DEVELOPMENT SNAPSHOT #100 — From Plan #87 to the Game: Field Repair Caps and Arsenal Repairs

This morning's post is the 100th on this developer blog. For the milestone, here's the follow-up to a plan I wrote up a week ago. In #87 I proposed splitting battle-damaged equipment into what can be fixed in the field and what only a rear arsenal can restore. Yesterday steps 1 through 5 of that plan landed in main. Below I go through what the plan turned into, what is still open, and the actual screens.

The Regiment window (an actual screen from the Debug build). A new "Damaged equipment" row now sits below "Missing equipment".

The problem before

Damage and wear that equipment picks up in battle stay after the battle, and field repairs run every day at midnight. But repair capacity only came from a few lines with a research effect (such as biometal types and military trucks), so most equipment never recovered. The lines that could repair went all the way back to factory-new with field tools alone, and there was no way to fix anything in the rear.

1. Maintainability: field repairs stop at a cap

Equipment now has a field repair cap. The defaults by equipment category are 90% for infantry gear, 85% for armor, 75% for support equipment, 70% for vehicles and horses, 60% for aircraft and 50% for naval equipment. Each type can override this within 50–90% (the initial master data has no overrides yet, so the category defaults apply). Health is set by whichever is worse, damage or wear, and field repairs never go past the cap.

2. A base repair capacity for every type

Even types without a research effect now recover slowly up to the cap, with 0.05 work per day for each unit. The research effect (repair work rate) only adds speed and never lifts the cap. Destroyed equipment is still out of scope.

The commander and Unit strength part of the same window. The strength bars show Current against Fully equipped, followed by the missing and damaged equipment rows.

3. At the cap, only the equipment goes back to an arsenal

After the midnight field repair, equipment that has hit its cap and can't be fixed further in the field is sent automatically to the nearest arsenal of its own nation by land (a region with a weapons workshop). Only the equipment goes; the unit carries on with what it has left. The trip there and back takes as long as an equipment shipment on the same land route, at 100 km per day with a minimum of one day. If there is no arsenal or no route, the equipment stays in place and is checked again the next day. From departure until it returns, it counts toward neither strength, crew assignment nor battle losses.

4. The arsenal repairs with the same work points as new production

When the equipment arrives, a "Repair: type name" line is added to the production queue. The work required is the damage fraction × the type's production work × the quantity, and it advances on the same workshop points used for new production. Materials, scaled by the damage fraction, are paid in one go on the first day from the state warehouse in the arsenal's region; if they are short, the job stops for missing materials. Repaired equipment spends the same number of days going back to its unit, and on arrival its damage and wear are reset to 0 and it rejoins the unit's strength. Repair lines can't be cancelled or resized, and whether repairs go ahead of new production is held as a national setting (there is no on-screen switch yet).

I also checked that re-running the same midnight step, or saving and reloading, never sends equipment back, pays for materials or restores health twice. The new automated tests are 7 for the field repair cap and 4 for evacuation and repair.

A closer look at the Damaged equipment row. The Autocannon Vehicle is at 62% health against a 70% cap, with 2 days of field repair to go; the second entry is folded into "…" in English for lack of width (the Japanese capture shows it: a second vehicle type with 3 on the way to the arsenal and 3 under repair). Because the opening data has no battle damage yet, these rows are sample values that only the Debug build shows for screen checks.

What changed from the plan, and what's left

The plan said repair costs would be paid from the military part of the national budget. For now repairs are covered by materials only, with no money cost recorded yet, and no transport is assigned for the trip there and back. A screen switch for putting repairs first, and letting the commander's personality decide whether to send equipment back (a separate improvement item), are still to come. The whole change is waiting for review, and the daily processing performance will be checked in the nightly measurement.

About the images

All images are actual game screens, captured by starting the Debug build without showing its window, in a verification state started from the initial master data (images 2 and 3 are parts of the Regiment window captured at the same time as image 1). Nation, person and unit names and values belong to the verification state, and the damage rows are samples as noted above. Some names, such as the regiment and platoon names, are still shown in Japanese in the English UI.

The plan: DEVELOPMENT PLAN #87 — Where Broken Gear Gets Fixed: Field Repairs and Rear Workshops

Check the files currently available and the development status on the download page