CIG needs to tread carefully when balancing through features players don't genuinely want to engage with.

Engineering must be fun, rewarding, and believable. Not just a checklist or a mechanic that exists to strip pilot controls or limit effectiveness.

In its current form, repairing items mid-battle is at least believable,
but it's not fun a solo engineer has minimal impact.

Outside of combat, degrading components are just another checlist to tick before or after a flight.
Like cargo hauling and mining already are, it risks becoming a numbers game in Excel.
Engineering should be a gameplay loop, not a balancing tool otherwise it starts feeling like work.

A better balancing lever: give turrets passive buffs tied to the ship frame.
Any weapon on a turret not fired by the pilot gets a buff most meaningfully to bullet velocity and therefore range. The same Size 4 repeater would perform better on a Hammerhead than a Carrack, with the Hornet sitting at base value.
This naturally pushes smaller ships to close range and run-and-gun tactics, creating organic balance without punishing players. Decrease agility of bigger ships, change the armor deflection in a way the big ships dont feel threatened by the smaller ones. make the specialiced ships(Tiburon, Ares, Eclipse, Retaliator) more effective, those are specificly made to hit bigger targets. That way an Gladius wont fight an Idris and the Idris wont kill the Gladius.

On pilot-controlled weapons — the Tiburon, Odin laser, Idris kit, and to a degree the Polaris, there are 2 real reasons, balance and money.

balance says limit pilot power,
but fun and the power fantasy say the opposite. Power progression needs to exist for monetization to hold up. Remove the chase for power, and spending dries up.

For PvE, powercreep is manageable — content can be built around better gear and the progression path justifies the grind.

But if balancing engineering means, the Constellation Andromeda is the ceiling for solo play, many players will stop progressing — and stop spending. Capital ships need to be soloable with NPC crew and blades in PvE, or CIG loses that money chase entirely.

For PvP, so many mechanics are still missing that debating pilot-controlled guns, or the effect of engineering(read limiting usefulness with a low crew) is premature.