Maintenance command

The MAINTENANCE command hires a planetary maintenance crew to repair the current ship while it remains in orbit. The command may be abbreviated to MAI.

Syntax

MAINTENANCE [password]

An ordinary planet trade password must be supplied directly after the command; the game does not open a separate password prompt. The special password team is intended to limit access to members of the planet owner's team. Classic GE and ge-next through 0.3.2 instead treat it as a literal word in MAINTENANCE: a nonmember can enter MAINT team and receive service despite the team restriction. See Classic bug: Team maintenance password bypass. Since ge-next 0.3.3, the command checks membership instead; a team member can request maintenance without supplying a password, and a nonmember cannot bypass the restriction by entering team.

Where maintenance is available

The ship must be in stationary orbit. In sector 0 0, Zygor and Tahanian Station provide maintenance for 2,500 cash. The Enforcer Planet does not provide repair service.

Outside the neutral zone, a claimed planet establishes a repair facility when it has at least 25,000 men. Service there costs 200 cash. The facility does not have to belong to the player requesting repairs. Ordinary trade passwords must be supplied if set; access to a team-restricted planet differs by game version as explained below.

The complete fee is charged when maintenance begins. There is no partial refund if the work is interrupted.

Restrictions

Maintenance will not begin while the ship is considered engaged in hostilities. Weapon fire and damaging another ship set a combat timer used by several game systems; maintenance crews refuse service until that timer has expired.

If a ship becomes hostile or is attacked after maintenance begins, the crew stops work. Leaving orbit also cancels maintenance. The ship keeps whatever repair progress has already occurred, but must pay again to restart the job.

Classic lowers and completely discharges shields when maintenance finishes, regardless of whether the shields were damaged, down, or operating normally. It does not repair cloak damage at all. ge-next leaves undamaged shields alone and includes cloak damage in maintenance, but a cloaked ship cannot begin maintenance unless the ship's owner also owns the planet.

Issuing MAINTENANCE again while work is already underway does not restart the job or charge another fee in ge-next. Classic does not have this guard: repeating the command charges the fee again and replaces its repair counter.

Classic Galactic Empire

Classic bases maintenance duration only on structural damage:

warsptr->repair = (unsigned)(warsptr->damage / 3.0) + 1;

The resulting number is displayed as "centocks." Maintenance is actually processed by the ship-state update, which normally runs every six seconds. The displayed count is therefore neither a real-world number of seconds nor a complete count of all work required.

Each maintenance update removes three points of structural damage. Individual system damage does not lengthen the estimate. When the hull-derived counter reaches its completion threshold, classic immediately resets the hull and a fixed list of systems, then announces that all maintenance is complete.

This has several consequences:

Damaged systems are not repaired progressively; most remain unavailable until the final update.
System damage alone does not produce a longer maintenance time.
The cloaking device is omitted from the final reset and can remain damaged after the completion announcement. See Classic bug: Maintenance omits cloak repair.
Shields are lowered and completely discharged regardless of whether they were damaged or operating normally.
An undamaged ship can still pay for maintenance. On the next update, the completion block runs and can unnecessarily change its shield state.

The classic help describes service at the player's own planet or Zygor, but the actual command is less restrictive: any claimed planet with at least 25,000 men can provide service if its password requirements are met. Classic checks even the special planet password team as literal text, so MAINT team passes that check for a nonmember. See Classic bug: Team maintenance password bypass.

ge-next

ge-next 0.3.3 corrects the team-password bypass described above, matching the BUY membership rule. It validates old team references on the planet before applying that rule. Ordinary passwords are unchanged.

ge-next first checks whether the ship has anything that requires repair. An undamaged ship is told that maintenance is unnecessary and is not charged.

During paid maintenance, every six-second ship-state update performs work in three areas concurrently:

structural damage is reduced by 3 points;
damaged shields receive five normal shield-repair steps; and
five system-repair steps are applied in priority order.

The system order begins with helm and tactical systems, followed by phasers, torpedo and missile fire control, cloak, jammer, decoy, zipper and mine launchers, and finally warp or overspeed damage. A badly damaged system may consume several steps before work advances to the next system. Messages are shown as individual systems return to service.

The completion estimate is calculated from the outstanding hull, shield, and system work. These categories progress together, so ge-next uses whichever category will take the most update ticks and converts that result to real seconds:

ETA = max(hull ticks, shield ticks, system ticks) * 6 seconds

The initial maintenance message and REPORT SYSTEMS therefore show a real-time estimate rather than classic's centock counter. The estimate may change if the ship suffers more damage or maintenance is interrupted.

ge-next does not announce completion until structural damage, damaged shields, cloak damage, and all other applicable system damage have been cleared. Undamaged shields are left alone, preserving both their operating state and charge. An operational cloak is likewise left in its existing state, although a cloaked ship can only begin maintenance at a planet owned by the same player.

Ships also perform slow passive repairs without hiring a maintenance crew. Paid maintenance replaces those normal rates with the faster rates above. The enhanced damage-control upgrade improves passive repair and exposes additional repair-time information, but paid maintenance already uses its own faster rates.

ge-arena

ge-arena planets may generate either a maintenance depot or an instant maintenance pickup.

At a maintenance depot, MAINTENANCE starts the same progressive repair process used by ge-next. Arena maintenance costs no cash and does not use planet population or trade passwords. It still cannot begin during the arena combat-lock period, and leaving orbit or renewed hostility interrupts the work.

The standard ge-next hostility lock uses FIRETICKS 10, normally about 60 seconds across six-second ship-state updates. ge-arena reduces this to 4 ticks, normally about 24 seconds. This keeps a player from repairing during active combat without imposing a one-minute wait in a 15-minute arena match. Some less severe hostile actions use fractions of these values, so the exact remaining wait can be shorter.

Instant maintenance is collected with TRANSFER UP, not MAINTENANCE. It repairs all hull and system damage immediately. If the ship does not need repair, the pickup remains on the planet rather than being consumed.

Comparison

Behavior	Classic Galactic Empire	ge-next
Standard fees	2,500 credits at Zygor or Tahanian Station; 200 elsewhere	Same
Planet population required outside sector 0 0	25,000 men	Same
Duration display	Hull-derived centocks	Calculated real-world seconds
Systems repaired progressively	No	Yes
All applicable damaged systems included	No	Yes
Undamaged ship refused without charge	No	Yes
Repeating the command during maintenance refused without charge	No	Yes
`team` restricts maintenance by membership	No; literal `MAINT team` passes the password check	Yes, since 0.3.3
Visiting cloaked ship refused	No	Yes, unless the ship owner owns the planet