Closed New and Old Characters have Different Universes

When I started up the game for the first time in a few months I figured I'd made a new character and see how the game had changed. I spawned on a new planet and at the time said okay, no big deal, it's a new build so it makes sense.

Eventually I pop in on one of my older, more powerful/resource rich characters and find that their spawn planet is the same as it was when I made them last year.

I like to make the spawn planets starting bases, so all my characters can share resources and so I don't have to grind through the early game stuff and can jump straight to exploring on newer characters. I wanted to do the same and combine the universes of my new(glad giraffe) and old (pre-glad giraffe) characters. So I packed everything up into the ships and deleted everything in the universe folder.

The problem is that when I start up on Old Character and generate a spawn planet, that spawn planet only words for other Old characters. The New characters get their own separate universe still, and I'm not sure why.

Is there a way to merge things so my new and old characters can share resources/planets?
Thanks

 

yes. no planet comes up.
I also end up with two universe files in the universe folder, so I know it's not the same one.