An idea: You can mark a ship design as a "Standard Design". This ship design is then available as a "base pattern" in all games in that DB. The idea is to not have to design the "same" ship classes over and over again (geo & grav explorers, transport ships, tankers, troop transports come into mind here), but rather create a new ship class in a new game and then fill that new design with an already existing "base pattern" from one of your earlier games.
Now, the problem here is "race tech". The copy routine can do three checks to circumvent this issue:
a) does the race in your actual game have a race tech with the same parameters as the race tech in the other game? If so exchange that tech against your actual game race tech
b) if no such race tech can be found, does your actual empire have all prerequisite technologies researched? If so generate a race tech with the same parameters
c) If no such technologies can be found offer a drop-down list of all actual race technologies from that category (for example engines, or lasers) and ask the player to exchange the missing tech with one that he already has researched in this game.