Damage and repair

Your ship has a shield and a hull. The shield soaks up shots and recovers on its own; the hull doesn’t. Whatever gets past the shield eats into hull integrity, and with a low hull the ship can suffer damage to its systems that weakens it until you repair it. Repairs are done at stations, with credits and scrap.

Hull

Maximum hull comes from your level, attribute points in armor, your equipment (the ship’s armor) and the class: a Battleship has far more hull than an Explorer at the same level. Integrity shows on the HUD and in the station’s MARKET tab (“hull 80 / 140”).

The only damage in the game comes from shots: there is no collision damage and no damage from the heat of stars. Before reaching the hull, a shot goes through the four-sided shield; see Combat basics.

The hull does not regenerate on its own. It goes back to full when you:

repair at a station;
level up;
respawn after your ship is destroyed.

Damage to systems

With your hull below 30%, every shot that gets past the shield has a 15% chance of breaking one of the ship’s systems. Each system can only break once, so you have at most three damaged systems at a time:

Damage	Effect
Engine failing	−20% speed (on impulse and afterburner)
Unstable warp	−30% warp speed
Weak shield	−30% max shield

The game warns you about every new damaged system, and the SHIPYARD shows the damage on your active ship. It doesn’t go away on its own: only a repair at a station fixes it. Each ship keeps its own damage, even while it sits in the garage.

Repair

Dock at a station and open the MARKET tab. The Repair hull row shows your integrity, how much the repair costs and how much scrap it uses. The REPAIR button brings the hull back to full and fixes all damaged systems.

The price has two parts:

Credits: 2 ¢ per missing hull point.
Scrap: one unit for every 20 missing points (rounded up). It comes out of your hold and backpack. If you’re short on scrap, the station sells you the rest for 8 ¢ each, added to the price.

Example: you’re missing 100 hull points. The repair costs 200 ¢ and 5 scrap. With only 2 scrap in the hold, the station sells you the other 3 and the repair comes to 224 ¢.

Scrap comes from downed pirates (around 10 per kill, more if you’re lucky), surface containers and wrecks. It’s worth keeping some around: bought at repair time, it costs more than it’s worth when you sell it. See Workshop.

Equipment has its own wear, separate from the hull, and its own repair in the same tab; see Equipment.

When your ship is destroyed

If your hull hits zero, the ship is destroyed and you respawn at your respawn point: your base (if you have a colony set as your base) or the last station or kiosk where you saved your point, whichever is more recent. Without either, you respawn at a random point in space.

Outside matches, dying costs you:

Loss	Details
Ore in the hold	All ore is lost; the rest of the hold stays
10% of your credits	Deducted on the spot
A bit of experience	Your level never drops

You respawn with a full hull, in the same ship. In the arena, dying costs nothing.

Destruction in PvP

With war mode on and a valid war license, being destroyed by another pilot is different: the ship is lost for good, it becomes a wreck with part of the cargo, and the license insurance pays back part of its value. See PvP and wrecks and War license.

Tips

Keep an eye on your hull: below 30%, every shot can turn into damage. Pulling back before that is cheaper.
An “Unstable warp” slows down your escape and your trip home; repair before a long journey.
If you run out of fuel with no way out, the emergency tow brings your ship back with the cargo, without the losses of dying.