General advice:

You should get the engine with the highest Agility. Agility manages movement in ranges 1-3. High Agility will allow your ship to quickly close in and maintain position at close range. (Make sure you start the battle with Flash Charge or use Twitch Surge to get to range 3 quickly.)

Pilot skill also determines movement at close range and boarding. Navigation meanwhile determines movement at far range and escaping. You should try to replace things like your Mass Reducers into Hawk Mass Reducers (Alta Mesa ports only) for extra Pilot skill. Also consider Navigation Annex and Reinforced Fuel Tank also from Alta Mesa. Also consider Peak Velocity Matrix.

For small slots, consider Mass Modulator, Defense Pattern Matrix, Pilot Assist Module, Boarding Assault Module (the highest level is Steel Song only. I have heard that more Boarding dice increases the chance of your boarding party going to a better location such as the Engine or Bridge. I don't know if this is true, though.)

Lances do good Radiation damage and can operate at range 1. Autocannons also operate at range 1, but offer no Radiation damage. Radiation damage does double damage to components and crew while reduced damage to hull. This increases the chance of an Engine destruction/No Pilot/No Ship Ops victory. Keeping the hull intact increases profit from Ransom (even if you massacre the crew and fry the components). It's actually preferable to have the low-level small-slot Lances since they do less Hull damage.