I'd say the breakable joints are unnecessary if you're already doing armor and damage calculations for each piece of the ship. If a hit damages one area enough, stuff flies apart.
I was just thinking that once you have enough credits you should be able to purchase a shield generator so that they have to deplete your shields before they start damaging components. It might also be fun if different shields had different purposes. Energy shields (lasers, fire) and physical shields (bullets, missiles). So if you can only afford one you have to use some logic.
EDIT: Wow, 3 pages.