ChrisReid
Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
Edit: of course, there is another aspect to it. Disabling a carrier, particularly in this case, should absolutely be harder than simply destroying it. The player should be strongly encouraged to see this as a tough moral choice, where he can either save the Lexington (with great effort and no benefit other than feeling good), or he can take the easy way out and blow it out of the water. But if disabling the Lexington had been simply tantamount to leeching, then it really wouldn't be any harder than sinking the ship, and that effect would have been gone.
It sounds like you're mixing up two different carrier assaults here. This thread is about disabling and capturing the TCS Princeton in the Speradon System. It involves a funky method of blowing out the engines and damaging to a certain point.
On the other hand, you CAN leech the Lexington later on in the game, and it's arguably easier than destroying it. And there's even a different cutscene that plays when you leech it versus destroy it.