And since we’re talking about energy drain, I will restate that it’s NOT acceptable for ECM to disable ANY ship’s special module. Ever. I don’t care about actives or anything else, but the special module is usually the ship’s line of defense. All special modules should be, more or less, completely separate from the rest of the ship’s systems to make it “specially” resistant to any type of disabling.
I know it’s off-topic a bit, but oh well.
As for engie drones, it’s a special module. Even if it takes energy to use, ECM shouldn’t be able to prevent its launch. So then maybe it needs to simply not consume energy if that is truly the mechanic that the developers want.