I think the reason is that a template is always useful once you've unlocked the hull size but using an outfitted ship requires you to get every tech needed for its modules plus enough miniaturization to make it all fit.

A lot of people would never see the ship they downloaded if it wasn't a template.

Edit:  Also, if you like the look of weapons or other modules on your ship you can add the models to the template.  Weapons are under the "small" category and everything else is under the "universal" category in the design tab.

What you say is a good point and likely reason.  However, this is what I was hoping for in the workshop.  I know I won't be bothered to equip every design I could come up with.  I rely a lot on predesigned ships.  I figure if I download a bunch of different ships with different equipment distributions, then as I explore the tech tree, I will get different designs available.  That will be fun.  More importantly, I expected the AI would have access to all the workshop ships I subscribed to, so the AI would have a rich set of designs to choose from.  I understand that assumes the AI gets a way to choose meaningfully between all those designs, but I have faith in that.

I am an optimist about GC3, so I can only hope these are some initial implementation issues with Steam Workshop in preparation for a much more robust Workshop support.

I get what you are saying and you are correct but it would still be nice to have our cake and eat it too. BTW, I am not seeing any "weapons" parts in game stock, and the weapons parts from other contributors aren't sticking either. I am not sure what's going on with that problem.

I already get sensors I don't necessarily care about on pre-set ships.  So, I understand what you are saying.

If blueprints are bits of XML code, could they be little mini-mods of some sort?

To anyone wanting to use weapon parts in their ship designs you need to click options in the ship designer and choose to show all parts, and yes those parts do show up as I have several workshop downloads with weapon model parts just nothing with actual modules.

well it doesnt solve the issue of those obsessed with having pre equipped ships, but it does mean that ship designers who want the weapons for appearance sake have access to them.

In GC2 shiptemplates could hold functional modules - however, only for their outward design, they were actually without function (*). So, essentially, one could use all available mods - functional or not - to make a design without any limitation whatsoever.

That this is not possible right now because of blablabla is just a lame excuse - the game could simply be coded to work like the prequel did and that would be the best solution, and given the fact that the code already exists it shouldn't be that difficult.

(*) Actually there was a minor function - if the auto-designer would pick weapons or defenses on a template it would use the anchors of the void non-functional weapon/defense modules and replace them with working ones. This was, again, a good solution, otherwise the autodesigner would have to place all these in random order at anchors (which could happen at some time, eg. if current miniaturization level would exceed the number of real weapons vs. the proxy-weapons) and that would lead to chaotic designs.