[Suicide Junkie]

I just hate the « damage soaking » armor model ...Armor is here to STOP damage, either it succeeds and the damage is minimal, or it fails and damage passes through. That's how it works IRL for AFVs and naval ships !
So I plan to rather have « massive » component (basically 1/ship) with a high « emissive » ability (and perhaps regen as well). Structure of these should be high as well, but I have to tinker more with the idea...

I suspect you will have a LOT of trouble balancing that emissive thing. Instead, you may want to consider the following:
Piercable Armor
1) Start with a standard SE4 piece of armor.
2) Remove the armor ability.
3) Increase the hitpoints per KT size immensely. At least 10 HP/KT is good, Tweak to taste.

For example:
Make a 30 KT "armor" chunk, that has 1180 hitpoints, and place it on a standard Escort (which has 120 hitpoints worth of internals)
This piece of armor will absorb about 90% of the hits that strike the ship. The other 10% of the time, a shot will pierce, and shred the internals.
Big guns can destroy the armor, and little guns can zing shots off the armor while hoping for a lucky hit.

In many cases, by the end of the battle there will be a number of burnt-out shells of armor plating, waiting to be salvaged or vaporized by excessive amounts of weapons fire.

You can use smaller/weaker components, and allow layered armor, or whatever you desire.