[Cyrus]

One thing you can do to make the Engine Destroying weapons useful is put them on a smaller hull, like a destroyer. That gets a +25 to defense, put on stealth and scattering armor +30 to defense, put on ECM 3 +60 to defense, train the ship and fleet to max before using them +40 to defense. I haven't used engine destroying weapons with this strategy, but I've used PPB's at max range succesfully against battleship and dreadnought sized ships. They ended up having something like a 1% chance to hit even with a combat sensor.