Indeed, I did see that. The ideas I could see on Trello were using repair drones, that would operate outside of the ship, and would also be responsible for construction of new parts. I think for an operating vessel in a combat situation, putting drones outside the ship is a massive risk. I like the idea that crew would conduct repairs, I think it's consistent with what would actually happen inside a star ship. Maybe the drones would be able to affect repairs on the ship significantly faster than the crew can internally? And drones wouldn't need corridor access to fit new components.
My extension to this 'Maintenance Bay' idea is the 'Repair Bay', in which ship modules are manufactured from resource and cash, and the crew carry them in pieces (as they do for missiles) to the location required to an accessible starship blueprint.
Visually, the 'Repair Bay' would build up the graphic of the component under construction (starship structure first: 1/4 tile at a time, then the component itself, 1/4 tile at a time). The crew come and take it away each 1/8th of a tile in boxes (so this is a crew intensive activity!), carry the part to where it is defined on the blueprint, and unpack it into place.
In the image below, I have mocked up a visual representation of the module. Two crew are operating the manufacturing rig, and two have picked up parts of the module under construction to carry to location. One crew is carrying a box containing a part of starship structure (shown grey), and one crew is carrying a box containing a part of FTL drive (shown cyan).
If operated with the current resource system, the resource usage of the repair bay is a consumption of 'energy' taken from the reactor and consumption of the 'cash' value of the part of the module produced. (The Trello page indicates that multiple types of resource that will superseed this.)
Each 'box' of parts has a cash value:
- Structure: $13 (because that is ($50 structure tile cost)/4 parts, rounded up)
- FTL Drive: $613 (because that is ($10000 cost - $200 structure)/16 parts, rounded up)
To construct a module, the crew must lay down the starship structure into the empty space, one box at a time, and then construct the main component upon that structure, one box at a time.
To repair a module, the crew bring a box of parts to a damaged starship module, and spend time to apply it to the module, and thus restore hit points equal to the cash value of the box.
The AI would try not to consume boxes of parts of higher cash value than the maintenance needed (so if an FTL module has $350 worth of damage, it would wait until the damage exceeded $613 before making a repair)
If the part to be repaired, or newly constructed cannot be reached by the crew (e.g.: it is no longer accessible, or the component was part-fitted and then destroyed before it was finished, or the player changed the ship blueprint such that the part is no longer required), then the un-fitted boxes would go into storage for later use, or returned to the Repair Bay and recycled into cash.
The 'Repair Bay' could come in various sizes, to accommodate different sizes of module to be constructed, for example:
- a 2x2 (small) 'Repair Bay' could produce only 1x1 components (corridors/small thrusters/small armour blocks/small ship structure/doors)
- a 3x3 (medium) 'Repair Bay' module could produce 1x1, 1x2, or 2x2 ship components.
- also available in 4x4 (large), and 5x5 (massive) versions to accommodate the larger components.
Alternatively: simplicity of repair
The 'Repair Bay' produces spares, using energy and cash. Each 'spare' has a nominal cash value, of, say $100, which is used to repair $100 worth of damage, or add $100 to the construction, of any module. So, for example:
- a corridor or structure would be constructed or repaired using 1 small spare.
- an FTL drive would be constructed or fully repaired from 100 spares, with each box of parts adding 1% to it's completion, or hit points.
- (maybe a small, 2x2 repair bay produces structural spares worth $100, and a large 4x4 repair bay produces system spares worth $1000)
