Okay, after thinking it through, here are my two cents worth.
Explosions:
-A ship should rarely if ever go "kablooey" and just vaporize. I really like the idea of all systems having computers and disabling ships leaving them dead in the water. That's a far more realistic solution.
- If one wishes the ship to vaporize, it should be rigged with disintegrators to self-destruct. (Disintegrators need to NOT explode when shot or bumped, only when activated by logic. Seriously, ditch the nitroglycerin and use C4 instead.)
- Breaking a power reactor has a chance to trigger an explosion if the ship is sufficiently damaged already. Chain reactions might destroy portions of the ship but would be unlikely to totally (or even mostly) vaporize most ships.
Ship kills:
- Destroying a computer disables the system it is connected to. I agree that system computers should be targetable, but there should also be a way to scramble such targeting, such as with a radar jammer.
- Destroying the core should render the ship inoperable (dead in space). Think of the core as the ship's main computer that controls all other computers. No explosion - the ship just ceases to function and computers, including build blocks can no longer be operated. The core could only be repaired with an astrotech beam (or a handheld healing beam) as the ship cannot be entered and the core can't be replaced in astronaut mode. (There should be a way to move ship cores, but only in build mode. The original core should be automatically removed when a new one is placed to make sure there is always exactly ONE core.)
Salvage:
- You can only salvage a ship that has no shields. Interestingly, if you manage to drop the shields and blow out the shield computer, your planetary-scale mining ship would be perfect for quickly finishing off the crippled vessel without wasting/blowing up useful ship components!
- Alternatively, it could work similarly to the current setup where the core must be blasted before you may salvage a ship. The difference would be that there's no timer so you could wait until after the battle to pick up the pieces. This would make less sense realistically, but might make more sense gameplay-wise than the shield idea.
The overall result:
- Ships are far more likely to leave behind useful wreckage, essentially adding the much-suggested debris fields to the game in a very realistic manner!
- With the addition of one of the repair systems that so many have suggested, there is hope of restoring your "dead" ship, or even finding a derelict vessel in a debris field somewhere and restoring it to working condition.
- The destruction of ships would feel far more believable and realistic.
