After altering a TEC capital ship.entity file's abiltiies list at the top of the capitalship's entity file by dropping one ability and replacing it with another ability from another capitalship.entity file, I changed the ship's fire rate, starting hull points, starting shield points, cool down time, hull points gained per level, as well as the shield points gained per level.

After doing all this, my capital ship is firing faster, gaining more hull points and shield points per level, but the  initial hull points, shield points, and the ship's changed abilities don't show up in the game.  It still shows the standard starting hull/shield points and the same old abilities list.

I did not change the name of the capitalship.entity file so that I would not have to make changes/updates to the string file, entity.manifest, and the PlayerTech.entity file.  I figured that if I leave the name alone, that this would save time on not having to mess with these other files mentioned from other mod postings.

Is there something else I am missing?