In the real world there is a good reason why patrol ships are not battleship sized: small ships are way cheaper to maintain than bigger ones.
I propose to implement
- wear and tear for every ship, drone and module used even with normal use the same way module damage from overloading occurs - just much less for normal use
- a recource cost for repair which must be met both for repairing on stations and for repair modules (hull, armor, shield - not for automatic shield recharge which is included in ship maintenance), based on the material cost to initially build the ship.
- repair modules can only apply a certain amount of recources per cycle - the bigger the module the more recources can be applied in a cycle
- ancillary repair modules additionally require spare parts like other repair modules
- ships with a ship maintenance bay should be able to repair ships quickly while stored within the maintenance bay and not require repair modules for it (they are included in the maintenance bay). Such repair still requires spare parts.
- industrial ships are built for efficiency and low maintenance and should have low maintenance cost
- combat ships are built for performance and tend to have high maintenance cost - the more complex the higher the cost.
- modules built for efficiency might have a lower maintenance cost than those built for performance
- station space docks can repair any size of ships quickly
Effects:
- actively flying ships will now have a maintenance cost. This will not stop the massive proliferation of capital and supercapital ships, but it might make using smaller ships for regular duty desirable from a cost perspective.
- supercapital ratting will have a high associated maintenance cost, making smaller ships more competetive in relation.
- shield tanked ships do not need their armor or hull repaired often but might be more complex and thus have a higher base ship maintenance cost.
- logistic repair ships cannot do so indefinitely but require spare parts (much like turret weapons require ammunition)
- limited supply of recources that can be carried within logistic repair ships may require actual battlefield logistics from transport ships to get more spare parts to the troops (this is a major factor of real world warfare)
- bigger ships require more recources to be maintained than smaller ones.
- small repair modules will have a small effect on large ships
Necessary implementations:
- the already existing mechanic for overloading modules applied to active use w/o overloading
- the already existing mechanic for using charges applied to every repair module (ancillary repair modules requiring two separate kinds of charges)
- ships and modules are to be assigned a maintenance interval defining how quickly wear and tear occurs
- repairs costing mineral recources (on stations) or specialized spare part charges (for modules or stations) in addition to isk cost (if applicable), based on the item’s initial build cost
- ship maintenance bays enabled to repair ships as if a repair module of every type was built in that can be used on ships stored within the bay. Repairs cost minerals or spare part charges.
What do you think?