srt(2,000+2,000)=63.24 I think that formula would be rather lopsided...
There's definitely an argument for modular ships, although if it were going to be a new game dynamic then it should act as such. A "clamp" would be needed to affix the module, and the hosting ship would need clamps for each module. Being that they're mounted on the outside of the hull, they should take minimal tonnage and suffer no breakdowns. A core ship might have 4 clamps. You could then design a module as a special type of ship, requiring no engines but needing a clamp, perhaps gaining some boost to maintenance life or crew requirements, maybe they only work when clamped to a core ship. These modules would be designed like a ship, with armor levels, weapons, magazines, sensors, all of that, except they would function as part of the ship itself, so things like fuel and ammo would be shared amongst modules and core, and module weapons could be slaved to core firecons. Ideally these would not show up in sensors, marking only one ship of equivalent tonnage. Incoming fire would have a chance to hit different modules or core depending on the relative sizes. Detached modules (jettisoned fuel or mags) would register more as wrecks or lifepods, items to be scooped up or re-attached, but with no default orders to fire on stray modules. A ship with missile modules could go to any colony or task group and perform the "refit modules" command to quickly re-attach any missing modules that might be available, similar to the way ordinance is applied this would be done in the design screen and the order to refit would grab what was assigned to that class.
If it were done like that, then armor sections could prove extremely valuable, if your 5k ton cruiser was mounting a 10k ton armor covering and a 5k ton weapon rack, then half of incoming fire would get soaked by armor, though the first internal hit would strike the clamp and destroy the module entirely, but then your carrier could be hauling a dozen spare armor covers to make "repairs" easier by exchanging damaged sections for fresh ones. Similarly, magazines could be reloaded on carriers and ships could grab a fresh mag to run back into the fray with full ammo.
This would mainly require 1: the linking module, 2: sharing fire control, power production, fuel, etc across sections that may or may not be there - probably done easiest by simulating damaged sections. If a module is missing, then it counts all those parts as "damaged" in terms of productivity. IE - you're flying along and a missile blows up your module. You had a core with a sensor and engine, a module with a laser, and a module with a reactor. The missile destroys your reactor module. The ship still remembers that it should have a reactor as this is saved as design data, so it marks that as missing/destroyed and adjusts power levels accordingly.
Of course this is mainly late-night ranting, but many of the ideas sound simple enough. Just that Aurora isn't quite built for truly modular ships and it'd take a small overhaul of ship design and tracking to implement them.
