honestly with the first addition of the corsair i was really excited for balance changes from the engineering standpoint. just looking at the stats of the corsair, for example, seems to indicate that its a unparalleled powerhouse. gunners can blast away from every angle, often with the heaviest weapons. the pilot has fantastic sightlines and maneuverability. it would seem a completely unbalanced ship, except that when the rubber hits the road, its actually a ship that you would expect to have twice the crew on, maybe even up to ten or so to keep everything ship shape. The acrobatics of the engineers having to repair it is not a result of a ship that is poorly designed, but rather of a ship that would normally have more people.
for the angleans this makes sense because despite their limited population, their raiding parties have to come in on the ships, hence the massive balloon for being able to lift the massive quantities of booty. the heavy hitting weapons to overwhelm the defenders quickly, and the huge open space near the hull repair point is low enough to easily fill with stolen goods quickly. the ship would therefore be easy to crew with a few extra hands, and a masterfully designed ship for raiding.
as a warship its a weird ship, but its not impossible to imagine that when wartime comes, they get all their ships up in the air, even if they have to run a little shorthanded.
the yeshans have similar design parameters we can see justified by the ships design. we are seeing a large open space above decks, and a strong forward facing weapons system. it seems like in a battle the ships would fly in formation (very reasonable considering their more philosophical approach to governance and combat.) the judgement therefore would likely be more populated with marines, rather than raiders, who would stand on the upper decks shooting down on other ships, or dropping grenades and firebombs. the access to the open spaces in this ship would make combat of this kind very effective. we can presume however that the protracted wars has left the ship somewhat underhanded again. in fact MOST ships seem like a couple extra hands seems like the "recommended crew" for these ships, from the massive galleon on down to the high performance squid, everyone seems understaffed, crewed mainly by a bunch of really tough old sailors who can get the job done come hell or high winds
TL:DR is that it seems like the ship is insanely designed, but i like the balance via engineer skill ships, as we already had balance by pilot skill ships like the squid and balance by gunner skill ships like the galleon or spire. also it's not impossible to imagine that many of the ships were well designed for more people that are crewing them, so from a lore perspective the ships the Judgement make solid sense.
