Manicpop at 23:53, 16 October 2026

2026-10-16T23:53:12Z

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'''System damage''' is a secondary consequence of certain hits to a ship. It is distinct from the [[Hull damage|structural damage]] added to the hull: a ship may survive the hit but lose the use of equipment, and in [[ge-next]] it may also lose supplies or personnel. The routine is called <code>randamage()</code> in both codebases. It is not a separate attack, and not every hit invokes or passes its damage check.

== Classic GE ==
After a qualifying weapon hit, classic checks the ship's ''current'' structural damage. The routine does nothing at 20 or less. Above 20, a random roll determines whether there is a secondary effect; the chance increases as hull damage rises. If the roll succeeds, one of six equally selectable categories is chosen: shields, phasers, fire control, cloak, tactical display, or helm/navigation. A result can disable the corresponding system; it does not directly destroy carried items.

If the selected category is not fitted to that ship, classic prints a flavor message instead of disabling a system:
* '''No shields:''' "Some of the crew have abandoned ship after that last hit, Sir!"
* '''No phasers:''' "That one shook us pretty good. We cannot take much more of this pounding!"
* '''No torpedo or missile launcher:''' "Damage control reports the head was damaged in the last strike, Sir!"
* '''No cloak:''' "If this keeps up, I may have to update my Will, and quick!"

These messages do not indicate an actual crew loss or damage. Under the distributed ship classes, shields, phasers, and at least one applicable launcher are common; cloak capability is much less common. Thus the no-cloak "update my Will" message is the fallback a player normally encounters.

=== How long a system stays offline ===
Classic assigns most selected systems a damage depth of <code>N = (int)rndm(current hull damage + 10)</code>. <code>N</code> varies with the random roll and the ship's current hull damage, so there is no single fixed outage time. Ordinary ship-state updates run about every six seconds:

{| class="wikitable"
! System selected !! Automatic recovery in classic
|-
| Phasers, tactical display, helm, or cloak || The stored value becomes <code>-N</code> and increases by one per update until it reaches zero. For <code>N > 0</code>, that takes <code>N</code> updates, nominally <code>6 × N</code> seconds. Cloak repair runs in its separate cloak-status routine.
|-
| Fire control || A separate roll sets its counter to <code>gernd() % 20</code>, or 0–19. It counts down by one per update; the longest ordinary outage is 19 updates, about 114 seconds.
|-
| Shields || Shield charge becomes <code>-N</code> and the system is marked damaged. Each update adds the installed shield mark; repair finishes when charge becomes ''positive'', then the shields are down and uncharged. For shield mark <code>M</code>, this takes <code>floor(N / M) + 1</code> updates, including one update when <code>N</code> is zero.
|}

For example, a phaser assigned <code>-30</code> takes 30 repair updates, or about three minutes. The first scheduled update may come sooner than six seconds after the hit, so elapsed wall time can be slightly shorter. A roll of zero can print a damage message without actually taking phasers, helm, tactical display, cloak, or fire control offline; a shield marked damaged still waits for its next repair update. [[Maintenance|Paid maintenance]] can repair these systems earlier, although classic GE's maintenance omits cloak damage, see [[Classic bug: Maintenance omits cloak repair]].

== ge-next ==
ge-next 0.3 reworked <code>randamage()</code>. A qualifying hit must add at least 5 points of [[Hull damage|hull damage]], and the ship must have had at least 20 points ''before'' that hit. If the hit has already brought the hull to 100 or more, the routine does nothing: destruction will be handled by the ship update instead. Mine and ion-cannon hits can also enter this expanded routine.

=== Selecting an effect ===
The routine combines pre-hit hull damage with the size of the new hit into a weighted damage score, capped at 74. A larger hit or more existing damage increases the chance of selecting a secondary effect. When the roll succeeds, it selects one of eleven categories: missile controls, torpedo controls, decoy launcher, zipper launcher, jammer launcher, mine launcher, shields, phasers, cloak, tactical scanners, or helm. This selection is not a guarantee of damage: the ship might lack that equipment, or the chosen system might already be disabled. The four classic fallback messages are not used.

