I never said most cases, I realize it's rare, but that shouldn't mean the template shouldn't be able to handle it. The point of a modular template (which mine is) is to handle all cases. And it's not BS to say 400m would possibly be used. Here's an example of a real design that fits perfectly at 350m, with a border marker for where the image should be cropped to since this ship didn't have a ship badge. The scale would be cropped to 350m as well but I couldn't show that without actually doing it.
TestTemplate2 by
~~@ Lord Malachi @~~ The Awesome Coon of Awesome, on Flickr
I also added the appropriate border for if there was no underwater section.
I'm aware that the site is primarily for real life designs, but deciding that the template should only be designed to handle real life designs is rather short sighted, if not discriminatory. "AUs being left for casualties in the forum." sounds like you have a very dim view on AUs, whether that's true or you just had a moment of miscommunication, they should still be treated the same as any other design in respect to the templates they are required to follow.
So 90% of all ships in the catalog fall under 200m, that just means 90% of the time a large portion of the template would be cropped out. But the other 10% of the time, it's there and no one has to sit around asking what they should do about the template not being large enough.
Also in regard to Thiel's comment, I don't see how it doesn't solve the problems I mentioned? Regardless of length, it will always fit the ship after cropping. And after rearanging everything to be based off of the top and left borders of the screen, it's very easy to crop in MS Paint. I also gave a little more space for the 3rd text line, I thought I left enough room for 3 but I didn't, thank you for catching that.
As for how long you've been using them, I assumed that since this thread is only a year or so old, that the "New Templates" were also only that old. If they predate the thread then I assumed wrong. I'm sorry.