I'll confess. I am half posting this to help assist in generating conversation in this community.
But I am genuinely curious: Is it worth it to change out coolers / power plants? I changed out my Taurus's quantum drive and it was hugely helpful, so I'm kind of exploring what other upgrades I could make.
What component upgrades have you tried? Were they helpful or noticable?
Coolers pretty much never make a difference anymore as far as I'm aware. They used to at least have different distortion shutdown resistances, but they aren't affect by distortion damage anymore.
As for power plants, the only time upgrading makes a difference is if you're going for a stealth build or if your ships loadout manages to exceed the power output. An easy way to check this is to look at your loudout's power requirements on erkul.games