Just another explanation I’m throwing in... Yes, ship adds population, but what these people are doing is *using* it to build another building somewhere effectively leaving them with little to no available population. They’ve got to delete something, or build some houses/level up their Babel a few times to gain back the what, 1900? 2000? population the ship provides in order to delete it, upgrade, replace it with the higher population gain.
Uhhh Muhhh Guhhhh!
And it's a user created problem. If they just built the ship and left everything else alone, they wouldn't have an upgrade issue. But they put down the ship, upgraded it a few times, then removed some housing, or built a building to use up the pop of the ship that upset the balance. The players need to fix their mistakes. It shouldn't be a bug fix.
It seems odd you would need to move out the current tenants before you could renovate the property to a higher capacity? It works the way it should. It's the user that jumps the gun and messes with their pop during build out that's getting caught. But once you know how to fx it, it should never be a problem again.
Because it works consistent with every other residential building. You can only delete it if there's enough population.