Hull Repair

[CMDR Argent Steel]

Explorers know that they can now fix almost everything on the ship that degrades over time. Until recently the canopy was one of those things we couldn't repair, but that got changed. Now with Horizons we can reload the AFMU with the proper elements and keep it repairing, and if we have two AFMUs they can repair each other. All that's left are a few things, but the big one?

The Hull.

I get why it'd be out of the normal scope of your typical AFMU to repair. Makes perfect sense to me. What I would like to see though is an option to repair the hull of your own ship manually by landing on a planet and doing the repairs from your SRV. I think that would make hull repairs significantly inconvenient and yet still possible. It would be a boon to explorers who want to maximize their time in the black, and it would also be more realistic than pushing a button and letting the magic device repair your ship while you wait.

If it requires a new AFMU-like module on the SRV, all the better. Those things could use some customization options anyway.

 

[Lestat]

There has to be a reason for a player to go home. The player should not be able to stay out forever.

 

[Chrystoph]

There is a reason for the character going home, but it is an immersion reason, namely publishing/sharing the research.

Personally, I prefer this:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=162057

The idea of interactivity, and the need to make choices in outfitting, stirkes me as a good way to encourage community. It even supports the less than lawful aspects of the game by giving pirates and smugglers more viability outside of a facility.

 

[DocLooshkin]

Hello, Cmdr Steel.

Hulls in ED make absolutely no sense whatsoever, at present.

We can take an unshielded ship, fly it in a battle until there's only 1% hull left, jump into hyperspace, reappear in a complex solar system (where our ship may briefly pass through the convection zone of a star before slowing to supercruise speed), fly through the star's atmosphere scooping fuel, before finally flying off home for tea. Later on, assuming nothing else changes in this area, we'll also be able to fly through the atmospheres of gas giants and into the depths of oceans.

All without experiencing any ill-effects whatsoever, despite our ship being riddled with potentially thousands of bullet-holes.

I'm not even clear about what the hull is supposed to be at present: is it the exterior fuselage, the armour (which might or might not be the same thing in ED), the internal bulkheads, the spaceframe? Some or all or none of these?

In my view, ED should have a slightly more articulate system than the simple RPG-esque health percentage currently in use. What we have works, but it's not very convincing.

• All ships should have a high-density spaceframe¹, which would be exceedingly difficult to fix outside of a station or port. It's integrity would be our most-important measure of ship's health - and the thing we must come home to repair.
  
  
• On the outside, we should have the hull. All ship's hulls should be automatically self-healing, as a matter of course. Self-healing armour² is one of the first applications any remotely-competent space-going culture would develop - and especially a highly-militant culture, like the people of ED. It's something under development in the present day and some self-healing internal components have allegedly been in military use since the 1970s³.
  
  The resources for repairing current hulls might be replenishable, like the internals, or might contain exotic materials that necessitate a return to base. FD's choice, obviously.
  
  
• On the inside, we should have the internal bulkheads (which would include the floors and partitioning walls, power conduits, etc), with damage repairable at our discretion, or ignored at the risk of life-support failure (and probably other malfunctions, due to the reduced environmental control).

FD might have something planned for the future - a Ship Internals update is certainly expected at some point, although not soon, I think.

I've no idea how much detail FD would find practical to go into, but any steps forward would be most welcome.



¹ A spaceframe is what ED currently calls an airframe, when it mentions it. Airframe's not incorrect, as such, but I think it's wrong for the ships in ED, given both their extraordinary capabilities and the possibility that some ships will be designed never to enter an atmosphere. Plus, it sounds cooler, IMO.
² See http://www.popularmechanics.com/tec...armor-patches-itself-within-minutes-16773095/ .
³ See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMP-3#Countermeasures .

 

[Shadow_Frost]

Not to mention your hull can be at 1% with your canopy blown out and you're venting atmosphere but as soon as you hit SC, all of your battle damage becomes invisible and your ship looks absolutely perfect once more. It's like someone Sham Wow's it.

 

[CMDR Argent Steel]

There has to be a reason for a player to go home. The player should not be able to stay out forever.

You have to go home in order to sell your data. There is a built in reason to go home.

Besides you still can't fix the power plant.

 

[Lestat]

You have to go home in order to sell your data. There is a built in reason to go home.

Besides you still can't fix the power plant.

Right now there two Reasons. Hall and Power plant.

 

[CMDR Argent Steel]

Right now there two Reasons. Hall and Power plant.

...and selling data? Three.

 

[Chrystoph]

Right now there two Reasons. Hall and Power plant.

Your argument lacks a certain something, though. Why do they NEED to go home?

Please, spare me the circular logic that they need repairs. That is what forces explorers back to repair facilities at some point. You imply that they need to return to the bubble, and I would like to know the logic behind that.

 

[CMDR Argent Steel]

Your argument lacks a certain something, though. Why do they NEED to go home?

Please, spare me the circular logic that they need repairs. That is what forces explorers back to repair facilities at some point. You imply that they need to return to the bubble, and I would like to know the logic behind that.

That's a good question. I would say that the FD development team has shown really no special inclination to make explorers come back in any contrived way. If the idea was to force explorers back then I would have trouble seeing why canopy repair was implemented.

I still think my hull repair idea is a good one. I wouldn't even be averse to power plant repair too, allowing a determined explorer to stay out in the black for years if they wanted. The only thing is I would want the repair procedure to make sense.

 

[Lestat]

Well You seen window repair done on cars. Sometimes they add sealant to make cracks go away with out changing the windows. So repairs on windows can be repaired. Until the damage is to extream like a break.

Now I think Hall would be harder to repair. Unless the ship was at a dry dock.

