Maintenance

[Telengo]

I never know whether to post in here of the bugs report. So I am going to chance it and go in here, because of course this is the friendly board.

Just a quick post about "maintance overhaul". Because I think it may not be working quite right. It seems to come around quite quickly so I guess it is based on the amount of jumps the engine goes through. Anyway mine appeared in the equipment list last week (maybe Friday), and I ignored it as I was busy trading something. This turned into a save before I leave and see how long I can push it before it breaks. Well it is now Wednesday and I have been playing pretty much every night for several hours a night and bouncing all around the place and only had two fuel leaks and no mis-jumps. I get the feeling that something should have broke by now and it hasn't, which leads me here to ask is there a small bug with this?

And I don't know if this is connected or not but I arrived at a station last night at the end of my delivery contract after finally getting the gem-stones contracts etc. And there was no delivery contracts at all on offer and there were no ships for sale. Very strange! So I hoped off to a tech 12 planet nearby and the same thing, no contracts and no ships. Off to another tech 11 planet same again. Very stange.

I am using version 1.73.1

[Cody]

Hi Telengo.

First off, I'd recommend upgrade to 1.73.2.

Maintenance seems to be variable, but I suspect it is time related. One of the Minds will know. It's well worth paying as it keeps your ship value up. 2.5K on overhaul can add 20K.

No idea about the lack of contracts - I don't do them.


Regards

[Cmdr James]

There are two things related to a maintenance overhaul.

Firstly, if you dont do it, things will break. Not immediately, but you are always running a risk. Think what happens if you get a fuel leak in a misjump.

The other, probably bigger deal is that the state of repair impacts upon the resale value of the ship. If it isnt looked after, then you dont get a good price.

[Telengo]

Oh yes I am OK with the conequences, I just thought that things would have broken by now. Which is why I am letting it go on a bit further to see if they do actually break.

Which is really the reason for my post, do they actually break?

Talking about the resale value, I feel hard done to. There is a Cobra MKIII which is selling for 850000.0 and has less equipment on it than I sold mine for and I only got a poxy 217000! Damn those second hand ship dealers! I bet the mileage on this Python ET is clocked as well you know.

[Cmdr James]

Some equipment available from backstreet grey markets may fail on you, but I dont think that in the current versions you will see equipmant break from lack of servicing as long as it was fitted by a pro.

You will see fuel leaks, and more misjumps, and if it doesnt happen now, you can expect that future versions of oolite may have equipment fail due to lack of servicing.

Equipment does get damaged by combat, this is unrelated to servicing, even freshly fitted stuff can be hit.

[Kaks]

But there's nothing that could stop an enterprising OXP maker to make your equipment break depending on the last time you serviced it...

Wait, there is... Should we include something like player.ship.lastServiced to the mix?

[Cody]

Yes!

[Thargoid]

You could probably do it anyway, based on purchase of a maintenance service ("EQ_RENOVATION") and the number of jumps (or perhaps dockings?) since then.

Set an incremental counter to signify the chance of a random failure, which is reset by a maintenance service.

I must admit this thread did get me thinking on this topic earlier, might give it a quick look later and see if there's milage in it.

[Kaks]

All good points, Thargoid. No need to add yet another variable, it's fully doable already! If the oxp doesn't find a myoxp_jumpsSinceLastService mission variable, it can simply set it to 0 and start counting from there!

[Cody]

BTW is there a minimum TL where an overhaul is available? If so that might have to be adjusted. Cheaper at low TL, but less reliable, maybe.

[Thargoid]

BTW is there a minimum TL where an overhaul is available? If so that might have to be adjusted. Cheaper at low TL, but less reliable, maybe.

Tech level 6 for equipment, so 7 in-game.

The price varies depending on the value of the ship, it's a percentage of that iirc.

[Commander McLane]

BTW is there a minimum TL where an overhaul is available?

Yes, it's 7.

[Thargoid]

All good points, Thargoid. No need to add yet another variable, it's fully doable already! If the oxp doesn't find a myoxp_jumpsSinceLastService mission variable, it can simply set it to 0 and start counting from there!

From a brief discussion with A_C, it seems that there is already some possibility for equipment to be damaged (or broken in strict mode) if a ship is not maintained. So there's no need for an OXP to do it.

Specifically the risks from lack of maintenance are a misjump, a fuel leak, cargo being destroyed, equipment being damaged or "cosmetic" damage (reduces your ships trade-in value, plus increases the risk of problems at the next jump).

[Cody]

Thanks Thargoid.

That clarifies things nicely.

[Ramirez]

As it's easy to miss the overhaul option in the equipment list, how about a simple console message to say that an overhaul is due? Is there an existing overhaul timer thing that can be looked up by an OXP script?