Players have the option to increase their ship repair capacity by upgrading bases and building FRDs and PRDs. Nothing exists for Depot Level Repairs.

With the General War being much larger than anyone could have anticipated, and the vast numbers of ships being destroyed, the holding boxes of some DLR tracks had significant backlogs of ships needing depot level repairs.

I propose players have the option of purchasing a line of the 4 repair track boxes drawing from a specific holding box after that holding box has a 4 ship backlog with all 4 track boxes filled for a cost of 4 times the normal crippled ship repair cost of the largest base hull of that track. For each crippled ship in a track box, one more destroyed ship must be in the holding box.

After the second track is filled to capacity, if there are 4 ships in the holding box, a third track may be purchased which draws from that same holding box. A fourth and fifth or more could be purchased if all of the boxes of the previous tracks are filled and there is a 4 ship backlog.

The cost, as stated before, is 4 times the repair cost of the largest base hull of that track at the time of its construction. BBs, DNHs, and some others are more specialty ships and don't influence the cost.

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Thursday, July 21, 2022 - 09:36 pm: Edit

John, I'm having a hard time following your logic here. However, if I understand it correctly I would be paying be paying 6 EPs just add a second FF track for the Federation. Why would would I want to spend that kind of money when I can repair 6 FFs at an FRD in a single turn? Sure the FRD cost me 10 EPs to build, unless it was one of the ones listed on the at start OOB.

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Thursday, July 21, 2022 - 11:29 pm: Edit

Thomas, you're close. The FFB is a variant. It isn't a base hull. The cost of a second FF track would be 4 EPs.

I'm glad you chose the Federation FF for your example. I chose 4 times the repair cost so the cost to get cripples through the tracks wouldn't be efficient until the 4th or 5th ship. The idea of a second track would be to get the destroyed FFs which made a successful depot roll back in action sooner. The Federation builds a lot of FFs and can be expected to lose a lot of them causing a serious backlog. You can choose to repair 4 FFs, but then you're done. It's a one time gain for the EPs. A second DLR track is an investment which lasts for the rest of the game, or until the Capital is taken.

It can be debated how big the backlog should be and what the cost should be for a second track. A second track is just saying that there were some underestimations of how much DLR was going to be needed. Prior to the General War one of each was sufficient.

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Friday, July 22, 2022 - 08:00 pm: Edit

How do you figure the FFB is a variant of the FF? The 2020 SIT says the FFB is the base hull for FFB, FBE, FBS, and FBV. Even (R2.50) says the changes were significantly extreme that they were considered a new class.

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Saturday, July 23, 2022 - 01:02 pm: Edit

Thomas, nothing that follows is meant in a nasty, mean, or argumentative way. I just looked at the May 2020 Federation SIT which is the most recent one on the BBS. It clearly states in the notes at the right side of the FFB row that the FFB is a variant of the FF. Maybe you have a SIT which states differently. I don't know, but I see what I see.

In any case the point, while relevant, isn't urgent at all and isn't important enough to need hammering out here and now. It's off the topic of a proposal which is intended to get worthless survivers of combat back into service quicker than before.

Even if we hashed out the issue of the FFB being a variant or a base hull, which would as written in the proposal affect the cost of the track, someone else will point out the Tholians get one track for all of their ships.

So lets shelve the discussion of whether or not the FFB is a variant or a base hull. I've already said the cost and triggering event can be changed.

More important are the merits of the proposal. If ADB thinks there is merit we may see something like this end up in the rules. If not, we're done. Maybe ADB wants to do it a different way.

Answering your question as to why someone would want to do this depends on the game and individual. You have some cripples at repair points, a slew of wrecks in a holding box, and a pile of EPs needing something to do. You could repair those cripples now and get them back into action immediately, you could build another DLR track for the backed up holding box getting those wrecks back into action sooner than before, or you could spend the EPs on a third project altogether. It depends on the game situation. Currently there is no way to get the wrecks through the depot faster. I think there are plausible reasons that there could be.