[Suggestion] killed ESFs should crash into the ground, not explode mid air

Yes it will, because in 96+ fights ur comp don`t render all Enemys, and small comps are happy, of vihecles they don`t have to render..
And ESF or Lib, who have this style to go down, need more animations = more rendering for ur CPU + fast move = more work for ur GPU+ ´the Cpu have to render that vihecle longer as he need

They actually did something like this in PS1 (for awhile). Once you hit near death you couldn't bail and went into an uncontrollable dive.

0:45-1:15

It completely depends on the way it's implemented.
The ESF could just act as if the pilot bailed out, which is already part of the game. (Physics of an unoccupied ESF + momentum)
You have the cockpit view, which remain the exact same (relative to vehicle position and angle) as when driving, but your commands are ignored.
No new animation, no new mechanic, no new object physics or predefined trajectory.
Performance hit = 0

Personally I want to also keep the shiny explosion effect... When you spawn an ESF they could add a random value that determines wether it will have the "Explode" or "Crash" behavior.

"more smoke than a damage one"<here is your performance hit. Maybe just move the smoke origin point somewhere to the front of the ESF so the pilot can see it.

fiery smoke then
explosion smoke

also the idea that ESfs are predefined to be either crash mode or splodey mode is stupid
It would explode when taken down with a SMG (because RNG)
but go into crash mode when hit by a tankshell (because RNG)

An ESF in crash mode wouldn't make more lag than a damage one
The smoke/fire trail is the same but with different textures
There is no animation, it just the pilot loses control and the thing dives down
The explosion it would make on the ground wouldn't be more different than the one it already does when it just explode