mikro-orm - reading entity data by given reference IDs

I'm kind of new to mikro-orm, trying to wrap my head around as how to correctly define the relations between some of my entties in my collections.

The idea is to store all my pre-defined modules in ship-module collection. And then as I load the ship-entity all the related modules data would get resolved as well by the respective reference id. I'm storing these references as part of the ship creation process, I do see the IDs being saved correctly into the db, however, when I'm fetching the ship data, the modules atribute is always empty.

ship.entity.ts

@Entity()
export class ShipEntity extends BaseEntity {

  @Property({
    default: 'Ship 1'
  })
  name?: string;

  @Property()
  ownerID: ObjectId;

  @Property({
    default: 1
  })
  level?: number;

  @Property({
    default: Date.now()
  })
  createdDate?: number;

  @Property()
  coords: CellCoordinates;

  @Property({
    default: 0
  })
  galaxyId?: number;

  @ManyToMany(() => ShipModuleEntity)
  modules = new Collection<ShipModuleEntity>(this);

  constructor(ownerId: ObjectId,  galaxyId: number, name: string, coords: ICellCoordinates) {
    super();
    this.ownerID = ownerId;
    this.name = name;
    this.galaxyId = galaxyId;
  }
}

ship-module.entity.ts

@Entity()
export class ShipModuleEntity extends BaseEntity implements IShipModule {
  [OptionalProps]?: 'level' | 'description';

  @Property()
  type: ShipModuleType;

  @Property({
    default: 1
  })
  level?: number;

  @Property()
  name: string;

  @Property()
  description?: string;
}

this is how I'm trying to retrieve the data.

const shipsRepo = DI.em.fork().getRepository(ShipEntity);
const ship = await shipsRepo.findOne({ownerID: player._id }, { populate: ['modules'] })

So as part of the create ShipEntity process. All the data are populated correctly. Even the modules araay is pre-poulated with all the required module ObjectIds'. At least when I'm checking the data in the DB. The problem however, lies with the retrieval of the data, once I try look up any ship, I'm not getting anything. What I'd expect is to retrieve ShipEntity along with all modules. The moduels should be all resolved by the respective ID. SO insteaf of getting modules array width just the ObjectIds', I'd get the modules filled with all the ShipModule Entities.

But I'm not really sure if this is even posible. in Typegoose I used to do:

  @prop({
    required: true,
    ref: ShipModuleModel,
    type: Types.ObjectId
  })
  modules: Ref<ShipModuleModel>[]

Can anyone please let me know as why is this not working?

Spent days trying to solve this using AI, but no luck. Seems like SO comunity can't be replaced with AI just yet :)