If the fuel tanks were not meant to explode when they are hit, at least not normally, then there could be room for other interactions with fuel.
- Damaged fuel tanks could slowly leak fuel, dependent on how many holes they have.
- Different weapon or ammo types could have different likelyhoods of causing an explosion. It would be a new ammo attribute like ignition or sparking.
- Players would then have to decide between how well they penetrate the armor of their foes' ships and how likely they are to cause secondary damage.
- Smaller ships would not always get torn in half so easily. That would give losing players more opportunity to try to run and hide, instead of losing everything.
- For bigger ships, this will give another job for crew members to deal with, patching fuel tanks that are leaking.
- This may make ideas like the "Integral Fuel Tanks" by Brushes more feasible, or at least not too far out of reach after solving the problems associated with leaky fuel tanks.