Good points! I would love to know how effective silent running is...I have tried it twice and I am unsure.
I keep all my ships at one station and was planning to use the Imperial Eagle to do specific bounty hunter missions. For these I think the Imperial Eagle needs torpedoes because the target can be tough for a small ship (at least with my skills).
Yes the downside is it costs 32K credits to get your 200K bounty. The upside is its fun and a roleplaying challenge! (to use silent running and fight without any shields).
edit - This thread has a FD dev state you need that distance (like in the video) to be effective against npcs:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=178172