With all the talk these days about items or effects that alter ship appearance long term. I was wondering if it would possible to add persistent damage.

My thought was to simply adjust the current ship damage decals so that they correspond to ship injuries.

So as you pile up ship injuries the appearance of your ship would reflect that damage until those injuries were repaired. You could even leave the existing decal system in place, so that it looks like you can only self repair without components to a certain point, if that makes any sense.

And by tying it to the existing injury system, you do not have to create a new mechanic for it.

I think it would be great after spending 6 missions in b'tran, if you pulled into ESD or flew through sector space looking like you had just left the fight with Khan.

Well, i havent thought about the details, but i think its a great idea if it can be implemented,

I think that it is a good idea, and it is possible with current mecanics. Currently damage is visually tied to our hull percentage. Perhaps they could replicate a similar mechanic to the Ship Injury system as the OP stated.

Yes, Sorry for the confusion.

My thought was to not alter the existing damage tied to hull level at all, but simply add the decals to the existing injury system so that the appearance of damage would persist for as long as you left the injuries unrepaired.

Also this would mean that only folks who play on advanced or Elite modes would see a difference.

Yeah I don't see why this couldn't be done. And it's a good idea. Furthermore. Why are we not yet seeing ship repairs in those floating ship hangers outside ESD and having similar ones added to DS9 and all other hubs including Klingon. Seems like a much better aesthetic solution then beaming down. Pull into a hanger and select your repairs. While it's being worked on enter your interiors and headto sick bay to treat yourself and your BoFFs

I don't see why they couldn't do this with the existing game mechanics. Just add a separate check to apply the decals that already exist. If you have X amount of ship "injuries", leave the <75% hull decals on, X+Y amount, leave the <50%, etc. etc.

I support this idea. I think it would be awesome to fly through sector space, showing all the damage on your ship after a rough encounter with the Borg Once you fix the damage, the decals go away, be it with components or at a starbase.

To be quite honest, with these new "Kit" modifications released with season 3, i think it is possible.

Kits with the appearance of external damage that refer to "patchwork" repairs done by the crew. For most of them they have overridden safeties to coax out more power for specific items. Plus they will be GREAT for roleplayers.

They can be Jury rigged systems!

For Example:

EPS Bypass:
+20 Beam Weapon Damage
-10 Crew
-10 Cannon Damage
-10 Heavy Cannon Damage

This can take the physical form of crumpled panelling, hull scarring in one section of the ship.

Emergency Forcefields:
+35 Hull Strength
+15 Hazard System
-10 Shield Strength
-10 Starship Emitters

This can be small forcefields dotted around he ship containing the exposed sections.

Fused Warp Coil Shunt:
+20 Impulse Speed
+5 Turn Rate
-15 Deflector Dish
-15 Deflector Field

This can have a visual effect of one warp nacelle flickering and dimmed bussard collector plus flickering lights in that region.

One can argue, Why would someone choose to have damage on their ship? Well why do people have borg pieces on their ship!?

Whaddya think?

Question on this though cause injury effects fade over time but they stay in your system to be fixed so would these decals fade with the effect?

My thought was that "hull damage" decals would fade as normal, but damage decals attached to "injures" would only go away when the injury was removed. either by components or at the repair guy at a starbase.

I liked the other suggestion that came up, of allow us to access the ship repair menu from an empty "drydock" outside of a starbase. That seems like a simple way to add some neat interaction to the orbital space around starbases that are otherwise just eyecandy to fly through. And all they would need to do is add the repair engineer script to the drydock object, and set an appropriate rage for activation.

The jury rigged repairs stuff is interesting, but would take a lot more back end game engine work. Id be happy just with the cosmetic changes