This is a little bit on the detail side, but it would be cool to see either way:
Some sort of varied crash effect when ships are shot down, like maybe in ground maps they could be hit and damaged and go flaming to the ground. Maybe when ships are hit in space they could catch on fire, spin through space and explode?
The reason i thought of this was because i remembered that one of my favorite moments in a SWRC cinematic was when you were flying towards your first mission on a gunship, you see another gunship get hit, then go flaming down at high speeds into a rock pillar. It would be cool to see something like that here.
One other effect that might be cool to see would be when a ship crashes, (on land.) there could be some remains that last for a significantly long time (1 min? 2 mins?) before de-spawning.
Imagine crashing a ship, you survive the crash, and there is a hulk where it crashed that you could hide around. (or if it was big enough, in.) These are just special effects but would be cool to see all the same.

Curses, foiled again!