Great tool, thank you! Took me a few times to read your description before I groked it fully. I believe I do now. :) Made a nice miner so far, though don't have anywhere near the full 24.9K salvage modules yet. I assume the logical place for the cannon modules (when I get to them) will be in between the salvage checkerboard. Thanks for posting this great tool!
Hull cladding is of course not strictly necessary, but you will be subject to a lot of critique, some of it perhaps not terribly polite, if you leave an otherwise completed ship without such skin. Worse, as multi-player is technically a PvP environment, an unclad ship may find itself hunted for it's crime. Best to be space efficient and make the finished ship, look like an actual ship.