You know, I've been thinking - the whole force carries through thing actually makes sense. to a certain extent. Imagine a car, but the part in the middle is made out of cardboard (say from the front of the front door to the back of the back). That part is going to crumple in a head on accident even if the front is sturdy enough to survive unscathed! SO if we want something pseudorealistic we need to keep in mind that the weak point in the chain IS the most likely to break.
Theres still plenty of ways to make it better but its worth keeping in mind. If you really want something to stay safe for fragile bits you want some sort of shock absorbers like car crumple zones inside a rigid frame making sure the fragile elements only have to have their own weight absorbed
Mmm. Partly. But you have to remember that pretty much every piece of a vehicle is attached by having a Steel Frame there first.
That is the part that should be absorbing the force, for the most part. So while your tanks and RV kitchen might be more fragile than a solid steel plate, they really shouldn't be getting the impact at all. The Steel frame they are attached to is.
After all, it's not like the basic plastic console box in my car isn't going to shatter if I get into an accident. In fact, it's probably going to be just fine. Something inside it might break from the stopping force, but anything that's actually attached to the car isn't going to be hurt unless it is directly impacted. That's part of the point of the steel frame, it takes the blow and diffuses the force of the blow along it. If you had a wooden support frame as part of the car (quite doable, by the way, and something that should at least be an option)
it would break, certainly, but that's frame and not component added to a frame.
Basic point is that the weakest
frame piece is your weak link, not the stuff attached to a frame. Those only get damaged in a direct impact unless you're going really fast. And even then it's usually fragile stuff like glass that breaks, not rigid materials like plastic or metal.
Crumple zones and the like also help a lot, of course, since the reduce force before it even gets transmitted along to attached parts.
My brain is a little fuzzy right now, so hopefully that made sense.