Trouble in Skipping Ahead

I'm trying to start a new game to check out the new features, but I don't want to spend hours making a new base and ships from scratch. I try temporarily converting the game to creative mode via the game.dat file but nothing I make seems to stick. Anything I build or any blueprint I load simply doesn't appear when I load the game.

Any suggestions on how I should go about setting myself up in a new survival game without having to rebuild everything from scratch?