Indeed, the good old days!
Now it does indeed seem like a slugfest - I'm not surprised people hunt ships that go pop much easier and quicker
Oh don't worry, I'm gonna write up a big old essay on why the balance sucks at some point this week. Because it does effect both sides negatively.
If FDev are showing renewed interest in the development of the title, makes sense to strike whilst the iron is hot.
Shields are massively overbearing, as are the multitude of special weapon effects that allow for extra application of damage, missiles are broken due to lack of effective counters, etc..
Though people popping ships, seemingly at random, is a symptom of there not being any gameplay, its not really related to engineering.
PvPer's, most at least, play because the flight model is so good, and we've always found ways of at least mitigating the broken nature of engineering, its why you don't see all that many PvP ships running seeker missiles for example; Most people find their lack of counters and their super consistent module damage to be rather unfair and thusly avoid their use. (Just for one example)
Another would be why Plasma is so meta, IE: ships have such ridiculous shields nowdays, that absolute damage is for the most part, the best way of mitigating that overblown health pool and due to their "shoot and move" style gameplay, the often end up more effective for dealing damage and allowing the firing ship to remain evasive, despite on paper lasers being better for the low-thermal resistance, high capacity meta. The trouble is, lasers require consistent time on target, which for most pilots, is going to hamper thier ability to remain evasive at the same time, and thusly they'll probably lose to a plasma boat.
