Hmm, yes. NPCs still take some of your "XP". But what does it matter? It's not like you level up anything in game. Your weapons don't get more powerful, your shields don't get tougher or anything by getting that "XP". But if you have the NPC, that one actually is getting better by gaining higher ranks.
So yes, you get less "XP" per kill, but you do kill faster, especially once your NPC gets a high enough rating. Considering that your rank is nothing else than a way of showing off how much time you've spent in game, i don't really see a problem there.
Where it hurts a bit more is the wing design for multi-crew. And there the shared "XP" still is not what dislike. It's the whole "and we punish other players for the ship owner having a higher combat rank" mechanic. That's completely anti-social game design. Whoever actually thought that this was a good idea might want to refresh his knowledge of game design, quite obviously his understanding of online games is at least 8 to 15 years behind the market, depending on how you look at it.
Depends on how you do it. If you want it all and want it now, then indeed it is. Since the rework, it's not as bad as it formerly was. But while you were told so many times, you never account for that. You still go around and tell people that it's the devil himself, despite you not playing any more since, hmm, how long?
Mind you, i also still very much dislike engineers. They are insane power-creep and no matter where you are, you might hear me cheering by just opening the window if FD ever dares to cut them down to size. But the mere process of getting engineering upgrades is very manageable by now. When roaming a HAZRes site, i just stop after a kill and collect the more valuable parts of what was left behind. Then once a while visit a material trader and exchange stuff from the full storage slots for other materials. (Killing Pythons and Anacondas of high rank quite often gives you several G4/G5 materials and just scanning ships if they are wanted keeps data coming in. ) Only for raw materials you might either want to cruise a planets surface in the SRV for a while, or go traditional mining (with mining lasers) for a while and perhaps watch a movie on the second screen. Altenatively, you can of course run missions to get exactly what you want.
So all in all, if you aproach engineers with a plan and a bit of patience, your material supply will build up and it's not the grind of old times any more. Only unlocking some of the engineers still is inconvenient, but that's a one-time thing at least. The real issue is not the grind, but how overpowered the stuff is.
