Repairs, Maintenance, and Salvage

Everything breaks. The question is whether it breaks somewhere it can be fixed, with parts that can be found, by a crew that knows what they are doing.

This chapter covers damage states, field repairs, port repairs, self-repair and jury-rigs, the maintenance clock, salvage operations, part availability, and the economics of a ship that is not entirely paid off.

Damage States

Ships do not simply have hit points until they reach zero. The crew lives in the ship. They feel it get worse as the damage accumulates. The GM should describe what is happening at each threshold so the crew knows what they are dealing with.

Hull Points

Hull Points represent the ship's structural integrity: the hull plating, frame strength, pressure sealing, and overall physical cohesion of the vessel.

System Points

System Points represent the ship's operational integrity: the ability of its electronics, software, and subsystems to function correctly under combat stress, damage, and cascading failures.

When System Points reach 0, the ship is functionally disabled even if its hull remains intact: engines offline, weapons offline, screens offline, navigation offline. Life support may continue as a protected subsystem.

System Damage (distinct from System Points damage) refers to targeted damage to specific named systems. A ship with full System Points can still have a disabled Navigation Suite from a precise ion weapon hit. These are not the same track.

Describing Damage at the Table

The GM should narrate damage rather than announcing numbers. "The railgun round punches through your port shield emitter housing. The screen on that side collapses and the damage-control board is screaming" communicates more than "you take 5 Hull Damage and 1 System Damage to Defensive Control."

Players who know what systems are damaged can make better decisions about what to protect and what to sacrifice.

Field Repairs

Field repairs are what the crew can do during an encounter or immediately after, without access to a port or proper shipyard.

Emergency Repair Action (During Combat)

Any crew member with access to the Engineering console may perform an Emergency Repair during structured play.

• Trigger: One or more ship systems have System Damage; or the ship has taken Hull Damage during this encounter.
• Check: Craft Trial. Difficulty depends on the damage:

• Cost: 1 crew action.
• Outcome on success: Remove 1 System Damage from one specified system. Each Boon beyond the first removes 1 additional System Damage from the same or an adjacent system.
• Note: Emergency Repair does not restore Hull Points. It addresses System Damage only.

Damage Control Action (During Combat)

Performed by the Defensive Control officer or any crew member with access to damage control systems.

• Trigger: Active cascade failure, hull breach, compartment fire, or ongoing System Damage spreading.
• Check: Average Craft Trial (increases with severity).
• Cost: 1 crew action.
• Outcome on success: Stop one ongoing cascade or seal one compartment or suppress one fire.
• Failure state: The cascade or breach continues. Banes may worsen it.

Emergency Patches (After Combat)

After structured play ends, the crew may perform emergency patches: restoring basic function to damaged systems before reaching a port.

An Emergency Patch is made with a Craft Trial. Difficulty follows the same table as Emergency Repair. Success means the patched system functions until the end of the next scene or the next encounter, whichever comes first. It is not a permanent fix; it is a stopgap.

Each net Success beyond the minimum may:

• Extend the patch's duration (additional scene or encounter)
• Improve the patch's reliability (remove one conditional failure trigger)
• Restore additional partial function to the patched system

Patch complications from Banes:

What Cannot Be Fixed in the Field

Some damage requires a port or shipyard to address properly:

• Hull Points (structural damage requires proper welding, plating, and sealing — not available in the field)
• Destroyed components (a burned-out navigation computer must be replaced, not patched)
• Damage requiring specialized equipment (military armor repairs, exotic system work)
• Cascades that have progressed to catastrophic hull damage
• Builder-specific failures requiring proprietary tools or firmware access

Port Repairs

Full repair at a port, station, or shipyard restores the ship to operational status. The time and cost depend on the severity of damage and the quality of facilities available.

Hull Repair

Restoring Hull Points requires dry-dock access, hull plating, welding and sealing equipment, and structural assessment.

Repair cost tiers:

• Cosmetic: Minor
• Light to Moderate: Moderate
• Critical: Significant
• Disabled to Catastrophic: Major to Campaign-defining

System Repair

Restoring System Damage and clearing damaged systems depends on the system and the parts required.

Repair Quality Check: A crew can choose to perform cheaper repairs by accepting a quality Craft Trial. A success means cost savings. A failure means the repair holds for now but adds 1 Bane Die to the next repair of the same system and may fail under combat stress at GM discretion.

What Requires Specialized Facilities

Some repairs cannot be done at a frontier port or standard station:

• Military composite armor repair (requires military-certified materials)
• Military screen array or EW system repair (requires authorized service with manufacturer codes)
• Gravitic or phase system repair (requires Caliphate or military-specific support in most cases)
• Patchwork ship systems with Rival or Forbidden integration (each carries repair complications; military components in civilian hulls add Bane Dice to repair Trials)
• Core system rebuilds (replacing a reactor is a major shipyard project, not a one-day repair)

Self-Repair and Jury-Rigs

A crew without port access is not necessarily without options. The question is how good those options are and what they cost.

