Did a search and didn't see this anywhere. I have a few ships I typically enjoy ... and upgrading the thrusters is part of the challenge. But upgrading the armor is very time consuming and almost impossible to get every little piece of armor without removing the texturing. Sooooooo ... How about an easy way to upgrade the metal in a vessel ... from either Station Services (at a $ cost) or the Repair Bay (at a material cost). Say Steel blocks to Hardened, Combat, Alien ... or downgrade to Carbon Substrate. I know this can be done in Creative through the ReplaceBlocks command, but if you have a ship in-game on a server, you can't very well take it into creative and back ... . Just a thought ...
