After playing some longer games I found some problems regarding the ship designs. 

• Probably I didn't find it, but there is no way to upgrade all ships of a certain design. This shouldn't get a problem if you lack funds, as it could be seen as a debt and be paid step by step. Having lots of cheap ships in my games brings up a huge micromanagement duty by point-and-click every single ship till they are upgraded to the new design. There should be a way to order all ships of one design to upgrade to the next step.
• As allready mentioned before, if you use only your own designs, you have to re-design every single research step. Why not get automatic upgrades not unlike the usual designs?
• In the current ship rooster I can't find a filter to find specific ship designs. How about having a complete fleet roster in the upper corner, where Victory, Govern aso. are located. With complete filters and fleet managment options. Ongoing, it is very hard to see how many ships I could combine into a fleet...except I do point and click every single ship before I send them to found a fleet. Ships should get a good visible 'hover' notice, how many logistic points they need.

Hope those ideas might improve the further gameplay.