Certain pieces of equipment can be damaged, decreasing its effectiveness and causing the piece to lose value. The effectiveness of a damaged module can be partially recovered through jury-rigging, trading one form of damage for another.
Each equipment can take damage from three different sources. There are five types of damage:
- Kinetic, caused by high-speed impacts. This can include heavy ringroid impacts as well as high-velocity ones from mass drivers or pulsed lasers.
- Acceleration, caused by sudden changes in velocity. This is typically caused by collisions, but can also occur from excessively powerful thrusters relative to ship mass.
- Thermal, caused by rapid heating. Typically caused by thrust exhaust, microwaves, and supercritical materials.
- Wear, accumulated by using the equipment. The rate of wear can be extensively tuned.
- Electromagnetic, caused by EMPs and electrically charged objects.
Equipment take different types of damage and have different penalties depending on their class. Within a given class, different pieces of equipment may offer greater resistances to certain types of damage.
Thrusters
Main thrusters, RCS, EI Kzinti Lesson, and the NANI can suffer from the same types of damage:
- Misalignment, caused by heavy impacts, causes thrusters to fire at an angle. Typically caused by ringroid impacts.
- Wear, caused by usage, causes thrusters to fire erratically, reducing effective thrust. Different thruster designs provide substantial resistances or vulnerabilities to this damage type.
- Choke, caused by high-velocity impacts, reduces thrust output.
The best way to jury-rig damaged thrusters depends on personal playstyle as well as one's autopilot selection. Advanced autopilots can account for bad thruster misalignment, while those relying on manual controls can find even minor misalignment extremely detrimental to handling.
Reactors
Reactors can suffer from the following types of damage:
- Jammed rods, caused by sudden changes in acceleration, cause larger temperature fluctuations, which can contribute to meltdown.
- Reactor leaks, caused by impacts, cause constant propellant loss as well as reduces the temperature the reactor can reach before going critical.
- Turbine Galling, caused by rapid heating, forces the reactor to run hotter for the same power generation, which can contribute to meltdown.
Reactor Leaks are typically the most dangerous damage type, as the propellant loss effectively places a time limit on your dive.
Mass Drivers
Kinetic weapons can suffer from the following types of damage:
- Misalignment, caused by impacts, causes the weapon to point off-center.
- Wear, caused by general usage, reduces muzzle velocity of projectiles.
- Warped Barrel, caused by rapid heating, reduces accuracy of fire
An optimal jury-rig largely depends on the presence of the NDCI Autopilot, which provides firing solutions. This reveals the misalignment and firing spread of the weapon, giving a captain the information they need to effectively jury rig their mass driver.