Yup CE didn't work for me. It's not a simple place in memory to edit. The value gets calculated on the fly [Or I'm just bad at using CE]. So you would have to try to find the list of parts that the ship is built on by adding and removing same part. Then browse memory region and change stuff and see what happens. At least that's my guess on how to do it with CE.
I used a C# debugger to hack some procedures regarding part calculation but this does not result in what you would like. Because the enemy uses same functions. So while I was able to have a lot of DDs enemy CA were 50" armour all around, and my BB had a turn radius of 20km or something like that XD. Thankfully TBs are not armored so in flames they went.
I also saw why they don't want to give unlimited resources atm. If a dev reads this: The graphical glitch [or rather not glitch but pushing the system to the limits it was not designed to handle](that I introduced by messing with cost and weight and displacement calculation functions) with air tubes (or whatever those are called) was hilarious. XD