Playing Synthetic. Upgrade shows it is earned with Colonial Engineering tech, but upgrade not available to select. Is it actually not allowed for Synthetics?

I cannot say which one i should hop in, believe i have the base game not having any DLCs over on IV yet. Would you guys recommend playing this or go on move to IV?

I register my email in the title screen but it doesn't send anything after it's accepted

I can't find a changelog anywhere.

So I'm trying to build a custom ship, something that can deal with guarded anomalies or just anything really and yet no matter what I try EVERY design is ALWAYS inferior to the basic ones in every single way possible. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, I don't know why the weight limits are so low and the weight of equipment so high but it means that I can only have a ship do one thing, if it surveys it can do nothing else, if it has movement it can't do anything else, if I put one laser on the damn thing...