I'm sure everyone who has a decent amount of play time on the game has spent a ludicrous amount of time grinding engineering materials, it truly is the only mindless grind in elite.
One of my least favorite parts about engineering is how it affects combat. Let me tell an imaginary story for a minute, lets say you pic up elite because cool space game lets shoot people with lasers, you realistically cant do combat early game other than the trick of barely shooting bots with your sidewinder. any pvp or pve that makes decent money requires you to spend a ridiculous amount of time to grind for engineering and waiting for 1 or 2 powerplay modules.
I and many others enjoy power play and engineers from a lore perspective, power play factions are quite fun if you do care about each factions political interests and its really cool going to different people because they're the only ones in the galaxy that can do a modification.
The upgrade system i would propose would be more similar to a side grade system than anything. There would still be the overpowered pack-hounds and cytoscramblers (maybe a bit more balanced than these ones but you get the idea of weapon variants that are fundamentally different from their originals). As for engineering, there could be only experimental effects or a single primary effect (basically all grade 1) and an experimental with no "re rolls" just a set cost. These single primary effects would be a bit toned down from their current versions for example a stock 4A Beam laser does 32.7 DPS and a G5 overcharged does 57.2! that is such a big increase its honestly quite ridiculous a near 100% increase is quite ridiculous. alternatively if they wanted the game to remain just a bit grindy there could be 2 grades with the first being a very reasonable cost, and the second being a much higher cost with diminishing returns. For example overcharged beam laser G1 could be a 25% damage increase and G2 could be a 15% damage increase (of base damage) over G1.
TLDR: Engineering and powerplay takes a ridiculous amount of time and should be reduced and balanced by making there be only one or two grades of engineering and an experimental effect that have less of an improvement than they currently do.