What a Crew Can Do Without Port Access

A crew with a Workshop module, reasonable spare parts, and an engineer with Craft skill can handle:

• Emergency Patches (see above)
• Field replacement of standard components with salvaged equivalents
• Jury-rigs to bypass damaged systems with improvised solutions
• Minor hull patching (does not restore HP, but stops atmosphere loss and prevents cascade from structural damage spreading)
• Ammunition manufacture for kinetic weapons from appropriate raw materials (Hard Craft Trial; output is half a magazine)

Jury-Rigs

A Jury-Rig is a deliberately imperfect repair. The engineer knows the result is not clean. The ship needs to function anyway.

A successful Jury-Rig restores function but the system automatically gains one complication appropriate to the work.

Jury-rig examples:

• The patched drive works but produces a visible signature bloom.
• The salvaged navigation suite finds established seams but adds a Bane Die when locating frontier routes.
• The jury-rigged weapon mount fires normally but has a 1-in-6 chance of jamming on any attack roll that generates a Calamity.
• The field-welded hull section holds pressure but the structural rating is reduced: treat Armor as 1 lower in that facing.

Jury-rig procedure: The engineer makes a Craft Trial at the normal repair difficulty. On success, the system functions with one complication (GM chooses or allows the player to propose a plausible one). On failure, the system does not function yet but the parts may be preserved for another attempt.

Jury-Rig Degradation

Jury-rigs are not meant to last. When a jury-rigged system is stressed (combat, pushed to full output, or exposed to additional damage), the GM may call for a Craft Trial (Average) to determine if the rig holds.

On failure, the jury-rig fails: the system goes offline and must be addressed again. On a Calamity, the failure is worse than the original damage (the improvised fix caused a cascade, the bodged weld failed structurally, the salvaged component broke into the system it was bridging).

Maintenance Clock

A ship is not a static object. Every system requires regular service, calibration, fluid replacement, software updates, filter cleaning, mechanical inspection, and component replacement. A crew that ignores this eventually pays for it.

The Maintenance Threshold

Each ship has a Maintenance Threshold: the number of sessions (or approximately equivalent travel time) before routine maintenance is required. The typical commercial hull needs maintenance every 4–6 sessions of active use; this represents several weeks of real operation.

The GM tracks this. The crew may not know how close they are to the threshold unless they check.

Factors that accelerate maintenance need:

• Sustained combat (each combat encounter counts as 2 sessions for maintenance purposes)
• Patchwork or mixed-builder ships (add 1 session per Rival integration to the rate)
• Operating in hostile environments (corrosive atmospheres, extreme temperature swings, heavy particle radiation)

Factors that delay maintenance need:

• Integrated Architecture (reduce sessions between maintenance by 20%)
• Workshop module and active engineering attention during travel
• Kharos hull (their design tolerates deferred maintenance better than Viridian)

Skipping Maintenance

Each session past the Maintenance Threshold without service, the GM adds one Maintenance Fault to the ship. A Maintenance Fault is a persistent, unaddressed issue that will eventually become a problem.

At the start of any session where the ship has outstanding Maintenance Faults, the GM rolls once per Fault. On a failure result (determined by GM using however many dice seem appropriate for narrative weight), one Fault manifests: a system experiences an unexpected failure, a power routing issue appears at the worst moment, or a component degrades to the point of needing emergency attention.

Common Maintenance Faults:

• Cooling system degradation: Heat Threshold reduced by 2 until serviced
• Fuel line contamination: Speed reduced by 1 until serviced
• Fire control calibration drift: Add 1 Bane Die to all weapon attacks until serviced
• Navigation sensor misalignment: Add 1 Bane Die to all seam-location Trials until serviced
• Hull seal micro-fractures: 1 Hull Damage per encounter where the ship exceeds 80% of max Speed
• Power distribution brownout: Power Capacity reduced by 1 until serviced

Maintenance Procedure

Performing proper maintenance requires:

What: Inspection, calibration, fluid and filter replacement, software update, and component integrity check across all core systems.

Where: At minimum a serviceable port with the right tools. A Workshop module allows maintenance without external facilities.

Time: 1–2 days for routine maintenance at a proper facility. 2–4 days if the crew is doing it themselves with a Workshop module.

Cost: Minor (affordable from small contract payouts). Patchwork ships with multiple Rival integrations pay more: the parts cost increases and some components may require special sourcing.

Check: No Craft Trial required for routine maintenance at an authorized yard or with a Workshop module. A Craft Trial (Average) is required if maintenance is performed under poor conditions, with partial parts, or in the field without a Workshop.

What it resets: Maintenance clears all Maintenance Faults, resets the Maintenance Clock, and allows the GM to describe what the crew found during service (foreshadowing future problems, recovering minor usable salvage, or identifying a hidden complication from the last combat).

Salvage Operations

A disabled or derelict ship is a resource. Weapons, modules, core systems, cargo, and sometimes information are recoverable from wrecks. Salvage is how frontier crews supplement income and how ships get upgraded without paying full price.

