The movement AI is choosing which engines to move for rotation vs translation badly. In the ship below attempts to make fine course adjustments by turning off the slow responding engines marked in red in alternation instead of the fast responding maneuvering thrusters marked in blue. This costs it between 3 and 4 meters per second in speed.
If the ship designer continues to have no ability to designate how engines should be treated (eg. toggles for whether each of rotation, strafe translation, and forward/reverse translation can influence the use of the engine) the AI at least needs to prioritize making small adjustments with the lowest ramp time engines. Even better would be to favor lower ramp up time engines perpendicular to the direction of movement if it has a translation command. Best of all would be to give the player toggles to control how engines are used at the time of ship design the way point defense can be toggled to target or not target ships or projectiles because you can't foresee all possible ship movement issues.
