The original idea was that the whole cargo section is one independant block where it could be released for that speed boost ( and well, a giant ass block as either a meat shield / massive kinetic missile(like an asteroid, but hard to implement)
It looks kinda weird without the cargo block
The main thing that stopped that was how to integrate it. Missiles in the game go on top the ship sprites, but as you can see it'll need to be rendered below.
Your idea is only some cargo containers, which while workable as a weapon, it's harder as a system, I really haven't tested missiles as systems,
But if i were to do something like that, I'd masquerade some of the containers as missile launching containers that'll release some number of missiles when the enemies are near,
Getting it to looks nice is definitely the hardest part.