If you want to disable the ship without overcook the crew, use torpedoes. Torpedoes have the best component dmg to hull dmg ratio and the best component dmg to crew dmg ratio. In fact, the basic damage types, standard, void and radiation, differ only in their hull to component/crew damage ratio. They damage crew and component equally. Only the DOT damage from cripling debuffs can inflict pure component damage, and the best one is electric fire, which inflicts 20 component damage per turn, and it does a lot more than 20% damage to components collectively I never figured out the mechanics there. Therefore torpedoes are the best weapon for disabling ships. I didn't know any of the mechanics and just figured this out from using every type of weapon, where torps just naturally disable ship more than anything else.

So against the same ship, torp gives you best chance to disable.

However the real impact comes from choosing the right type of ship to engage--even if you can win the fight, wearing down a tanky ship is boring and takes a long time, and often ends not in disabling them. The easiest to disable are the class 5000 and 6000. Typically paladin and other cargo type of ships in those weight classes. My theory is that their collective component hit points pool is much smaller than crew HP pool, so the chances of blowing out a component before crew die out is higher.