And on the subject of being challenging not having it: Yes, proper usage of prebuilding components is definitely very strong and allows, and said proper usage does require more micro, but the greatest gains require the least of it. But at the same time making effective use of it also has the issue of foresight: It's very easy to overproduce, and if you do you are left with a number of obsolete components and your only recourse is to scrap them at a net loss. Similarly, it also incentives much heavier standardization in components than might be the strict optimum if not considering the production lines in question.
It's a powerful tool, but I don't quite feel it's outright overpowered, and the efficiency gains have a strongly marginally decreasing benefit, so I don't feel it overly rewards micro (by Aurora standards).
On the note of personal usage, I generally just use it build a few of the biggest components of my ships (generally the "standard heavy civilian engine" that my freighters and other large civilian vessels use and a few high cost military parts for military ships I deploy in some quantity), because beyond that it takes a lot of effort to set up for very little extra gain.