I - like you by the sounds of it - tend to only leave a dock in Open if I am happy that I can survive or at least flee from a G5-engineered PVP meta build. As sensible as that is, it severly cramps my options for smaller ships. The Python and the big three are probably the only ships that can accommodate sensible anti-meta defenses without giving up something that would quantifiably be important to their primary role. A lot of the anti-meta, anti-engineering specials are responsible for the increased defensive loadouts and without them, your comment that minimal changes to a build are required would be valid, IMO.
The only thing a ship needs to have a good shot at survival is good thrusters and a handful of reasonable countermeasures. If you don't want to get shot down, you aren't going to get shot down in a fast ship with a single heatsink launcher (yes, emissive is a thing, but nine times in ten, you can be cold enough to be unresolvable a few seconds after submitting to an interdiction, or noticing a sensor contact).
Those internal defensive measures aren't necessary unless you decide to stick around and fight, or happen to be in a crap-tier trade vessel that should never be taken to a heavily populated area (and you still
can, if you are willing to sacrifice some cargo room).
- Engineered weapons (grom and PS lasers) can disable low-integrity modules through shields, so you need MRPs to counter.
- RC torps can one-shot a massive shield so you need EMPs to counter.
- Hull tanking is still not viable (because of HY cannons and scramble spectrum) so you need SCB's and boosters to counter.
- The heat meta is still a real issue so you can't do proper PVP without heatsinks to counter.
Nothing damages modules through shields, except heat, and integrity is irrelevant to the effects that cause drive/FSD reboots. Phasing cannot damage modules though shields.
Thermal cascade on cannons is the only significant heat dump effect and can be countered in the short term quite easily with a few heatsinks, and in the longer term by stronger integrity modules.
Reverberating cascade is extremely difficult to use against fast ships, and takes more than a "one-shot" against anything with a sizable shield generator, especially one that had had it's integrity augmented, ether via thermal/kinetic resistance, or a random secondary effect.
Scramble is potent, but overrated. It can only affect one random subsystem at a time and has a hard cool down. Pulse disruptors are somewhat more useful against fleeing targets because they can disable specific subs, but have to actually strike and damage the module in question.
I feel this wide gap between a PvP hunter & the PvE loadout prey is a primary reason why Open has the reputation it currently has (gankers paradise), and why PvE groups are so popular. Sure there are lots of players who will only ever want to PvE, but there are probably quite a few who would be happy with a little risk in Open, just not the 'run or die' boredom massive risk.
I feel that PvE leaves players woefully unprepared for the possibilities of what CMDRs can bring to bear against them and that more difficult NPCs, both in tactics and loadout, are necessary.
This has always been the case, and Engineers has only modestly exacerbated things. I distinctly remember a PvE wing, new to Open apparently, that interdicted me at a CG because I was wanted:
I was alone, in my daily driver FDL. They had a wing of three; one FDL and two Vultures. In the same encounter/instance, I shot down both Vulture CMDRs twice each (this was near the starport and they lauched to rejoin the fray), and the FDL once, before being the last one standing. This was well before engineers and they all had significant combat rank...they simply had never faced a PvP veteran in a pure PvP apex combat vessel before. Less moronic NPCs could easily have prepared them better.
