In the game, your ships speed is set when you buy it, I propose that you have to buy an engine with your ship, just like a power cell.

There would be a government suplied one for free, and the others require different levels to unlock.

certain engines would only work with certain ships (like a special engine for the bethmoth)or each ship coulkd even have it's own engine with MK Is', IIs' and IIIs'(maybe not though).

each engine would be unlocked by level, like weapons, and and size would be a factor (you couldn't put an engine built for a bethmoth wouldn't fit on a centurion.

(if it has been posted before then sorry)

We had engines before.
They were great fun especially when players found a way to exploit them (like fitting a rev c with a centaur engine).
Devs removed that option and it was a good judgement call.

I didn't know engines were in the games before, thanks

but I did say that engines biult for some ships would work on others

engines need to be rethought from when they where in the game and you could put a scp engine in a valk and have ludacris speeds but taking out the whole thing all together wasn't the best fix

Engines are still in the game in the same capacity as when people put scp engines into valks. The exploits are gone.

Now, back when engines actually were available to players to equip into their various ships, there were a total of four, much like the standard batteries, and they made for rather boring ship variations.

I think that removing possibility to upgrade ship is not good move. Fix particular problems by complete function removal is -- agree with peytros -- "not best fix".

Little OT:

I am even missing another, quite logical upgrade stuff, like some non-combat devices available without need to fill combat slots.

For example, the mineral scanner. It can be simply put to ship without combat slot. There could be "General Usage Slots" which can serve as space for various devices like mining equipment, scanning equipment, or even more cargo holders (following turret idea), etc.
Each ship should be equipped with at least one GUS. Each filled GUS will have impact on ship acceleration, etc...

It used to be as genka said that there ware only 5 types of engine (of which 3 were used) that you could put in any ship, and that made for quite boring ship setup.
Also there were no ship variants (mk1,mk2, faction) etc.

Engines are now there but they are permanently assigned to ships, which makes more interesting ship types possible.
(like high mass and high thrust on transport ships)

Option to slightly tweak engine performace would be nice, but the usual 'omg no dev time' condition applies.

Removal of the engines had nothing to do with player exploitation.

Rather, it was mandated by the fact that engine-replaceability on lighter ships had a destabilizing impact on the physics/control-system used for much of flight. It would develop a jitter and could eventually destabilize to a point where the ship was no longer controllable.

Instead, we opted to nix the "all engines on all ships" option, with the idea that in the future we would offer specific engine upgrades for each ship class, allowing us to tune the upgrades to the ship in question. Distribution of mass is a factor in the control system issue, so even the shape of the hull has to be taken into account.

We haven't gotten around to adding the engine-upgrade-per-class stuff as of yet.

I am even missing another, quite logical upgrade stuff, like some non-combat devices available without need to fill combat slots.

For example, the mineral scanner. It can be simply put to ship without combat slot. There could be "General Usage Slots" which can serve as space for various devices like mining equipment, scanning equipment, or even more cargo holders (following turret idea), etc.
Each ship should be equipped with at least one GUS. Each filled GUS will have impact on ship acceleration, etc...

Wow, that's a really great idea! Thanks for putting it out there!! I'm sure nobody has ever suggested that sort of thing before!!!111

--- Engines ---
I do agree with Incarnate in point that many engines to all vessels is too general
approach.
Vessels specific engine upgrades can be more feasible. I don't think this is something
with high priority, so I am just looking forward to it ;-)

--- GUS ---

Ok, I would like to suggest to put General Usage Slots (GUS) in the following way:

Light:
-----
EC - 2x GUS
Centurion 2x GUS
Vulture 1x GUS - i think hull of Vulture can't hold more
Raptor 2x GUS

Medium
-------
Warthog 2x GUS
Hornet 3x GUS
Revenant 3x GUS
Atlas 3x GUS

Heavy
-----
Centaur 3x GUS
Ragnarok 3x GUS
Behemoth 4x GUS

Optionally:
Each filled GUS will increase mass, decrease turbo energy and turbo speed by precisely
defined fraction for all vessels. I don't know how difficult regarding game physics
this can be, reffering the reply from Incarnate. I hope there is the way, nonetheless.

I can imagine devices that:

* do improvements of navigation (radar extenders, etc)
* are holding mining stuff beams, scanners (prev. point)
* are holding cargo devices (cooling dev, life-support for live cargo, ...)
* (anti)spying devices (inventory scanner -- 4 from 5 pirates are missing that)

In the future non-weapon combat devices:
* shield generators, and other passive combat devices
* cloaking devices (heh, prob. won't be ever in any form)
* signaturing missiles (targeting device for future use, which mark/stamp something)

It seems at first sight that so many GUSes is too much, but I suppose that creating
possibility to fill vessels with various sci-fi devices will create "market" for new device
types. Currently, only few devices do exist, basicaly limited to just essential
ones, because they can't be used too much.
Advantage is that once implemented, effect is multiplied with each new device,
not wasting time of developers...

Hopefully I was not boring, but at least in small way useful.

this is a great idea but I think that there would even have to be large and small GUS ports(maybe)

if VO were to bring back engines they could even add in a way for people to pay to upgrade there ship. it would look something like this:

Warthog MKII points: 20/30

Speed:-----|----- (60)

turbo:---------|- (220)

ECT.

you would slide them up and down, spending your points on different upgrades