Repairs

[alien]

Is there a material cost for repairs ?? (i.e. in minerals, organics, radioactives, depending on what components require repairing)
If not I think there ought to be. Sorry if this has already been suggested to MM

[Droplede]

Nope no cost -- other than the maintenance you normally pay for the on-ship repair component. You don't lose resources every time a ship is repaired.

Personally, I think that's just fine. The maintenance fee satisfactorily represents repair costs in an already abstract system, in my view. But I don't feel strongly about it, and I don't remember similar discussions in the past three months on this board. Might try doing a search to verify that.

[alien]

Yes, you do have a valid point.
However, I'm still not entirely convinced,
although I admit it is not a big issue.

Cheers

[Beck]

I think the current system is fine. It is after all an abstraction, and to what gain would requiring additional consumation of resources? One, as mentioned you are paying maintenance already and two, there is a limit to what can be repaired as the repair components can only work and repair a certain number of components depending on the level. The main reasons for requiring an outlay of additional resources is to provide a limit to how much can be repaired which is already in place and realism. But even damage is an abstraction. The component may not be in fact be totally destroyed, the marking it as such only means that is not functional and the game doesn't allow the use of its abilities. If you remove all the spark plugs from your car, in game terms the engine is destroyed as it will no longer function but the repair of it would hardly require much resources. In repairing, the biggest limiting factor is the presence or not of a ship having a repair component. If ships could simply repair at will or there was no limit to the number of components that could be repaired by a repair component, I could agree with your suggestion as then it would be needed to serve a function, limit repairs. As it is, it would be somewhat redundant. If you feel something needs to be done, then simply increase the cost of the repair component thereby increasing your maintenance costs and making repair ships rare. Due to its cost you wouldn't have one or more in every fleet.

[raynor]

You make a good point about the repair cost already being included in the maintenance cost. But I think a much more realistic repair model would incorporate the original cost of the component into the time required for repair. It just doesn't make sense to me that it takes the same amount of time to repair eight SM components as it does to repair eight pieces of Armor I.

I doubt this will be included in the game because of it complexity. But if it would be added easily, I would change the game so that a repair component can repair up to 'X' kilotons of component per turn. For example, let's say that even a Repair Component III can only repair 8 KiloTons per turn. By simply changing repair from number of components to total Kilotons, the game would be much, much more realistic, IMHO.

[Beck]

To a point I would agree. However since its fairly abstract, there would similiar lapses in realism regardless of the system applied. In your example, one could argue that 8 SM components could be more than equal to 8 armor as the armor may be totally replaced whereby the SM components may have a single item which must be repaired or simply replaced because it was all used up and the repair ability is mimicing having additional supplies of that item. For example single bulb flash cameras. Used once they can not take another flash picture until the bulb is replaced, a simple process. The same simple process could be taking place with the SM components. The only problem I have with going totally to KiloTons is the size of units is frequently not necessarily based on anything but play-balance issues in regard to how many one item should be in a same sized ship in comparsion to another. A better system would be if each component was rated as to the difficulty of the item to repair. This would dictate the length of time to make the repair and could allow for hierachies in which some types of repair would require a visit to a SY as a repair component would be insufficient or could only be completed to a certain level. Armor would be exceedingly difficult to repair while in space and in most cases would require a visit to a SY IMO. Utilizing the current system as to not make too much of a change, one could simply add a line to the components file; "Counts as X components for repair". Then one could modify and make the components repair at different rates.