Maintenance
Maintenance is the process of repairing a ship's hull and damaged systems. Slow damage control runs automatically during normal play; a planetary crew can work much faster when hired with the MAINTENANCE command. Operational equipment recharging, such as a phaser filling its energy reserve, is not the same as repairing a disabled system.
Passive damage control
Every normal ship-state update, roughly six seconds apart, can make repair progress without a hired crew. With the stock REPAIRRT setting of 6, hull damage falls by 0.06 points per update. Repairing 3 points this way without further damage takes about 50 updates, or roughly 5 minutes. ge-next's enhanced damage control upgrade doubles the passive hull rate; it does not change the destruction threshold. A ship at 100 or more hull damage is destroyed before ordinary repair can save it.
Classic GE advances each eligible damaged system, such as phasers, helm, tactical scanners, and fire control, on the same update. Damaged shields have their own repair path. Classic repairs a damaged cloak separately in its cloak-status pass, one point per update. Paid maintenance omits cloak damage from its completion reset, so the cloak can still be disabled after the crew announces that work is done (Classic bug: Maintenance omits cloak repair).
The maximum time a system can be damaged is lower in ge-next than classic GE, but repair times for individual systems stack instead of run concurrently; damage control works on systems in priority order. Helm and tactical systems come first, then weapons and other equipment; a heavily damaged system can delay work on the next one. The enhanced damage control upgrade gives two passive system-repair steps rather than one. Damaged shields are repaired separately, outside that queue.
Planetary maintenance
The MAINTENANCE command starts a paid, faster repair job while the ship is in qualifying stationary orbit. The command page covers syntax, planets, fees, passwords, hostility restrictions, cancellation, and the precise work rates.
Classic GE determines the job's duration from hull damage alone. Hull damage decreases during the job, but most damaged systems remain unusable until the final step of the repair resets them together. Cloak damage is omitted, while shields are lowered and discharged even if they were not damaged. ge-next 0.3 repairs hull, damaged shields, and other systems in parallel, returning each system to service as its repair finishes. Completion waits for all applicable damage to be cleared; undamaged shields keep their charge and state.
In ge-arena, a maintenance depot provides the progressive service without a cash charge. An instant-maintenance pickup instead repairs the ship immediately when collected with TRANSFER UP. See arena maintenance for the different restrictions.
Checking progress
REPORT SYS describes hull damage and lists damaged systems. Classic omits some system failures from that report; ge-next 0.1 added the missing phaser, fire-control, and warp-drive conditions, with later reports covering newly added equipment (Classic bug: REP SYS omits damaged systems).
During paid maintenance, classic displays a hull-derived count in centocks, not seconds or a full accounting of system work. ge-next shows an estimated number of seconds remaining, based on whichever of hull, shields, or ordinary systems needs the most update ticks. Outside paid maintenance, enhanced damage control can show an estimate for the system currently being repaired, but not for all later systems in its priority queue.
See also
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