MES allows its mods to swap NPC grids with Ion-thrusters, for its own special ion-thrusters that functional however they contain this self-destroying component rather than give you thruster-components.

Thruster-components are platinum based, so this removes the ease of stockpiling massive amounts of plat from basic non-hydrogen NPCs in space.
If you don't see any, the NPC grids are either not configured to use this behavior or used normal hydrogen thrusters

possible because I use FORMIC mod and MES Space Pirates Enhanced mod
and i using Orks: The Great WAAAGH! but for now I only see SPRTE

although it's strange because the MES space pirates enhanced mod should work with MES in its name itself, but it's also possible that it needs to be done in the configuration files and I tried to find something about it in the files of this mod and I couldn't find it
I found something about it in MES and it seems to be enabled