Yeah, the idea of your own component health being visible was something we had discussed.
I'd had the idea of only gunners have hud indicators of gun health, and engineers for components, obviously both could see health if they directly walk up to it. And then captain has fully visibility and has to verbally communicate it or compounding with another idea i've been playing around with the concept of is class spots.
I like the idea of certain information being veiled between classes so everyone has to be speaking up and keeping everyone up to date.
My idea was for a 'gunner spot' on enemy ships that lasted for 30 seconds or so, that only he could see that maybe gave a real time range from the ship, or some sort of detailed enemy information, like a health bar, i dunno. Both are reasonably discernible as is without that though, i suppose.
My thoughts for the engineer would be that if the captain saw no component health or anything, the engineer would be able to spot ship components, and have them visible to capt for 45 seconds or whatever. If not that, then maybe something like a buff for components, but is only active as long as the engineer is actually standing on the component slamming away or whatever?