I think the ship integrity thing was an approach to the required airplane maintenance schedules. Airplanes record their flying time, and just like cars, despite the visual noticed and software appointed repairs, a lot of parts of an airplane must be checked out and/or replaced after a certain amount of flight hours. Airplanes are damn expensive things!
Even tiny screws must be checked periodically, and the engines and wings above all else.
I remember in one of my detachments in St-Tome Island, the engineer spotted a little crack in one of the turbo-propeller fans. He decided to file it and check how deep the crack was, and the damn thing stretched almost to the fan's root! We had to remove the whole fan set, and ask for a new replacement to come. And that was one military detachment turned into 1 week holidays time. XD
^This guy gets it. Integrity repair is not supposed to be some OCD thing that must be clicked on after every dock. It is supposed to reflect ship and aircraft borescope inspection maintenance in reality.
As far as aircraft are concerned it is the equivalent of a D check, this has nothing to do with regular maintenance that is performed on an aircraft or ship. D-Checks are for identifying micro fractures that build up over prolonged use, on a ship it is due to hull stresses from flexing due to years at sea, on an aircraft it is due to hull stress from pressurisation and depressurisation over many cycles, In ED hull stresses and fractures weaken the hull from time spent in supercruise.
In reality, the stresses will eventually lead to a catastrophic hull failure, this wouldn't work in ED, ships would be severally limited, voyages like distant world would be impossible. The devs provided us with a safety net, maximum hull degradation is capped at 70% with 0% integrity. It is really of no concern to anyone except high level PvP & PvE combat cmdrs looking to keep ships constantly in pristine condition before heading into battle.
Imo the devs should do a few things -
A. Massively
decrease the rate at which the hull degrades, this is a game that is meant to be played out over years, in reality D-checks are carried out roughly every 6 months or after a certain number of cycles.
B. Actually explain what the intergrity check is for, in detail, no need to hide it's function.
C.Make the failures catastrophic if a Cmdr does not maintain the ship, but not after a 1+ hour trip in SC to hutton orbital, after prolonged use over 6 months to a year, even then you may only see small micro fractures depending on how careful you have been with the ship.
D. Give cmdrs the ability the perform repairs when out in deep space, either through EVA, or internal checks when we can walk around our ships.
