After reading several post i came to this idea. Have ship armor divided into 2-6 parts depending on the ship. If it has six parts there will be the top, bottom, left, right, up and down plates. Depending on which plate is hit depends on where the damage goes. Some big explosions might have its damage divided amoung several plates. If a plates hp ever reaches zero then it will crumbe to pieces and fall off the ship. This will expose what is underneath. Different components of the ship will be seen under different plates. This is weapons(different weapons can be under different plates), battery, engine, cargo bay, or other parts.

To make a ship blow up, the batteries hp will need to drop zero(at that point it goes critical). Armor will have a conductive stat. It will then need to be possible to put different types of armor on the same ship. The more conductive a armor is the weaker an emp weapon will be on it but the stronger a heat inducer will be on it. To use an emp weapon( effectively) on a very conductive ship, you have to destroy its armor plates to get rid of it natural farad cage. To use a heat inducer (efectively) on a very non conductiver ship, then you have to destroy its armor to get acces to its very conductive parts.

Different heat inducer or emp weapons will target different parts of the ships inside(like its engine, weapons, type of weapon, or a combination of them). There will not be one that targets battery for balancing issues( unless the thing ways a ton though).

Ships will have different radiaters they can buy buy to cool there ships. The hoter a part is over some critical temperture, the faster it is taking damage. Armor can not take damage from heat.

capabilty of the battery to produce energy, cargo bay to hold cargo, or engine to produce thrust( max speed can be a function of thrust maybe max speed = ln (current thrust) * modifier) is:

normal capability * (current hp/total hp) or maybe

normal capability * (ln(current hp)/ln(total hp))

there can be modifiers through in there somewhere as well.

note: ln (3) is log base e of 3, e is about 2.71 which is the normal base in nature.

A ship can have interior armor added to different parts or a farad's cage added to different electric parts to provide additional protection from attackes ( these will be added over individual parts).

A farad's cage could have very little hp( compare to armor plate, different ones could have different hp, some could be designed to act as armor and a farad's cage) but subtract a set amount of damage from a emp attack that attacks the part it protects. If the emp att does 30 damage but the farad's cage stop 40 then no matter how many times the part is hit will an emp attack, it will not take any damage. if the emp does 35 but the cage profides 30 protection then every time the part it protects will take 5 damage and not the farad's cage.

As the farad's cage get damage then its effectiveness could be reduced by following one of the previous equations or because of how it works the cage could either work or not and there would be no imbetween. It might be better for a carbo bay to also be like this so it doesn't release any cargo until it is completely destroyed.

A ship could be disabled by completing destroy the engine. To keep a person from becomeing stuck after the pirates have disabled them, got the cargo and left. After 5-10 mins the ships engine be instantly repaired to 5%(This can be done at any hp below 5% but the ship has to not use its engine for the timer to start, if it uses its engine during the timer then the timer starts all over again, if the ships engine is zero the in can't use its engine of course) Different engines can have different repair times.

The more stuff a player decides to throw in there ship, the heavier the ship will become. Each part will have to be carefully tweaked but it will add a lot of depth to the game to make ship custamizable

This is a good concept. It brings a lot of things to the table as far as combat and ship management. This idea would also work well with stations once they get put in the game.

already been brought up and refuted multiple times with multiple reasons why allowing disabling of ships or ship components in flight is a BAD thing for gameplay. As for localized damage, it's on the agenda, but too much work to become a reality even remotely near soon(TM) AFAIK.

From what i have read, the only worry about disabling ship parts is that it might become more effective to take people down by disabling. With the interior and exterior defences, you will have trouble touching a player with the emp or heat inducer until you have taken out a good amount of armor. This just has to be balanced carefully.

Uhh, no, the real problem is that people don't like wasting time being disabled. Do YOU want to sit and pick your nose for 5-10 minutes while you wait for your engines to repair themselves? or do you want to end up losing fights more often than not due to a lucky shot or having your opponent draw first blood that leads to subsystem failure? crippled ships make easier targets, and this is not a good thing from a gameplay perspective, because it brings picking on the weak and inexperienced to a whole new level of dirty play and frustration, especially for newbs.

True simple is better, especially for newer players. But on larger ships and destructable stations that are played by more experienced players, a system like this could work.
Plus, it would be fun every once in a while to lose your targeting system or the ability to see your shields. This was a feature of X-Wing vs Tie Fighter that I really loved.

Lavespa: there are threads on that regarding capital ships and stations already, and yeah, THAT would have some merit, and may even be planned for at least the capships already.