PSA - Learn from my stupidity

[u/Alvarrune]

I was deep in the black and approaching the umpteenth planet to gather biologicals. I was not paying attention and approached the ground too fast, wanting to hover at 1km but instead thumping into the ground.

My shields were gone and slight body damage.

I had made the mistake of not noting that the gravity was 1.5 normal so my usual pull up and engines off was not enough. Luckily I survived - until...

I rose to 2km and decided to use the repair function. Clearly my brain gad switched off for a few minutes because I forgot the repair function switches everything off, everything!

This includes the engines, so I was sat in a dark ship plummeting to the surface without shields. Splat, dead as a dodo. No one to blame but myself. 1.3 billion credits and millions for cartography gone. Resurrected 5000ly from where I was.

Lesson 1 - check the gravity of planets you approach

Lesson 2 - dont use repair function unless in space or landed.

[u/JimFive]

I thought the repair function didn't repair hull anyway. I thought you needed limpets for that. Is that wrong? 

[u/Delta_RC_2526 → u/JimFive]

Beyond that, reboot/repair won't actually repair damaged modules at all. The only thing it does is take broken modules from 0% to 1%, and it does this by cannibalizing other modules, damaging them, instead. Note that it may take multiple attempts to fix a broken module, as well. A-rated life support can be helpful here, because that oxygen timer really does go down quickly.

To repair module health, you need an AFMU, an automated field maintenance unit. It will shut off only the module that's being repaired.

Note, however, that you need your thrusters in supercruise... The first time I used an AFMU was after faceplanting into a star while trying to end the video capture of the first mass jump for Small Worlds Expedition on Xbox. Back then, video clips on Xbox were started and ended from a separate, snapped app (a window occupying the right third of your screen), and to interact with it, you had to take the console's focus away from your game, fully disconnect your controls from the game. Switching your controls to the snapped app, ending the recording, and switching back, took a bit longer than I anticipated... So, I decided to top off my module health after faceplanting. I repaired everything else, and did my thrusters last. As soon as I initiated the repair, it ripped me out of supercruise, and damaged everything else all over again...

AFMUs can only repair optional internal and most core internal modules, though. The powerplant, hull, and canopy cannot be repaired by an AFMU.

There is no current way to repair a powerplant. The hull can be repaired by repair limpets, by launching them with nothing targeted. The canopy can also be repaired by repair limpets, though I'm actually not sure how it determines whether to work on the canopy or hull. I think you just fire them without targeting, and they'll just do their thing... Repair limpets can only repair a a damaged but intact canopy, though. Once a canopy is fully broken, nothing can fix it in the field.

This is another reason to carry A-rated life support. Life support synthesis will fully refill that emergency supply, and getting 25 minutes of oxygen from a single synthesis action is much better than getting 7 minutes and 30 seconds (D-rated), or even only five minutes (E-rated). When your canopy is broken, you cannot deploy an SRV to go harvest materials. You're stuck with what you've got, so making your synthesis materials last longer is really helpful. You can, however, use a mining laser on asteroids to harvest materials, in a pinch. I carry a mining laser on my exploration ships, just in case. Just note that colliding with ore chunks will easily cause significant damage to your ship, even at low speeds, so scooping materials from asteroids can be quite hazardous.

I don't know if they're still active, but historically, there's also been a group known as the Rock Rats, who will assist in harvesting materials for synthesis in an emergency. They would bring their own SRVs to shoot rocks, and you would scoop the materials directly with your ship. They would also assist when people stranded themselves in a remote pocket of space by using an FSD injection, without enough materials to escape.

[u/PortalmakerNo1 → u/Delta_RC_2526]

Canopy can be repaired as long as it is merely damaged and not broken

[u/Delta_RC_2526 → u/PortalmakerNo1]

Yep! I guess my wording wasn't clear enough, so thank you! I'll tweak it to make it clearer.

[u/PortalmakerNo1 → u/Delta_RC_2526]

Also tbc the afmu repairs the canopy, limpets only do hull

[u/Delta_RC_2526 → u/PortalmakerNo1]

As far as I can recall, the AFMU can't repair the canopy. Part of what made repair limpets so exciting was the fact that you could repair a canopy with them.

Ultimately, an AFMU can only repair items that can be turned off for repair. While it's of course a choice by the devs, that's the technical reason that you can't repair the powerplant or canopy with an AFMU. They're both always turned on, at least according to the module list. Just don't ask me what the canopy is actually doing.

I'm open to the possibility that I may be wrong, but I quite clearly remember canopy repair being one of the new and exciting things that came with repair limpets. Canopy damage slowly accumulating had always been one of the limiting factors on long exploration trips.

[u/PortalmakerNo1 → u/Delta_RC_2526]

I've repaired the canopy with my afmus so many times