This is just a guess, but I think the only way to get the design back is to edit the save file. But don't worry over the core ships -- you can always design better yourself.

The only way to permanently delete a ship design is to hit the 'delete' button, however that cannot be done with the core ships. Only your custom designs can be affected by that button.

In new games the first thing I do is design a new colony ship. The generic ones are just too slow, so I slap a few extra engines on it.

I have accidentally obsoleted one of my own designs. Is there a way to "unobsolete" it? If there isn't one in the game, does somebody know if I can change something in the savegame?

Besides, why is the ship config file still on disk when:
a) the ship is obsolete AND
there is no upgrade of this ship
c) I'll never see this ship again because it is only visible in my current game.

Besides, why is the ship config file still on disk when: a) the ship is obsolete AND there is no upgrade of this ship c) I'll never see this ship again because it is only visible in my current game.

You will see it again - in a future game once you have researched the appropriate techs.

Mustian - I quite like that idea..... a tab for Obsoleted ships.... and perhaps even a tab for As Yet Unresearched Ships (perhaps a more punchy title!! ). Ones you built in previous games and can no longer remember what techs you need to get at them (rather than scrolling about in the tech tree trying to find out exactly what and where)

I also made the colony ship obsolete--and than an anomalous event caused most of the planets to become magically better by a factor of 11. D'oh!

The designers might want to work on "un-obsolete"-ing ships in the expansion, or at least giving us a popup window that says "are you sure? You won't get it back..."

Talk about frustrating!

One good piece of advice i recieved in these forums with regard to designing ships....

if you spend the time to design a really cool looking ship, save it before adding active components.

What i always do is to call these ships 'hull cruser', hull fighter, hull battleship etc etc. Using the word hull puts them all together in one group in the list to avoid confusion.

Since these ships have no active components, they always show up as soon as their hull class is developed, then i add active components and give it a new name.