I am trying to re-build an unpacked apk, because it was unpacked the required libraries are already included, deleting the prepacked libraries would be feasible if it weren't for the fact that some of the dependencies seem to be missing when I build with them deleted. I could individually sort through and pick out only the ones that aren't added on build and delete the rest, but it seems like it would be easier to exclude the android support libraries from being included at all. Can/how can this be done in Android Studio/with Gradle?
If it is possible it is probably not documented because it goes against usual ownership securities. If this APK is yours, you can do this operation from the sources. If it is not, you should not be doing this operation.
However, you can exclude the desired libraries from the rebuild by avoiding to depend on them, or by excluding them explicitly, like here.
configurations {
runtime.exclude group: "...", module: "..."
...
}