Like the title states, does a ship still engage when it is in Reserve? Nothing in the rules seems to say that it does NOT engage... though, I imagine that it's really a moot point, because while it would need to engage, it couldn't do anything during that engagement. Since all "abilities of a ship in reserve are inactive unless" explicitly stated otherwise, and any cards on a ship are considered to be abilities of that ship (including damage cards), not even Console Fire would be able to trigger...

Any thoughts?

although not clearly stated, this should be an obvious no. ships in reserve are not in play, even though they're still in the game. it does not engage and it does not activate. this is from the rules on docking.

It is a bit of reading between the lines, but the bit quoted by meffo (p10 of RR v1.1.0) would certainly imply that ships in reserve do not engage. It's unfortunate that they didn't bother to put that explicitly in the section defining Reserve , I think it might be developer 1e hangover that 'attacking' could be conflated with 'engaging' 😕

7 hours ago, meffo said:

although not clearly stated, this should be an obvious

There are, what i think, a fair number of situations like this, unfortunately.