I've had similiar problem in one of my first games (scrolling shooter with asteroid physic, hobby project in TP7 and mode 13h), and I solved it in similiar way (when objects bounced off the obstacle I added constant to response vector length, so that ship always bounced with velocity so big, that even with gravity added, and when player rotated towards the obstacle and engaged engine, it would still move out of the obstacle in next frame).
It looked a little funny, cause when you left the ship to itself, it bounced in a place to half its height and back forever.
To mitigate this I've added 2 kinds of obstacles - most of the terrain was filled with obstacles with spikes, that did damage on each collision, so players won't test my collision response too much :) There were some obstacles without spikes, and you could forever bounce on them, but they were rare, and I marked them as "landing places". I think that added to gameplay.
Then I've added buttons that trigger doors to open/close, and in a few levels I've just placed some ship with no ai attached over the button. Effect - ship bounced forever, so the doors connected to the button opened and closed repeatedly ;) Player could also influence that by pushing the triggering ship away :)
It's funny how constraints of game engine can guide you into gameplay elements that you wouldn't consider without them.
It looked a little funny, cause when you left the ship to itself, it bounced in a place to half its height and back forever.
To mitigate this I've added 2 kinds of obstacles - most of the terrain was filled with obstacles with spikes, that did damage on each collision, so players won't test my collision response too much :) There were some obstacles without spikes, and you could forever bounce on them, but they were rare, and I marked them as "landing places". I think that added to gameplay.
Then I've added buttons that trigger doors to open/close, and in a few levels I've just placed some ship with no ai attached over the button. Effect - ship bounced forever, so the doors connected to the button opened and closed repeatedly ;) Player could also influence that by pushing the triggering ship away :)
It's funny how constraints of game engine can guide you into gameplay elements that you wouldn't consider without them.
EDIT: the game if anyone is interested: http://ajuc.ninja.umcs.pl/programy/gry/hw/download/hw.tar.gz it's in Polish, sorry, and coding style is outrageus