Source? Or do you only fligh a Corvette and mostly fight small ships? Sure, the game is still playable without Engineering, but large Elite ships in a CZ sure can be bullet sponges.
I think
all ships in CZs are bullet-sponges these days.
Not long ago I was unlocking Engineers for my alt-account and decided it'd be a good idea to unlock whichever Engineer requires a bunch of Combat Bonds.
I have multirole Krait Mk2s for my main account which are pretty good combat ships, when G5 engineered.
I bought a Krait for my alt-account and copied the loadout I use on my main account (beam lasers and MCs) with the only difference being it was all G1/G2 engineered rather than G5.
I, literally, couldn't destroy
anything in the CZs I visited.
No problems staying alive in the CZ.
No problems scoring hits on enemies.
I simply had no effect on any of the ships I was shooting at.
I actually ran out of ammo' for my MC's without destroying a single enemy ship.
To be honest, I was probably going for high or medium CZs, cos that's where I usually go with my main account, and I might have done a bit better in a low CZ but imagine how that sort of experience is going to make a newbie feel.
If I didn't know what was going on, I genuinely would have assumed there was some kind of bug which was preventing enemy ships taking damage from my weapons.
It was like I was firing fog at them.
I went to a couple of CNBs and had no trouble exploding any of the ships I found there.
Back to the CZs and.... nothing.