I'm in agreement that this probably wouldn't really make some fo the HP hull mods any better. The real problem with them is that they only do something when you take hull damage (i.e. lots of damage). The best solution is just to take less damage in fights (which also saves on supplies), so I think you'd more likely be pushed towards ships with good shields and conservative choices in combat selection rather than weakening your fleet to slightly reduce the cost of it performing poorly. The escape shuttle hullmod would still be a lot better for carriers, although you might just end up using fighters with no crew like sparks and wasps a lot more.
In terms of gameplay scaling, I don't really enjoy the very early game (before having multiple decent destroyers), I love the mid game (pre capital) and find the extreme late game pretty boring because of the lack of content. I like feeling somewhat powerful but still having lots of dangers and challenges to deal with. I think the 'slowing down progression' effect was already attempted with the increased ship costs in the last patch (and I honestly think they could be increased even further). To me that's a better way of reducing the rate the player scales because it also interacts with the ship salvaging mechanics more favorably. Increasing crew costs hurts d-mod ships while increasing ship prices helps them.