[Q]

I just made a test with the gold demo (my observations so far were SE IV Version 1.49) and you are right: boarding ships with shield depleters attack now ships, fire their shield depleters and then board the enemy.
However they still ignore the self destructing device. Therefore in strategic combat boarding is still a problematic strategy. But at least my modification with the "boarding cannons" should now work well in SE IV gold and make boarding more effective.