I'm absolutely with Garfunkel in the point, that we mustn't complain of AI strong sides, we must complain of weak ones!
It's good if AI have an ability to punch me in the nose nigh every time, it's desirable if AI will have an ability to do it multiple times, forcing me to build stronger and more thought-out navy and army. That's fan, that's why I need my brain, that's why I will continue to play Aurora!
What is undesirable:
1. To have an easy and natural way to crush any AI. What's the meaning of such baby food? I'm sentient being, and AI is not, I know I'm smarter - there is no interest to prove this point to myself again and again.
2. To be compelled in some monotonous, repetitive boring activity, absolutely necessary to continue the game. That's not an entertainment for the sentient being.
And here, I think, are our problems with missiles:
1. It's trivially easy to kill any AI fleet with missile alpha strike (box launchers), that AI cannot use itself because it cannot evaluate correctly a value of target against it's ability to dodge (jump away, hide, etc.)
2. It's absolutely boring to click through AMM spam, it's not an intellectual challenge nor aesthetic value.
So, really, missiles needs some form of nerf or countermeasure.
To revoke doubled max boost for one-off engines is an easy solution, but I think it's not a nice solution: better boost for one-off engines is natural, realistic and flavouring thing.
So, I think it will be much better to push more in the way of nerfing fuel efficiency for small engines and/or MFC max range against small/ECMed targets (lesser range of AMMs - lesser click-through time; bigger long-ranged ASMs - easier for AI to counter them).
In addition, I think it will be better to:
1. Make quick jumps impossible (easy way to bait AI's alpha strikes). Implement "warming up" time for any jump procedure, even through the gate (stab.JP).
2. Replace strict MFC range (another easy way to bait AI's alpha strikes) with steady increasing chance of lock failure. It's in addition will take off some strangeness of mechanics that officers cannot implement their tactical bonuses to missile combat.