Transporters are useless against shields, and maybe even useless against EMC.
Boarding parties would still be needed, and spent in the boarding operation. The only difference wold be that instead of being at point blank the boarding ship can be a few sectors away.
Transporter bombs wouldn't be different than a direct fire weapon there's no need for that. Other uses such as food replicators may already be being in use without our knowledege.
I'd also like to have boarding shuttles combined with starwars ion cannons, if not your shuttles would be killed by pdc before getting close
And about component and facility pictures. You seem to suggest that we should make pictures first and then let modders choose and add the ones they need.
That will not work. I don't want to make a pic no one will ever use, or if some picture looks really good, force modders to use it.
The point is that everything starts with modders requesting the pictures they need.
I'm not sure if a small Version of the picture is needed, since small Versions of all default pics are just re-sizes of the big ones.
I also suggested that some modders may need help editing those bitmaps that contain all minis.