DevTracker: About Wear and Tear

Wear and tear (Which is going to be renamed and slowed down) represents your ship suffering long term damage that results in a reduction to maximum hull health (so even if your hull says 100%, if you've suffered wear and tear, that 100% will be lower than it could be). Wear and tear never reduces your maximum hull health to 0 (I think the cap reduces your max hull down by 70% – we might tweak this).

I believe there will be a nominal fee to buff up your livery, which will become its own separate thing, allowing Commanders tomake their ships look nice even if they are starting to rot on the inside.

If your wear and tear was at 100% (the worst it could be) then your maximum hull health would be reduced by 30%. Wear and tear is not meant to totally cripple your ship, but it should still be a significant risk. Again, though, we're lowering the rate at which wear and tear accrues, as we think it was too quick.

The effects of having a ship that looks rough compared to one that looks pristine are not in the game yet, but that is the concept we are heading towards.

They way we imagine it is that when your hull is damaged it is because something very clear and obvious has happened: a cannon shell has punched a hole in it, or a bracket connecting an articulate plate has sheared clean off. You can easily look at the hull, or scan the hull and detect this kind of catastrophic failure.

But even during normal operation, your ship's hull suffers lots of low-grade strain. Every time you pull hard G turns under thrust, every time the frame shift collapses and expands space, and even natural perishing processes on components, all take their collective toll on the vessel.

You can't obviously see or detect this effect without effectively having a starship mechanic look specifically fort it. Maybe a hull plate has warped slightly and is mashed slightly harder into the plate next to it under thrust. Perhaps a bracket has started to wear and become loose, but has not yet snapped or failed. Possibly the gunk has started to build up in the cooling loops, increasing the pressure of the circuit, but not yet enough to burst the system.

A whole host of fatigue effects build up in the ship's hull and associated plumbing, and whilst they don't show as obvious trauma, they do overall make your ship less sturdy and more likely to fall under extreme forces.

Our wear and tear system is a simple abstract way of representing this effect without being too complicated.

Getting various repair costs perfect is quite complicated, and it will be something we keep over-watch on, making tweaks when we see all positive effect gains.

Wear and tear is being slowed down. However, it still needs to be fast enough to have an effect in a reasonable game time. If I said that on average you might likely see a percent drop in about an hour of flight that might help give an idea.

Also, wear and tear actually accumulates by activities such as hyperspace jumps, super cruise, being in asteroid fields, fuel scooping and from combat, so the rate is variable to a minor degree.

For clarity: currently wear and tear only affects hull. In the future we might consider module wear and tear, but not at the moment.

The concept of wear and tear is two-fold: it represents longer term fatigue for ships, and introduces another risk element to manage. You never *need* to sort out your wear and tear, the penalty caps out at 30% of your hull.

But of course, should you run into trouble, that 30% hull might become a significant factor in deciding whether your ship stays in one piece or not

Also wear and tear should only affect the ship you are using, because it accrues based on ship activities.