Ship Repair

I had an idea, while reading the 'Fleets And Stations' thread, about ship repair. To avoid sending the thread off-topic, and because another doesn't seem to be present, I have made a thread for discussion of Ship Repair in general.

My idea:
When ships are not in combat, the crew could repair their ship using on-board supplies of resources.
This could last until the required resources for the repair have been depleted.
However, each ship could have a certain amount of resources to start with which includes things like internal doors, walls, and stuff, which are nice for the occupants, but not necessary. These materials could be relocated to the hull, increasing health, but not quite up to 100% (due to reduced interior structure). That way, even ships without cargo holds will be able to repair themselves to a certain extent.


People seem to have ideas about payed repairs while docked… I prefer free repairs in space games, and defeating all enemies through use of complex tactics (the 'restart' button), but since this is Thrive, and so has an incredibly detailed economy, mostly carried over from planet-based civilisation, payment for a 'proper' repair makes sense. However, I'm no good at economics, so I'll leave the explanation to them.

The Uteen wrote:

I had an idea, while reading the 'Fleets And Stations' thread, about ship repair. To avoid sending the thread off-topic, and because another doesn't seem to be present, I have made a thread for discussion of Ship Repair in general.

My idea:
When ships are not in combat, the crew could repair their ship using on-board supplies of resources.
This could last until the required resources for the repair have been depleted.
However, each ship could have a certain amount of resources to start with which includes things like internal doors, walls, and stuff, which are nice for the occupants, but not necessary. These materials could be relocated to the hull, increasing health, but not quite up to 100% (due to reduced interior structure). That way, even ships without cargo holds will be able to repair themselves to a certain extent.


People seem to have ideas about payed repairs while docked… I prefer free repairs in space games, and defeating all enemies through use of complex tactics (the 'restart' button), but since this is Thrive, and so has an incredibly detailed economy, mostly carried over from planet-based civilisation, payment for a 'proper' repair makes sense. However, I'm no good at economics, so I'll leave the explanation to them.

I suggested a maintenance fee, Repairs could be included in that.

It seems like a good idea. But there would have to be limits to it.
-Should ship size affect amount repaired?
-Most a ship can repair is hull breaches, fires, disabled systems, and any small exterior damage.
-Cannot repair: Missing chunks of ship, massive hull breaches, and thats all i got.
-Repair speed is affected by the amount of crew.
-Ship can be repaired, at most, 25% of the original health.
-Other friendly ships can provide the necessary materials if theyre unavailable on the current ship.
-There should be a box next to a ships stats that says Auto-Repair, and once clicked, the ship will do repairs until, out of resources, 25% reached, or full health reached.
-Guns can be minimally repaired. They will work but have little armour.

GmansWatching wrote:

It seems like a good idea. But there would have to be limits to it.
-Should ship size affect amount repaired?
-Most a ship can repair is hull breaches, fires, disabled systems, and any small exterior damage.
-Cannot repair: Missing chunks of ship, massive hull breaches, and thats all i got.
-Repair speed is affected by the amount of crew.
-Ship can be repaired, at most, 25% of the original health.
-Other friendly ships can provide the necessary materials if theyre unavailable on the current ship.
-There should be a box next to a ships stats that says Auto-Repair, and once clicked, the ship will do repairs until, out of resources, 25% reached, or full health reached.
-Guns can be minimally repaired. They will work but have little armour.

That all sounds good.
I don't think ship size should affect amount repaired (% of total), because a bigger ship would have more spare material to compensate. But if you're talking about hit points, then it would have an effect, because bigger ships could regain more hit points with their supply of on-board materials. It would depend on how you measure the damage.

There should be a slider for fleet maintenance where you choose what you wish to pay, but having it be lower would reduce fleet effectiveness.

PTFace wrote:

There should be a slider for fleet maintenance where you choose what you wish to pay, but having it be lower would reduce fleet effectiveness.

Yes, have posted this idea before aswell.

The ideas about the ship repairs are indeed nice.

I personally would like the idea of having a pool of ship equipment for stations. This could also limit the possibilities of your technolgy. First you have to get rockets, etc. up to the station, or produce them on the station itself but you need the materials, then there is a time you can teleport the equipment up to the station and in some time your technolgy becomes advanced enough, that you simply can replicate the stuff. Ships could be able to do something like this in some kind of way aswell. Mining by Planets for ore to produce equipment, etc. But should be kept simple. No not hunderts of different ores

I personally had another idea for the space travel. I read there are chemical rockets, maybe nuclear/fusion/plasma and then for interstellar dark matter. I think antimatter as a step between could be nice aswell. So dark matter as a max developed engine with invinite range, but antimatter has still to be refilled. Possible later also a mobile antimatter generator, where a ship can refill at a gas gigant, but this should take longer.

An advanced robotic technology - robotic drones could automatically repair your ship from nearby asteroids. However, the resources from the asteroids are gradually depleted.

An advanced nano-robotic technology - when nano-robots are at the point regular robots were, a fleet of nano-drones could also automatically repair your ship from nearby asteroids, but with the advantage of being invisible to the enemy (at least until they research a method of detecting them).

The Uteen wrote:

An advanced robotic technology - robotic drones could automatically repair your ship from nearby asteroids. However, the resources from the asteroids are gradually depleted.

An advanced nano-robotic technology - when nano-robots are at the point regular robots were, a fleet of nano-drones could also automatically repair your ship from nearby asteroids, but with the advantage of being invisible to the enemy (at least until they research a method of detecting them).

Sweet, like it.

Those robotic drones should also be able to be used as a weapon. Like a missile that deploys millions of them and eats away at the target. And if the drones survive, they could return to you ship with the scrap they took.

GmansWatching wrote:

Those robotic drones should also be able to be used as a weapon. Like a missile that deploys millions of them and eats away at the target. And if the drones survive, they could return to you ship with the scrap they took.

Ship harvesting might require the drones to have slightly stronger tools to allow them to break through the metal hull… This could probably be the next generation of resource harvesters - 'ship harvesters'. They allow nearby destroyed or unused ships (or asteroids, of course) to used for resources, as well as any enemy ships that get within range, allowing them to be used for offensive and defensive purposes. Nice idea!

Thanks Name em' Recyclers
Recycler Class 1 - Asteroids
Recycler Class 2 - Debris
Recycler Class 3 - Ships / Vessels
Recycler Class X - Buildings / Structures / Stations / Bases (etc)

Thanks for sharing the information about ship repairing.