The A-Wing exploded into the command deck. Then I remember a Y-Wing spinning into the bridge tower in the same battle. And lots of spinning and burning TIEs throughout the whole movie trilogy.

This is getting silly.

It's perfectly possible, or at least was in BF1942, to have an invisible engine that made the aircraft spin be strapped onto it when it takes so and so much damage. I've been thinking about this, too, and it'd be a great effect. However, I'd like some sort of randomness here, so that damaged fighters did not always spin out of control when so and so damaged (sometimes nothing happens, sometimes they catch fire, sometimes the spin out of control and catch fire, etc.), and I don't know if randomness is possible to code in BF2142 .

I've been thinking of a system in which you hit X or some other key to switch between routing power to Engines, Shields, or Beam Weapons (lasers and ion cannons), X-Wing series style. When hitting X to make the switch, you're informed of where energy is routed by a message ('Power routed to shields' or 'Shields recharging').

Power to engines: Boost power recharges.
Power to shields: Hit points slowly recharge. Preferably, there'd be some limit in place here so that you can only recharge them by so much, or whatever, since part of your hit points is hull integrity, not shield power.
Power to beam weapons: Lasers and ion cannon ammunition recharges.

Would be next to impossible to script, probably, but a system like that would be nice.

Keep in mind, though, that we only have one full-time coder, so things like this are fairly big things to ask for. If you want these things to come true, then, I think the best way to do it is to apply for a coder position and help make them come true yourself.