Suggestion: add "random encounters" while not engaged.

Well, as for the micrometeorites, impacts from enemy fire are not repaired between engagements. I think that would make sense as the frequency of a micrometeorite hitting the same place twice is very unlikely (though it would make external fuel tanks less useful). This would be a freak accident. There is no reason to try and repair the damage, you would have to dedicate extra mass towards those extra plates and machinery to weld them into place, plus those additional plates would be weaker and more massive than the "out of the box" armor because they had to be welded/bolted on.

But they are still a factor to be considered in space, enough that the ISS has whipple plates around critical areas. It would be impossible to reasonably simulate micrometeorite impacts any other way than through luck in the game due to rarity of their occurrence. Also, while they may be rare in the timeframe of ship engagements, but before the engagement ships operate in a timeframe measured in days. According to Robert Frost, Instructor and Flight Controller in the Flight Operations Directorate at NASA (I Ctrl+V'd his title from Quora)NASA has to maneuver to avoid significant collisions from large debris 1.5 times a year. Of course that is only for Earth orbit and not quite the same as micrometeorites in the solar system. However, I believe that as the system becomes more developed the amount of space junk will also increase both in Solar orbit and in orbit around other planets. Adding this to the simulation would fundamentally alter all civilian ship designs along with many stock military ones in order to protect weak points from impact. Partial armor would be an important decision as you could sacrifice immediate DV for the potential loss of an entire tanks worth. It could be miniscule chance but it should still exist as a possibility as real spacecraft need to take them into consideration.

The fact that we have to manage the Delta-V of our spaceships is plenty of a strategic aspect. Tankers and Depots playing a role in the game further emphasizes this. Traveling interplanetary is an aspect in game and, although there is only one campaign mission that effectively sends you from one planet to another, the level editor is growing in prominence allowing for Mars to Earth campaigns with many planets and stations involved in just one "mission
". Also, spawning in Jupiter might as well be spawning in a separate solar system what with the deepness of the gravity well and the complexity of navigating from body to body or even from orbit to orbit not to mention the distance involved. Traveling these distances greatly expands the chance of micrometeorite impacts..