Federation Commander

[count_zero99uk]

Hi, im currently working on a campaign structure for some of my friends.

Im wanting to limit the ammount of ships that can be created each turn which i have done by stating that each type of base can only utilise so many points per turn (im using the points cost of the ships as the basis of this)

Now im trying to work out repairs. There are ship repairs in combat which seem to work out ok for the time, but after battle does the ship need to return to base for a refit? Or can it just sit in space and slowly rebuild itself?

My original thoughts were that the cost to repair in points would be the same as the damage control needed. And this repair is done when it docks up rather than the engineering team running round and using replicators to fix things.

Im thinking now as i write this that maybe if a ship has take 10% internal damage it has to go in for repairs.

Im interested in other peoples thoughts on this.

Thanks
brian.
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[mjwest]

Repairs in Federation Commander (unlike in SFB) are unlimited. So, if left in the context of a scenario with no time limit a completely devastated (but still as yet undestroyed) ship can completely repair itself by itself. It'll just take a while.

Now, this is admittedly an abstraction. In "reality" many of those repairs would be short-lived and would fail again in a limited time frame (i.e. outside the scope of the scenario). But, unfortunately, there are many ways to handle this from a campaign perspective.

A very simple method would be to say that any ship that is crippled during a scenario loses its repair capabilities AFTER the scenario in which it is crippled until it is withdrawn to a repair facility. Any ship that is not crippled will retain its repair capabilities for the next scenario. So, if, during the first scenario, the ship is crippled, it will still be able to repair itself both during that scenario and afterwards. However, in the second scenario, it cannot perform any repairs during the scenario or afterwards. To regain its repair capabilities, it must be withdrawn to a repair facility (base, FRD, whatever). (Obviously, regardless of repair capabilities, the shields are fully regenerated after each scenario.)

This keeps things simple, requires the use of repair facilities, but cuts out the record keeping. After a scenario, a ship is either fully repaired (if it has its repair capability) or completely unrepaired (if it loses its repair capability.

If that is too simple, it is pretty easy to modify it to include levels of reduced repairs as needed for the desired granularity.
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[Wolverin61]

I'd say that frame damage could only be repaired at a repair facility at least.
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[storeylf]

We used to check the ships at the end of the battle. If a ship was crippled it was crippled next battle, if it was damaged but less than cripple it was slightly damaged next battle (dam con * 3 starting damage I think was our last formula). We didn't track actual system damage between battles, but just rolled the damage at the start of the next battle. This represents what MWest was saying - the ship taped every back together but when they went to battle stations next time various systems went down as the the repairs didn't hold, or previously fine systems were overloaded or had been cannibalized for spare parts etc.

E.g. Cruiser ends with 90 internal damage and is well crippled. Next battle it starts crippled, and takes half its boxes as damage (so it starts better than it ended with, but is still knackered). We just had to record the ship as cripple.

Another Cruiser is damaged but not crippled and is recorded as damaged, it start next battle with 12 damage.

In either case going to some repair base allows for proper repairs.

Obviously you can go as far as you want with that, but starting with damaged ships can make for some interesting battles. It just depends on how much paperwork you want and how much it will actually affect things. We ended up ignoring frame damage, it was not worth tracking it for the 'value' added, you just started with full frame each battle.

[Maxwell Luther]

Assuming that:

1. Repairs use material broken down and reassembled by replicator technology...

2. Even with Replicators, there is only such much reusable raw material left after bits of the ship have been reduced to hot metal and vapor floating in space...

3. Ships stores contain excess raw material, but are limited by the size of the hull...

I'd say use the following:

1. After the battle, a ship can repair a limited amount of damage using internal stores and refabricated parts. Roll a number number of dice equal to the size of the hull (FF 1, DD 2, CL 3, CA 4, DN 5, BB 6) and multiply that by the Ships Repair Point total. That is the total number of repair points you have to spend.

2. After that, if the ship spends the next campaign turn 'Exploring' nearby planets or asteroid belts for raw materials, it is completely repaired and has supplies for further repairs. Alternately, they may dock at a FRD or Starbase for a refit. Until they do this, they retain any unrepairable damage.

3. Frame Damage is only repairable at a Starbase or a Fleet Repair Dock.

[Steve Cole]

It's not all replicators. Some of it is spare parts that are too hard to replicate. Some of it is switching to back up systems, or patching together parts of two systems. (For a long time, the second phone line in my house was using circuit #2 on the front half of the building and circuit #3 on the back half, because the other half of each circuit did not work.)

You can carve up a metalic asteroid (easily found) for more raw materials.

There are no end of supply and repair and support ships around, and you can borrow stuff from other ships.

During combat, you will (trust me) find a way to get it working even if it will only hold together for a short while.

SFB has some campaign rules to deal with ships that don't have access to support systems for repairs between scenarios. Didn't see a need for them in FC.
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[Maxwell Luther]

[storeylf]

That was the general aim in our campaigns - the ships, especially the bigger ones, should be seen as rather valuable. It makes fights much more interesting when neither side actually wants to lose their ships and will seek to disengage when things are going bad.

[paulgenna]

In our campaign we allow 5*damage control to be repaired and the rest has to be done at a SB. Sounds like we might be too light on repairs after battle. Of course we really want damaged ships to have be fought with.

[Sneaky Scot]

You could import some of the SFB rules (sort of). I don't have my SFB rules in front of me, but it basically says you repair the hull, you repair x*dmg control (DC) in power systems, y*DC in weapons, and z*DC in other systems that don't fit in those categories. This represents the efforts of repair ships attached to fleets on the front.

I don't have the x, y and z figures in front of me, but I'm sure some kind soul can add them!
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[rfeceo]

In our Early Years campaign I have boldly and recklessly stolen storeylf's repair rules from two or three campaigns ago. Minor damage (4 turns of DC) can be ignored and the ship treated as undamaged; damage up to 50% of its boxes is kept as "damaged", and more than 50% is crippled.

Between battles, ships can return to a base (base station or starbase) for repair (free!), but it uses their action for the next orders cycle. And there is danger - if the repair facility is destroyed while a ship (or ships) is (Are) being repaired, they are lost with the base.

Given the difficulty of building bases in this campaign (they are built at homeworld, and must be towed with tugs to their destination) the repair facilities are quite strategic, despite the mapless campaign system.