no, i mean the numerical values, that are displayed on the infoscreen of a ship when you select it. often you remove some/all of components and change to new ones anyway.

ex i have reschearced new engines and lasers. then i upgrade my fighter, who have 5 movement 4 beam attac, 2 defence, first i have to remove all the old components, then start to add the new engines and weapons. if the game saved the previus numerical 5,4,2 (and the other values, cost, distance and so on) and displayed them next to the current indesign value. it would be a fast way to compare if my new ship is going to be much better then the old one.

Simple fix...name your ships like this HFb6-7-p2. This is a Heavy Fighter, beam weapons of 6, speed of 7 point defense of 2. These are the base numbers from the build screen. Then when I go to upgrade, I know how much of a change I have made, before I save the upgraded design.