So there is a chance of picking up a nice blaster with increased damage and accuracy stats for example. Common equipment can then be recycled for some scrap.
Equipment would (SLOWLY!) degrade and must be repaired with scrap. Also the equipment you pick up might already be slightly damaged.
This makes sense especially if its an armor you were shooting short while ago

Repairing will have a chance of failure if the skill is too low wasting the scrap in effort and further damaging the gear.
Repairing would also have a tiny chance of slightly increasing a stat (UPGRADE!)
After the ship is destroyed, there should be a small chance that some of its cargo, such as food pellets survive which can the be targeted and teleported to the ship.
Destroyed ships should automatically generate some scrap regardless if it had any in its cargo hold already.
Scrap ofcourse can be sold, used for repairs, upgrades, munitions and building structured on planets.