but if a part is placed in the middle of a vessel using top and bottom nodes, and then the SUBTYPE is switched, the ship will not be "moved" with the nodes
(clipping or empty space appears).
Otherwise, there is possibility to move nodes using NODE{} node, and a vessel will be moving with the nodes, but only new position of the attach node is specified, so no way to change size of a node, that is very desired, if the SUBTYPE is used to resize the part. Adding the size to the NODE could fix that.
Similarly, someone at some point may want to change a direction of the node with vessel sticked to it, so beside of the size, worth consider adding to the NODE only missing direction values.
Typical way of modifying nodes in the SUBTYPES is create them globally, and then enable only some of them:
but if a part is placed in the middle of a vessel using top and bottom nodes, and then the SUBTYPE is switched, the ship will not be "moved" with the nodes (clipping or empty space appears).
Otherwise, there is possibility to move nodes using NODE{} node, and a vessel will be moving with the nodes, but only new position of the attach node is specified, so no way to change size of a node, that is very desired, if the SUBTYPE is used to resize the part. Adding the size to the NODE could fix that.
Similarly, someone at some point may want to change a direction of the node with vessel sticked to it, so beside of the size, worth consider adding to the NODE only missing direction values.