Salvage Check

When the crew approaches a derelict with intent to strip it, the GM determines what is available and in what condition. The crew then performs a salvage operation.

Base difficulty:

The primary skill is Craft for component work and Pilot for maneuvering grapples and salvage rigs. A Salvage Rig module adds Boons to extraction Trials.

What Can Be Recovered

Boons on salvage:

• 1 Boon: Reduced extraction time
• 1 Boon: Preserved component condition
• 2 Boons: Concealed evidence of salvage (serial number removal, logging gaps)
• 2 Boons: Recovered an additional unexpected useful component

Banes on salvage:

• 1 Bane: Component is more damaged than it appeared
• 1 Bane: Extraction consumed more time than expected; mission time pressure
• 2 Banes: The salvage operation is detectable; authorities may be alerted
• 2 Banes: A connected system on the wreck is dangerous (power spike, gas leak, armed ordnance)
• 3+ Banes: The wreck is more complicated than it appeared (hidden crew, planted evidence, corporate claim, military trap)

Legal Questions About Salvage

Salvage law varies significantly by power territory.

Universal: A ship that fires a distress beacon or has living crew aboard is not derelict. Stripping it is piracy.

Irnan Directorate: Formal salvage rights are established by filing with the nearest relay before stripping a derelict. Failure to file means the crew may be charged with unauthorized salvage if the original owners can be identified.

Funtari Confederacy: Frontier salvage is largely practical. The Confederacy asks only that crew file within a reasonable period and that military hardware is properly declared.

Shoiyan Concord: The Concord tracks ship manifests carefully. A salvaged Concord ship with listed cargo creates paperwork obligations the crew may not want.

Jaziri Caliphate: Caliphate salvage law is strict. Derelict ships in Caliphate-adjacent space are presumed to be Caliphate property until proven otherwise.

Antaean League: Salvage is commercial. If someone paid for salvage rights before you got there, you are trespassing on a business arrangement.

Salvage at Scale

A small crew (3–5 people) without a Heavy Salvage Rig can strip:

• Cargo, small components, and Light weapons from a wreck without special equipment
• Standard weapons with time and a Workshop
• Heavy weapons and modules only with a Salvage Rig module; without one, it is a Severe Craft Trial with significant damage risk to the component

A large derelict ship with capital weapons and military modules is not a one-session salvage job for a small crew. It requires either heavy equipment, a larger crew, or significant time.

Part Availability

The right part at the right time is the difference between a ship that flies and a ship that sits in port accumulating fees.

Builder Parts

Builder-matched parts are the preferred option for every repair. They install cleanly, they work with the ship's diagnostics, and they carry the builder's Signature properties if applicable.

Generic Components

Generic commercial components are widely available at almost any port. They are not builder-matched; they work but they do not provide builder benefits and they impose Open Integration Bane Dice when used to replace native systems.

Generic components are cheaper than builder-matched parts. They are the frontier crew's default option.

Military-Grade and Exotic Components

Availability by Territory

A quick reference for how hard it is to get parts depending on where the crew is operating.

Insurance and Ship Debt

Many ships are not fully paid for. This creates ongoing financial pressure that shapes what contracts the crew takes and what risks they can afford.

Ship Debt

A ship bought on installment plan carries a monthly debt payment to the financing institution: typically a bank in the buyer's home power, a corporate finance arm, or an Antaean commercial broker.

Payment: The payment is the monthly figure from Chapter Twelve: on standard terms, 2.5% of the financed amount, due every month for ten years. The GM tracks it as a line in the ship's monthly nut rather than as session-by-session bookkeeping, unless the crew cannot pay.

Missing Payments

A payment is missed when it is thirty days late. The lender's response escalates by count, not by amount.

Repo Agents: Debt recovery specialists are a fixture of the Five Powers economy. They are licensed to repossess flagged ships by any means within their power's legal framework. Some are creative about what "within legal framework" means. What a lender posts, who can claim it, and how a hunter finds a posted ship are covered under the bounty market in the GM Guide.

Curing a default: The crew pays the arrears, the late fees, and the bounty the lender has posted, whether or not anyone has claimed it. The lender adds all of it to the balance. The flag clears within a week in the lender's power and within a month elsewhere.

Repossession: A repossessed ship is auctioned fast, at a quarter of its condition value. The crew still owes the difference between the auction price and the outstanding balance (Chapter Twelve). A crew that loses a 122,500cr Model 20 twenty-two months in owes about 90,000cr, receives credit for about 30,600cr, and walks away owing about 59,000cr with no ship. Lenders sell that paper too.

Work Bond default: Refusing an assigned job is a missed payment. Three refusals put the ship on the board like any other.

Paying Off a Ship

A ship paid in full carries no debt. For many crews, this is a campaign milestone: the moment the ship is actually theirs.

Accelerated payoff: A crew that generates significant surplus income can pay down principal faster. This is a campaign goal worth tracking.

Renegotiating terms: A crew with good contacts and a solid payment history may be able to renegotiate terms after a major contract. This is a social/commercial Skill Trial.