Units will have many types of components both internal and external
external would be hull, wheels, sensors, and weapon
internal would be power source (cool fusion reactor) computer, and drive train
each component would have its own number of hit points, and the external components would also have their own amount of armor (sensors have the least, hull has the most)
concussion damage would do more damage to the external components while penetration damage would do the most to the internal components
each component would have a percentage of area from the total vec which would determine the chance of it getting hit from a specific area (ie wheels would have a high chance to get hit if being shot from the side, but a low chance if its getting shot from the front or back)
if the hull gets damaged it provides less protection to the internal components, and if it gets destroyed so does the vec, also that would provide the least amount of salvageable ore (more on that later)
wheels of course would slow the vec down by lessening its traction with the ground, so the max speed might not be affected much, but its rate of acceleration and deceleration and turning radius would be affected.
sensor with dmg would decrease the viewing range of the vec, lesson its wep accuracy and impair its plotting ability (getting from point A to point B )
weapon if damaged would decrease in rate of fire, and damage
for the power source it would be the smallest and most concealed internal component (and thus would be the least likely to get hit, except by a lucky penetration shot) if it becomes damaged the power for the entire vec goes down, degrading the performance of almost all the other components, the vec would move slower, the sensors would degrade, the wep would be degraded)
the computer, if it is damaged it would effect the plotting of the vec and also the accuracy of the wep, also this component would be damaged by emp, so not only will emp temporally disable the vec it will take hp from the computer. it would take many shots from an emp to destroy it. A vec disabled by just a broken computer would have the highest salvageable ore.
The drive train is the biggest and most likely to get hit internal component, if it is hit the vecs max speed is decreased
all the damage effects are linear, thus there would be little or no effect on a lightly damaged component but performance would decline with more damage
if the hull is destroyed, the vec is considered destroyed, and only a small amount of wreckage is salvageable
if the vecs computer or power source was destroyed, the vec becomes disabled and can be taken by any player to a gorf for recycling or garage for repair
a vec with just destroyed wheels or drive train will no longer be able to move, but if it has a weapon it will be able to fire at enemy units (you may want to allow it to always have a minimum amount of movement)
if the sensors are destroyed the wep on the vec is useless (but the sensors are a small component of the vec, and thus the wep would most likely be incapacitated by some other means) and the visible area around the vec is reduced to zero, basically it wanders around blindly
and of course if the weapon is destroyed it cant be fired
some weapons like acid cloud would mostly do damage to the hull, and thus would leave poor salvage, but units destroyed or disabled on the battlefield would be salvageable with the salvaged ore being proportional to the amount of damage done to the different components (thus a damaged computer wouldn't penalize the ore return much, but a weapon damaged the same amount would reduce ore return by a greater amount)
I could see a big battle taking place, and than afterwords both sides send out cargo trucks with light units to get salvage, so there would be skirmishes for the carrion of other battles lol
tell me what you think, its just a concept, not set in stone