I haven't played SM very much during it's integrity period because I had real life things which came first.
And I am not a PvP player who cares how ships are build.
Also:
You have
shipA and it looks pretty and now you want to make the best combat ship out of the shell possible.
For ShipA, any Isanth would fit. Retrofit it until certain combat or speed cap is maxed out, go to next, repeat.
Then you have
shipB which is a meta-build. For ShipB, I have once build a pyramid ship on sunworld
° maxed out reactor-power with a set number of Squares missing a block at one diagonal's corners.
° used Blocks so black, you need to fire your handgun at your own ship to see shape via shields.
° Designed so that AI had serious problems firing it's Core at the top-point
° Players didn't know where to aim at the pure darkness shape when I am not flying through asteroid fields.
TypeC doesn't care about combat at all, because it knows that it can handle most minor treats with turrets far smaller than the reactor outputs and for major treats it knows there will be escorts.
Once escorts are not sufficient anymore because they die 1by1 or because you don't live long enough for escorts to help you, you would need to invest into something bigger anyway - optimisation or not.
My Ships are TypeC:
17x9x25 has 3 hull layers - inner hull, armor layer, deco layer.
3x scale has 2x armor.
5x scale has 3x armor.
8x scale has 5x armor.
I can make armor layers like 3x scale or 5x scale as following:
inner // outer // deco:
wireframe, basic, standard // standard, standard, advanced // basic basic standard
wireframe, basic // basic, standard // basic basic.
wireframe, standard // standard, advanced // basic.
I will opt for the last option.
How will this affect integrity?
I have a wireframe. Not good.
But I have a solid shape around it. Good.
I have mining waffles - guess it's not good?
But thrusters within - is that good or do they both suffer?
I have a dedicated outer-hull layer fitting the consumers needs, but the inner hull is not made for military and unlikely to change.
The deco layer contributes some basic hull parts, but not much hp per block.
Either it's pure good, or using 1-block-thick layers will hurt integrity. dunno.
I think there should be some mechanic in place which clearly says:
YOU NEED 1/2 mass in hull or your ship will break at 20%+1/2 max speed.
BECAUSE it would break, you cannot archive that speed.
It doesn't really matter how it's laid out.
Decorative blocks can weight 50kg and a solid 1x1x1m water would weight 1 ton or more.
Everything made of metal filling that volume is either a partially occupied volume or weight 4-10 tons easily