 

[CMDR Argent Steel]

That's the second time you said hall. I don't have a hallway on my ship.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I'd be up for having some kind of self repairing hull.

Very expensive, heavier than normal light weight hulls. Requires power too.(can be turned off)
Takes a while too repair even 1%. Maybe 1 hour(in game) per 1%. But not during supercruise.

No use at all in combat, but perfect for explorers. People spend weeks out in the black, not all of it in supercruise.

 

[Chrystoph]

Well You seen window repair done on cars. Sometimes they add sealant to make cracks go away with out changing the windows. So repairs on windows can be repaired. Until the damage is to extream like a break.

Now I think Hall would be harder to repair. Unless the ship was at a dry dock.

Sorry, not buying into this one. The primary reason for a drydock is to be able to access parts of the ship that are not available when it is in the water and the repairs cannot be accomplished by divers.

I provide an example below for reference:

Please note, there is nothing there that is special to repairs. The only thing that is unique to the dock is a set of cranes for moving supplies and repair parts. Other than that, the drydock provides nothing except access to the parts of the ship below the water line.

 

[Lestat]

And in Star Trek had dry docks.

The game should not hold your hand. There are things that should not be able to fix unless you are dock at a station like the hull of the ship. In some of the Newsletters they also talk about Wear and Tear. Which is part of the game.

[video=youtube;KanhO0Umsbk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KanhO0Umsbk&feature=youtu.be[/video]

 

[DragoonKnight]

We already have wear and tear. It is called ship integrity and is expensive to fix.

 

[Chrystoph]

And in Star Trek had dry docks.

The game should not hold your hand. There are things that should not be able to fix unless you are dock at a station like the hull of the ship. In some of the Newsletters they also talk about Wear and Tear. Which is part of the game.

Sorry, friend, but the docks in Star Trek were for refit, as in main engineering modifications and such. Additionally, you might want to consider that current repair ships are capable of some incredibly complex repair work. The only argument that makes sense for requiring a station is that they would have supplies readily available, and that argument is not sustainable when you add in synthesis and the fabrication plant that would be part of the suggested module.

 

[Lestat]

Sorry, friend, but the docks in Star Trek were for refit, as in main engineering modifications and such. Additionally, you might want to consider that current repair ships are capable of some incredibly complex repair work. The only argument that makes sense for requiring a station is that they would have supplies readily available, and that argument is not sustainable when you add in synthesis and the fabrication plant that would be part of the suggested module.

Keep trying. Why is it when you type in Star trek dry dock or space dock. You see ships. Any star trek movie you watch You see them leave a dry dock/space dock. So I think your mistaken. Let get back Hall repair. Let take the USS COLE which was hit by Terrorist. Due to a 40 foot hole on the port side. It was put on the Blue Marlin to take back to the USA to a dry dock for Repairs and a few upgrades. We can also look at some older ship like the RMS Olympic due to human error and a few war ships in WW2. That had to do some repairs. They went to dry docks.

If a war ship could fly out side of the battle and repair it hall and other parts of the ship. The only target for NPC or players could target is power plant and everything else could be fix. So I think it wise to have more then one area that can't be fix with a repair unit.

 

[DocLooshkin]

Sorry, friend, but the docks in Star Trek were for refit, as in main engineering modifications and such.

Hello, Chrystoph. It's not really on-topic, but your assumption here is incorrect. For most ships in the Star Trek canon, docking at a station or drydock is the preferred option for most refuelling, large cargo transfer and non-trivial repair activity, not just retrofitting. The original series couldn't easily show it for budgetary reasons, but later ones do. The series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had seven seasons built around ships docking at a space station.

Let get back Hall repair.

Just so you know, Lestat, the word you want is 'hull', not 'hall'. They're not the same in English. 'Hull' means the skin of your ship. 'Hall' means 'large room' or 'corridor'.

 

[Chrystoph]

Hello, Chrystoph. It's not really on-topic, but your assumption here is incorrect. For most ships in the Star Trek canon, docking at a station or drydock is the preferred option for most refuelling, large cargo transfer and non-trivial repair activity, not just retrofitting. The original series couldn't easily show it for budgetary reasons, but later ones do. The series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had seven seasons built around ships docking at a space station.

Hiya, Doc. It's sort of an apples and oranges argument, but I'll play along. Refueling in the Star Trek canon is a non-trivial exercise, on par with the care and feeding of modern day nuclear reactors. In fact, they use a fundamentally similar process at the macro level. Unfortunately, that is not the same sort of process used in the Elite canon, where, appropriately equipped, you can scoop fuel directly from any main sequence star.

The other part of the argument is also somewhat difficult to parse in relation to Elite, since the Star Trek ships are all designed around the ships versus boats mentality. The short form of that argument is that ships carry boats. Practical application is that ships have endurance, whereas boats get launched for short term missions.

What this means to Trek v Elite is that ships (Star Trek) normally have multi-person crews And are meant to stand on station for long periods of time, weeks or months, with the corresponding values in volume and costs, whereas boats (Elite) are normally tied to a parent facility, be that a ship or a station. The argument breaks down some with explorers, given that they are out in the Big Empty for extended periods, but my argument is that the repair limpets would fill the role of shipboard maintenance facilities (tenders). Please note, I am not suggesting a combat medic, but rather, come alongside and get proper repairs that take time. Let's be honest here, 5 minutes is a long time in the Elite universe.

Cargo transfer - Sure, I 'll concede the station transfer point, but I would also point out that cargo lighters are an established concept in other venues. The Aliens/Predator universe comes to mind. Their starships weren't designed to land at all, so all of their planetary supply was done by intra-system interface craft; dropships or cargo lighters.