Can't Expand Ship Hull Beyond Bounds

I'm trying to expand the vacuum production area on the right side of my ship, which happens to be on the edge of the ship's current bounds.  Add Hull isn't letting me expand the hull beyond the ship bounds.  Is there any way to expand the hull in that direction?

Ships are build on ship "canvases", the canvas is the bound for the ship. Cannot build outside of that because those are placed in sectors based on their canvases, meaning if it was possible to build over then ships would be overlapping each other. On top of each other.

So is my ship limited to that 2x2 canvas on the deployment grid for good, with no way to expand beyond that?

Yep, u can however make a second ship. There's a big button with a + in it next to the 1 of ur ship in the top left, that lets u build a second ship, and u can make that ship the same size so u can have 2 large ships. That's the only way i know so far to keep building a bit larger. But i don't think u can make a third tho... But ya, that's it.

You can build more ships and choose other types of ship canvases to build on. We might open up new options regarding those in the future, we will see!