When vehicles like the SRV come online, vehicles designed to tow other ships and wrecks, will they be able to grab onto these soft death ships and bring them back for repair?

Yeah, exactly. So in the end, people should expect, especially in the long term, a more detailed damage system. A big example that came up in the questions was crash landings, where the ship still tends to explode. In theory, as long as you have enough crumple space, so to speak, in the sense that you don't hit a mountain head-on, with Maelstrom you would probably expect to lose wings...