The OP makes a good point however they are way too polite about it. It looks like whomever was responsible for coming up with the code that would allow your customers to customize your ships, never finished their job. I’ve been waiting since Gal Civ II for this to be corrected or finished.
Let’s take Torian ships for example. They are beautifully designed ships. I would love to use them when creating a new faction, but … no one ever finished the code for customizing ship colors. These ships don’t even match the color scheme of the Torian faction let alone any faction I might create.
If we look at the picture the OP attached, we can see that no matter what color you make your ship you are going to be blasted from the bottom left-hand corner with the original color. Using our example of Torians, their ships are the color of baby fecal matter after eating too many canned green peas. Who wants to look at that color particularly for the duration of the game?
So can someone come back and finish their code? Can you hire someone to finish the code? The code needs to be finished. We have waited too long.