Repair option # 2, Scotts Draconian solution

[Da Brain]

Allright clearly there is a issue with repair. Lets look at the facts.

-Damaged ships realistically should not be brought up to fully healed by running right before battle for 5 minutes as battle starts

-Does everyone know that no matter what level of damage warp engines are at full strength ? Which means in between battles a LOT of repair is going on. Even a ship with 90% damage has full engines to start !!


SO, my proposal is that once a ship is registered as damaged, it no longer gets to use repair in subsequent battles ,.. PERIOD. They use up all the repair usually during the first battle or when they fix engines to full inbetween battle.

This prevents all the issues that we are facing.

[DemonFROG ISC Pacifism]

OK, Problem with that.

You control 2 ships and your opponent has 3. You decide it is to be a closed battle. That means AI will be flying your ships and the enemies. THose ships will use repairs. You would have to make a ruling on on removing or stripping all the repairs on all the ships that received damage.

With that also in effect, I may be persuaded to agree.

[Da Brain]

Yes that works for me also,... with the following ammendment

ships that sustain less than 10% damage are immune from this ruling.

I would hate to see a DN with 1% damge lose all repair for the next battle. Leakies even do a fractional amount sometimes like 99.6% health. I think the 10% rule is pretty fair ?

Damage will add up nicely, that works fine. The real issue is that bandaid/duct tape repairs in battle are getting counted as permant repair. We have no way of distinguishing the two. I think this method works pretty darn well.

It also adds another strategic element to the game. Resupply. Once damaged beyond 10% you would have to return to a repair facility to get your repair boxs back. Mobile tenders and or repair ships can then be introduced also.

Supply has always been lacking in our games and this would help to add to that.

[DemonFROG ISC Pacifism]

I think 10% or less damage would work for keeping repairs as surely that damage would have been fixed with any remaining bailing wire and duckt tape found on the ship.

[Da Brain]

Between Ken, Dfly and Myself, this rule if accepted by the new Ref's could be quite groundbreaking.

Good job team, even if it gets rejected.

[jhonsheridan]

I like the ruling. But how do you strip a ship of repairs before it enters a battle. If the sector assault has already repaired whatever % damage. When you launch the repair still works . so what you just agree not to use it then? Confused here ! My 6Th grade, ed- a- cation is showing again!

[Da Brain]

You goto space dock and remove the repair boxes for that damaged ship.

Just like you up repair boxes or shuttles etc, you can reduce them too. So yes you manually bring them down to zero.

[Head Fur Shalafi]

the way to mediate it would be to allow up to say 5-10% repairs per turn away from a base... would cost EP of course but would allow people to keep their ships in relatively working order.

[Da Brain]

The whole point of damage is to keep ships outta working order, and force a fleet to turn around and to head back to repair. The only hope for someone who cannot win against a superior force is that by repeatedly throwing ships at a superior fleet is to cause that fleet to eventually be damaged enough that it will have to return home to get fixed up.

I personally would never allow the rule of allowing a ship to repair up alone by itself. That just puts the massive, highly skilled fleet, in even a better position, to continuely kick butt. Sorta like the Shadow fleets are doing in B5, which is why we are trying to fix it.

Damage should be repaired at a repair facility. Hasty repairs in space are not meant to sustain a ship. When one of our carriers gets slammed with a Har.p.oo.n (d**n fowl language editor) missile, it heads home. Repair at at sea is not expected.

[Head Fur Shalafi]

that's only partially true though.... the off base repairs are instead of being able to repair in battle.... how many weapons were working on that DNH at the beginning of the battles when it had 30% health? you can have all the power in the world but if you can't use it ...

[jhonsheridan]

Of course there is always the option of F.R.D's. ;)They may not be able to keep up with fleets say a movement of one or two and a limited repair evp per turn.
still they provide a strategic edge compared to having to get to a base each time to repair.

[Da Brain]

I am confussed on what is partially true.

Off base repairs:
I always try to write rules from the perspective of the less skilled player (probably cause I am one). For example in this upcoming game, I will not be able to choose ships as well as some, others will be even worse off than me. Some players will likely be able to tell you right away what ships can go at a certain speed while arming weapons. I cannot, nor will I spend the time to evalute all 250 fed ships.

So right away I will likely not have as good ships as some players and not have as much skill as some in actual battle a double whammy from the get go.

For someone in my boat, my only hope is that damage acculates on my opponent as he destoys my fleets. Eventually a build up of damage will force him to turn around or maybe give me a victory.

If that opponent can pause a turn or 2 and go from 75% damage back to full, then I am in big trouble.

If he is forced to turn around spend time heading home, then time in dock, then time traveling back to the front. I can find allies, move stuff, build defensive bases, etc.

Ya if we make no changes to the repair it will suck as bad as it has for the folks in the B5 game. The changes of allowing repair while in deep space is not really that much of an improvement, (personally think it might be actually worse) . It reduces the usefullness of bases, changes the dynamic of holding space and building forward bases to do repairs.

I for one do not like the ideal at all.

I will go along with whatever changes you guys make though.

DNH: Exactly it should have been a hunk of junk at 30% health and stayed that way !

[DemonFROG ISC Pacifism]

I also dont like the thought of ships doing repairs in space, even at a cost. You just dont find photon tubes floating around in space perfectly intact.

[jhonsheridan]

Where as i agree with some of what you say , Scott. Is it fair to punish players who pick "better ships"? For one thing in the middle era there are not 250 fed ships.
Any repair ship is virtually defenseless. it needs escorts to protect it. and any ship under repair would also be vulnerable. So even if they did not have to return to a base to fix and repair. they are open to counter attacks and other enemy forces.
They also still require a turn to repair. And if a Evp was set, for the amount of repair possible. It may very well require more than one turn to fix the battle damage. Then the fact that a F.R.D really could only work on one ship at a time adds still yet more time to factor in .
If attacking becomes to hard to do then stagnation sets in . Casualties are the price of war. Both for the victor and the defeated.

[Lord Hellus, Council Chairman]

This is indeed a can of worms. My thoughts were that players would make 1 large fleet and fight with it while trying to hold their possessions with lesser stuff. In the AOW campaign, I penetrated far into Klingon space but was reluctant to attack Klingon because of battle damage and loath to return home as that would take my fleet out of game play. If we do not allow repairs in battle for damaged ships I can accept that. For the "space" repairs, how about limited repairs at planets? Materials would be available, but lack of sufficient facilities would keep the repairs to minor amounts. It would make taking planets even more important. Large attacking fleets that have recieved damage would still take some time at these spots if they wanted to bring their ships back to full health. To make it less advantages, only one ship repaired like at a base