For the repair depths below, <code>D</code> is the capped weighted score, and <code>r</code> is the random value used by the routine. The divisions in these formulas are integer divisions. Each selected system has a minimum depth of two, avoiding classic's zero-depth "damaged" messages:

{| class="wikitable"
! Selected system !! Damage stored if eligible !! Normal recovery
|-
| Torpedo or missile fire control || A separate positive counter of <code>N = 2 + r % (D / 3)</code> || Counts down through the system-repair queue until zero.
|-
| Decoy, zipper, jammer, or mine launcher || A negative reload counter of <code>-N</code>, with <code>N = 2 + r % (D / 3)</code> || Advances toward zero through the queue.
|-
| Phasers or cloak || A negative system value of <code>-N</code>, with <code>N = 2 + r % (D / 3)</code> || Advances toward zero through the queue.
|-
| Shields || Negative charge of <code>-N</code>, with <code>N = 2 + r % (D / 3)</code>; shield status becomes damaged || Repairs separately by the installed shield mark each update until charge becomes positive; then shields are down and uncharged.
|-
| Tactical scanners || <code>-N</code>, with <code>N = 2 + r % (D / 6)</code> || Advances toward zero through the queue.
|-
| Helm || <code>-N</code>, with <code>N = 2 + r % (D / 9)</code> || Advances toward zero through the queue.
|}

At the score cap, the <code>D / 3</code> group can receive 2–25 repair steps, tactical scanners 2–13, and helm 2–9. This is ''repair work'', not a fixed number of seconds offline. The game spends one step per roughly six-second ship update on the first damaged system in priority order: helm, tactical scanners, phasers, torpedo controls, missile controls, cloak, then jammer, decoy, zipper, and mine launchers. A system farther down this queue waits for earlier ones. Enhanced damage control provides two passive steps per update; paid [[Maintenance|maintenance]] provides five. Shield repair is separate: it receives one mark-sized step normally, two with enhanced damage control, or five during paid maintenance. For instance, a phaser at <code>-10</code> takes about 60 seconds of normal updates ''if no higher-priority system is damaged''; it can take longer if the queue is busy.

=== Lost cargo and personnel ===
The same random event may damage a system, destroy carried stock, or do both. When a weapon or countermeasure category is selected, it can also destroy some items of that type if the ship carries them (e.g. damage to a torpedo launcher can also destroy some of the ship's torpedo stock). If an item-loss roll did not affect that category, the routine can instead describe a breach elsewhere:
* A cargo-bay breach may destroy up to four eligible types of ordinary cargo. Gold and personnel are excluded from this cargo-bay selection.
* A living-quarters or mess-hall breach can kill men, troops, or spies. A hit to the [[wikipedia:Head_(watercraft)|head]] can kill one person of one of those types.

The quantities vary with the damage score and the stock on board; the routine generally favors partial losses instead of wiping out a stack. These are real inventory losses, not equipment downtime, and maintenance does not replace the lost items or people. Automated ships can suffer system failures but are excluded from random item loss. A breach message can still appear when there is no eligible stock to destroy, so the message alone does not prove that anything was lost.

[[Warp travel#Overspeed|Warp-drive damage and overspeed wear]] follow their own rules rather than these eleven outcomes. Damage to the warp drive only occurs due to overspeed; weapons fire does not damage warp engines.

== Gameplay effects ==
A damaged helm can interfere with navigation, and damaged tactical equipment with scanning. Damaged phasers or fire controls prevent use of the corresponding weapons; damaged shields must be repaired before they can be raised normally. A system failure can therefore be urgent even when hull damage is modest. See [[Report command#REPORT SYS|REPORT SYS]] for what the ship reports as damaged, and [[Maintenance]] for automatic and paid repairs.

== See also ==
* [[Hull damage]], [[Maintenance]], and [[Maintenance command]]
* [[Report command#REPORT SYS|REPORT SYS]]
* [[Combat]] and [[Ship inventory]]
* [[Source code#routine-randamage|<code>randamage()</code> in the source-file map]]

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[[Category:Ships]]

System damage - Revision history

Manicpop at 23:53, 16 October 2026