my thoughts on the above:
for IES:
it just feels wrong that doing whatever to the engine assembly lets the front of my ship take 10 more pilums to the face. maybe instead it should give a 10% speed bonus? it seems alot more appropriate.
for ARU:
haven't really ran into a situation where this didn't unscrew me from the predicament i was in. =P all its useful for really is if a muck up with my capital and limp off with like 10% HP and don't want to wait the 20 or so days for complete repairs.
my ideas:
- have it repair armor and hull during combat. something like 5 HP/s for frigates and destroyers. 10 for cruisers and 15 for capital ships.
- let it cut down the amount of FP a ship takes up. this can be argued that the unit keeps the ship maintained 24/7 (im sure the human crews do too, but im really, - really- doubtful that you will find ~ 1000 crew as dedicated to their job as engineers donnelly and daniels.) and is slightly better and faster at maintaining the ship.
- i like the idea in one of the other threads where the more times a weapon / engine goes offline, it should take progressively longer to repair. this would make it a very serious contender for OP.