I came back to the game recently, and had played it back in 2015 (on xbox now I'm on PC) prior to the release of horizons and engineering. I'm not saying engineering should be removed or that it's a bad idea, just that in its current state it is horribly unbalanced.
For example, I decided to engage in PvP last night for shits and giggles and because I had money to burn after make a few hundred million in the black. I knew full well I had little to no chance of winning a fight, but was curious. So I took my a rated combat build Krait mkII (no engineering other than grade 1 fsd and dirty drives) and an npc Taipan slf. I engaged a Krait Phantom (fully engineered). My thrusters were disabled and my hull reduced to 1% in about a minute or 2 while his first shield bar was barely purple, and then he struggled to shoot down my npc slf for a minute or 2 while I rebooted. We had around the same window to fire on each other plus the slf on my side (I launched because of my lack of engineering). There was no clear skill gap, hell he had the far more maneuverable ship. Based on this the system seems thoroughly broken imo.
So if I ever want to engage in PvP:
A. I have to dedicate 6+ hours to collecting mats for only a few ships if that. Which let's be real not a single one of us truly enjoys doing if we do it efficiently or otherwise.
B. Try to set up PvP where we only have unengineered ships.
And that's not mentioning that I hope to god I don't get ganked by some engineered fuck. I know you're going to tell me to play in Solo, but that's clearly not what Fdev ever intended this game to be. The lack of offline mode, the BGS, and community events and goals all prove that they want a lively populated server for players to interact in. Also there are methods to avoid being interdicted or ganked as well, I know.
The only thing that engineering has done is created a grind with a more than mundane gameplay loop and made it difficult for new players to join the community if they want to play in open, and there are plenty among us that have refused to even engage in the engineering system. Either because it is such a grind or it makes gameplay loops unchallenging and therefore boring.
I do love the potential for builds you can create and an endgame grind should provide you an edge, just not a whole damn cliff.
TL;DR: I like the idea of engineering, but in its current state it is horribly flawed. Those with engineering should have an advantage to those that don't, BUT it shouldn't be like they enabled god mode. The gameplay loops for mat gathering should be reworked as well. It should be an addition to the game that increases the potential for different builds and setups, but doesn't detract from gameplay by making you so overpowered it's easy.
