know that however there are a ship layout that spreads out weapons and defenses evenly- it worked before now it does not. I wouldn't mind if the auto builder would update my designs- no sir- just there are moments when you are at war with someone and you go full steam reasearch. You get beams 1 turn, missile the other etc- its tedious if you have to "rework" all your designs- its time consuming.
Yes you can build individual ships- beam(corvette), kinetic etc but when you are facing lot of enemies they all have diffrent types of weapons and these blueprints "jack of all trades" are way to go.
Like on larger maps(i play) its 5 min play time versus 20-30 min in designer- for each turn= repeat. Thats not fun. In Gal civ 2 there were sliders both for weapons and defenses and it worked. In Gal civ 3 the auto builder worked too until something happened and it doesn't shift defenses anymore.
For instance my enemy has kinetics- i design a counterpart- next turn i unlock shield systems and whola- my new design shifts everything to shields and enemy eats my new countership(if i rush them or forget to update the design).
Those exact 3 medium/ large/ massive hull ship types are meant to even it out and they are broken currently. Its not fun to design counters each every game when in couple of turns they become obsolete and you have to design better ships.
Try playing massive or insane maps then see what i mean. On smaller maps i believe it is fun and doable quite fine.