adding colliders greatly increases torque effect on player ship

I have been testing some player movement code for a wing commander type game, using a player gameobject without colliders. the object uses the rigidbody.addtorque() command to rotate the ship. whenever I try to add a collider to the ship, or any of the ship’s subobjects, the rotation speed is increased dramatically. could anyone help me understand why this happens?

Am I doing something wrong, or do I just have to suck it up and rebalance all the force variables?

I found a slightly different thread that was rooted in the same issue.

I also found a solution that has not been posted there yet, and I will do so now.