This seems like an unusual standard to hold D&D rules to.
Its not I just wanted to see how far I could blow out the Tinkerer class just because.
Tinkerers are not hte industrial revolution they are just fast at making stuff and they do not get it for free which is the balancing thing.
Even using RL examples like the Venetian Arsenal they can't out produce mundane means unless you have a lot of them (1 for 1 they can).
If you wanted a magitech campaign they are fine for example they might not fit a low magic setting though. But using a bit of imagination you could have tinkerer powered orbital shipyard in Spelljammer where they could crank out ships, it fits the setting and if you have all the worlds to ply getting a few tinkerers would not be that hard.
You could also have something like Leonardo Da Vinchi's workshop, Tinkerer+artificer tag team combo on Eberron, tinkerer constructs the airship the artificer empowers it. They are not as efficient as RL industry but are better than RL pre IR means with perhaps a few exceptions like Venice and even then if you had the same numbers of Tinkerers as craftsmen you would beat them.
The Battleships were an absurd example I agree, if you wanted a full on magitech industrial D&D game that duplicated RL things you would need magitech factories as efficient as RL ones (or more efficient maybe). Or you could have an exceptional city or workshop/foundry somewhere that would be a D&D worlds equivalent of Venice or perhaps Damascus if you cranked out quality blades or whatever. Even limited to the PHB they are good, the only way to really break them is if they added rules for crafting where you can craft things cheaper than the PHB prices so if players wanted lots of downtime to manufacture things and sell
en masse its free money. Or f the Dm is restricting PHB stuff heavily due to campaign setting or what have you.
MAin point is the class ability is fine, I don't think its worth giving up a lot of combat ability for it as in most games I think something like Rogue expertise will get used more. Thematically it seems to be a major thing of the class, mechanically its a minor ability IMHO.