I don't know if it is related but if I try to force them to spawn with the editor the game partially crashes with this error:
Error while running event FTL-Ships::on_built_entity (ID 6)
FTL-Ships/script/FTLSCRIPT.lua:11: attempt to index local 'burner' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
FTL-Ships/script/FTLSCRIPT.lua:11: in function 'get_speed_boost'
FTL-Ships/script/FTLSCRIPT.lua:26: in function 'new'
FTL-Ships/script/FTLSCRIPT.lua:76: in function 'handler'
core/lualib/event_handler.lua:72: in function <core/lualib/event_handler.lua:70>