Damage Control

[alexanderson1993]

Here's what I've come up with for damage control, based on feedback from all of you. Thank you if you've responded to my newsletter or the recent discussions.

I'm writing up a full blog post that will come out on Thursday, but I wanted to get these ideas in front of this crowd first. Thoughts and suggestions welcome!

• There are different types of damage a system can have.
  • Electrical
  • Heat
  • Radiation
  • Plumbing
  • Mechanics
  • Fatigue
• Damage affects the properties of a system in different ways, not just efficiency.
  • Heat generation rate
  • Stability (the chance that a command sent to that system will trigger an unexpected error and have to be retried by the crew)
  • Signature (adds to the sensor signature of the ship and makes it easier for the ship to be detected and followed)
  • Spontaneous catastrophic failure risk (the chance that the system will completely break)
  • Cascade failure risk (if the system completely breaks, the chance the system will take down other systems)
  • Safety rating - danger to crew members that are in proximity to the system
  • Hacking vulnerability - how easy it is for a hacker to exploit the system
• Systems become inoperable when they fall below a certain efficiency level, and don't work until they are restored to a certain efficiency level.
  • Inoperable below 50%, and restored up at 80%
• Systems can be made invulnerable (impossible to damage) or vulnerable (will always be damaged until inoperable) by the Flight Director or Timeline actions.
• Damage is repaired by the crew following small maintenance mini-reports. One or two steps maximum.
• Maintenance Reports are automatically generated from a bucket of possible steps and automatically clear when the steps are completed.
• Maintenance Reports are based on which system is being repaired and the type of damage that is being repaired, so they are more consistent and don't suggest random actions.
• Maintenance Reports can affect more than one property of one or more systems, both good and bad.
  • Improve efficiency while making the safety rating worse, improving heat generation rate while increasing spontaneous catastrophic failure risk.
• Maintenance Reports can affect more than one system - improving some properties and diminishing other properties.
• Crews will know ahead of time exactly how much a Maintenance Report will improve or diminish the systems, which gives them agency when choosing which report to complete.
• The Flight Director can adjust the effectiveness of Maintenance Reports - making reports apply larger improvements when completed for crews that need help, or smaller improvements for experienced crews.
• There can be more than one active maintenance report at a time.
• Maintenance Reports are implemented with the same tools as timelines.
• Additional Maintenance Report steps can be created ahead of time or inserted into the bucket of available steps mid-flight as part of a timeline.