Well, I'd think that using the fighter engines would be pretty distracting
I have fiddled with the cultures for uniqueness and hopefully balance.
I've also gone through the weapons and sprinkled the double, half and quarter damage to shields damage types around, seeing as they work now!
I also felt that, especially considering the new advantage with weapons variety it has, that the organic racial trait should be split.
I pulled the organic armors, and the medical labs, and merged them with the "living ships" trait.
What I have now, is two 1500 point organic traits; basically split into offensive and defensive.
I also took the time to make most ship beam weapons NOT target planets. The fighter Versions do target planets, for the most part.
I see this as accounting for atmosphere, and scale. Orbital beam weapons knock down a house or maybe just make the clouds glow. On a fighter strafing the city, it could bLast a few buildings and the damage would add up.
Antiproton beams definitely do NOT work in an atmosphere
Ships will need to pull out the supply sucking missile weapons, planetary napalm or limited-quantity fighters to glass worlds. Or drop troops.
...
I'm also going to add some repair drones if I have the time to work out the details... They will be less efficient than regular repair components, but useful if you have a ship crippled at a warppoint and can't afford to send a ship to rescue it, or if you want to "store up" repair capacity for use all at once.