Often it seems to trigger whenever a singular part is destroyed, leading to the actual destruction of the vessel as your control is suddenly ripped away in a hazardous situation such as a landing, just remove it, period, it doesn't improve the experience and telling people "go use the tutorial" every time a singular part breaks, gets annoying.
#Remove "Vessel Destroyed" Popup that takes control away from the player
gentle rampart
velvet root
Item destructions should be added to flight report, but control should always stay with the controlling part, falling back to other controlling parts on the largest remaining chunk, and only once all sources of control are destroyed default to flight report.
brisk musk
THIS !!! It makes no sense to lose control of a plane if the cockpit is still intact , for real. Not sure why this isnt like KSP1 ? (Maybe its a bug)
gentle rampart
Not my vid, for reference, the cockpit was still intact at the point the pop-up appeared
Most of the plane was intact
So yeah, you probably could have recovered it or ditched in the sea
pseudo shell
I feel like the only time a "vessel destroyed" message would make sense is if an admin on multiplayer deletes your ship. Sorry I am likely missing some scenarios.