First I am running TA 1.97, I have the Ultimate Edition and version 2 is not out for that yet.

1) When you research one of the weapon techs they are usually split into four sections each section gives you a new weapon that does the  same damage as the previous one but is smaller and cheaper. Do the ship designs (yours or built in  ones) take advantage of this automatically and use the cheaper weapons or do you have to create a load of ships each with the new weapon on them.

2) Can you run the ship designer stand alone with all the parts ready to use?

3) Is there a ship tree showing all the built in ships and there stats/parts list and where they come in the tech tree.