[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Partial damage to components. Say, a 400kT Space Yard can build with 400 resources of each type per turn (just as an example). A weapon hits with an impact force of 100. The Space Yard is still mostly intact, but it has received 100 points of damage and thus is less efficient - it constructs with 300 resources per turn. Then, it receives a hit from a weapon with 50 damage. This time though, since it's already damaged, the efficiency reduction will be more drastic - it can now only construct with 200 per turn.

This way, you can disable components without destroying them, which has an impact on boarding action and its importance - since the component is not yet fully destroyed, you can repair it even though you may not have the required race technology.

This could also balance out severely unbalancing components like the Talisman and, to a lesser degree, Combat Sensors/ECM, since they can now be damaged without actually being destroyed enabling you to repair them and either use them in combat or analyze them for better techs.

You could have weapons that specifically only damage components and do not destroy them. This way, you can simply use swarms of cheap Escorts with these damaging weapons and boarding parties to take on high-tech enemy Dreadnoughts using their defense bonuses to their advantage against an otherwise far superior enemy.