Everything in 16.04.1 comes from the package archives. It's what you get by default from a particular image that changes. You can still get to whatever state you want regardless of which variant and point release installation image of 16.04 you use. However, doing things manually is of course not the same as being automatic.

So are you saying they won't make any more alternate releases for future releases?

Yes. It was that way for the 14.04 LTS, too.