What is the easiest way to duplicate publications?

We have a number of large publications that we duplicate (then tweak) for each software release. Currently, that involves using Publication Manager to open the current publication, then saving it off as 'new-pub-name'. We do this in order to preserve the enabled conditions, list of resources, etc... However, this is very time consuming as it takes about 10 minutes for any of these publications to retrieve its baseline, which is something that happens twice during this process, for just one new publication.
I would think that an option in Live Content to copy publications would not be out of the question? (We are running a few versions behind with Live Content, so perhaps this option already exists?)
How are other people handling such a task?

Thanks
Dan.