ANSWER!
Yes we can create and import our own ship components and engines. As for the specifics. My guess is that you will have to wait for the beta to see how it is done 
I’m very excited about this new feature. It may be quite early to talk about details; nevertheless, I need to make this one suggestion:
- Allow to reposition (weapon) slots (only the visual part, no gameplay effect!). It would be great if turrets could appear on the custom ship parts.
Danou
It have a gameplay effect.
If the turret work the same way than in GSB1, the range will stay at the centre of the weapon slot position.
BUT!
The projectile start from the turret position, this mean that it take a shorter time to reach it’s target.
If with bullet, it’s not a great increase in DPS at all, but with missiles, If they are still limited to 1 in flight, it grand a small boost in term of raw DPS.
yes but that numbers negligible… on vanilla ships at least
if you have a ship that so large, that a cruiser beam laser can not shoot at the other side of the ship that it was placed on … then we have other stuff to discus.
OK, I can see that it would impact gameplay (missiles more than other weapons if they behave like in GSB).
Hmm, I also understand this. Thank you, GATC and dafrandle, for your comments. I wasn’t seeing these “problems” when I posted my suggestion.
To limit these “problems” we could restrict the respositioning to a certain radius (100 - 200) around the initial slot position. But after all, I suppose it’s better to forget this suggestion…
well uh my problem isn’t in the base game… get p. industries and you will no what im talking about
Oh, very nice!
Even though there is a clear limitation in basic design through the use of repetitious forms, I can also see by the demo that there is really a LOT of freedom; it comes down to if players want to take the time to really fiddle with all of those little bits and pieces.
That would be an interesting contest at some point… who can design the most impressive cruiser?
edit
I noticed that the large, black ship to the upper left has cannons directed off the port bow, but the beams are striking off the starboard bow. Some kind of tracking issue?
yeah i fixed that bug today 
Ooooo, very nice. They look sorta like the Alliance ships from the first game, except cooler.
Oh man, this looks soo great!!
All the new ship making proccess leaves two questions… you can make a ship using little, previously added pieces, right?
So, ship destruction is modular too? In other words. Pieces are destroyed one by one? (Check Battleships Forever for example)
And modders will be able to add new pieces, right?
Just to throw a new idea, and if the second question is a yes, wouldn’t be great to have a tab in online mode indicating the mods that you need to play certain player-created scenarios (talking about something like good old Challenges system), providing links to the forum thread/direct download, and even installing it while in-game?
I know, all my ideas are somewhat hard to make hahaha, but this would ensure a greater modding experience/activity.
not to poke my fanboyism of steam but uhhh
WORKSHOP
LETS DO IT
maybe
please?
and before you just pass it off as a stupid idea ,if you were going to, may i cite the success inde games such as
Prison Architect
Space Engineers
Turbo Dismount
Plague Inc. Evolved
Democracy 3 (hey that sound familiar)
i’ll stop now because i think i sound like an arrogant little turd
but i hope you see my point
@cliffski
because Democracy 3 is on workshop dose that men gsb2 will be too, or are you still think about it?
Oh I definitely intend for the game to have steam workshop support, I’m a big fan of it, although actual sharing of ship designs should be in the core game anyway, it would be good for new ship components etc.
I think some people will invest a lot of time in ship design. This is why I have this suggestion:
Have an “import design” function. This should be usable across ship classes: this means I could import my custom “cruiser123” design to the destroyer I’m currently designing. This would be very convenient and save a lot of time.
Edit: Not that I want my destroyer to look like my cruiser. But I could at least reuse the same “engines”-design or maybe the “wings”-design (incl. colors, rotating parts, …).
I would love to get my hands on the ship designer and play with it a bit; there appear to be many more parts than the sample ships we have seen thus far, and I’m willing to bet that we will see some truly creative uses of what is already in the kit.
in terms of importing parts, the editor allows you to group select as much as you want (except the hull) and save it all out as a ‘composite’ which you can then use just like it was any normal component in any of your ships.
So you can spend an hour perfecting a super cool engine design, then use it over every ship you own. if you like 
This already works, there is just one small z-order bug I have to fix with it…
This is even better than my suggestion, thanks !
This is fantastic forethought! It will allow someone to create bolder, better designs, and keep a uniform look to their fleet, creating much more of a sense of racial design philosophy.
Question: is there a method for applying a “decal” to the ships or components? For instance, could I create a ship in the editor and drop a pic of the old Star Trek Romulan Bird of Prey (the red bird painted on the bottom of the ship) across the entire build? I suppose channels would allow for 3D and lighting effects to still function across and through the decal. That would open up an even greater opportunity to generate a fleet that reuses some features of paint and design, such as flags, logos, or even entire paint schemes.
Not yet, but I get the impression it would not be that hard, as the engine already allows for objects to take a separate layer as the normals (3D lighting transformation).
I’d love to get this working, but I hate to commit to something without knowing it can be done. Too many game developers are promising the moon and delivering much less…
But it wouldnt be in the beta, and maybe not the initial release. I’d love to do it though
general question.
is this module supposed to take over all hull building, or if i made a picture with a bumpmap (the thing that makes the lighting?) in it (not that i know how) and installed the same way i do in the first GSB, would that function still work
tangent:
what happens if a hull don’t have bumpmap wit it an you try to use it