Damaging Piloting on Automated ships

On a piloted ship, damaging (orange color, not red) the piloting section of a ship cancels the ship's ability to dodge without a pilot (or reduces it, if it was level 3 piloting) but makes less of a difference if it is manned. The difference that remains is the pilot is forced to repair instead of granting their personal +5, +7 or +10 dodge bonus.

However, automated ships have no crew to begin with, and yet are clearly able to dodge even when they only have level 1 piloting. My question is, can anyone verify whether damaging (or making orange) a level 2 piloting system on an automated ship has any impact on the ship's ability to dodge?

I would like to think that it does, but without examining source code, reading developer discussion, or producing a large body of statistical evidence, I simply don't know for sure.

This answer should be the same for advanced edition or the base game, even though the pilot-less piloting values are different (because we are dealing with the special case of automated ships.)