SHIP REPAIR COMMANDS NOW IN THE GAME
by Hazed
The new version of the server code that was put in yesterday contains the first code that directly relates to ship fighting – the ship repair code.
Now, any location that has been flagged with the Ship Repair property will allow players to fix up any damage their ships have incurred.
The command to repair your ship is ‘REPAIR SHIP’. This fixes up everything that is wrong with it. Later, if it turns out to be a useful addition, Alan will add in the option to repair individual items – for example, you could patch up a leaky hull while leaving your computer sub-par if you need to save money. But right now, it’s all or nothing.
You can get an estimate of how much the repair will cost with ‘REPAIR SHIP ESTIMATE’. Bear in mind that the ship repairs use raw materials purchased from the exchange so the price will vary from planet to planet – it pays to shop around, unless your damage is so severe you can’t make it to another planet without your ship disintegrating around your ears (or equivalent). It also means there may be differences between the actual cost and the estimated cost of the repairs. The shorter the period between the call for an estimate and the request to repair, the less likely there is to be a significant change.
“But how can I check out the new repair command when ship fighting itself is not implemented yet?” I hear you cry. Quite right. Obviously, your ship must be damaged before it can be repaired. Well, Alan had this very problem when he was writing the code, so he added a command to intentionally mess up your ship. ‘DAMAGE’ gives you a list of options for how you can damage different bits of your ship. When Alan first told me about this command I thought it meant he could damage any ship, and I really wanted to be able to use this to deal with people who annoy me – but no, you can only break your own ship. Shame. Still, the command will let you play around with the repair function.
Note that since this is actually test code, damaging your ship won’t update the status panel on the fly – you will have to use the ‘ST’ command to see what has happened to your ship, or log off and back on again to update the status panel.
What’s more, it won’t cost you anything to experiment, because there is no charge for repairs at the moment. Although the invoice will tell you what you have been charged, actually no money will be taken out of your bank account. That will change once ship fighting itself is in, but meanwhile the only way you will need repairs is to deliberately poke holes in your ship, so you can experiment without incurring any monetary loss.
By the way, you can’t repair sensors and jammers, you have to buy new ones. Details of how and where to do that will be supplied when the code is ready.
POs should make sure they have a ship repair place on their planet, and that it has the necessary property. If your planet was created using the auto-link function then the landing pad should be a repair yard.
Otherwise you can fall back on the various repair yards in Sol – Earth, Mars and Mercury all have repair facilities.
