A cool mechanic would be to have small scale pirate ships attack your ship while in space/orbit and you would have to defend it! in these fights, your ship could get damaged and you'd have to repair it before all the oxygen leaked out etc.
I like your idea. By the way, a little tip when writing suggestions and the like: The longer the better. Seriously, that small change is what gets lots of popular answerers on Quora popular, and I have no reason to doubt its effectiveness here.
In the next update, the space travel system is going to get overhauled, making it so you can park your ship in space not orbiting a planet/moon/asteroid field, and I watched a trailer of it and while the person was exploring, I saw other ships flying about and some were red. This means there WILL be ship battles soon, but its not just the enemies coming in your ship. Ohooooo noo. have you noticed EVRY RACIAL SHIP has Guns on it? This means individual ships will have to shoot each other, and I suspect you will take control of the guns, and MABYE there will be a Gunner crew member that can operate the guns, or extra ones.
