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Maintenance Rebalance

This mod adds additional mechanics to the maintenance system to make it less of a static "burn 20 metal every day to keep your base running" system and more of a dynamic "base health management" type system.

Firstly, with this mod, structures decay at unpredictable rates. While the vanilla game does include some variation in the speed at which structures decay, this mod introduces significantly more randomness. In real life, you cannot necessarily predict exactly when your car is going to break down, but you can probably get a general sense of how good a condition it's in. The maintenance meter now works similarly; it indicates the structure's general condition, but the rate at which it increases varies considerably rather than increasing steadily. It is no longer trustworthy as an indicator of how long you have before a structure malfunctions. The long-running average decay rate should be the same as vanilla.

Secondly, this mod introduces the concept of preventative maintenance. In real life, routine maintenance can save you significant cost and trouble if it is performed regularly; many components will last much longer if they are taken care of properly. In-game, this is represented by variability in the structure maintenance cost. Once structures reach a certain level of deterioration, but before they have actually filled the maintenance bar, any maintenance performed will cost significantly less, with the cost increasing slowly as the structure gets closer to malfunctioning. (At very low maintenance levels, the cost is instead 200% of the base rate, representing the cost of doing a needless across-the-board overhaul of working systems, so you cannot spam maintenance for 1% cost if you have a request maintenance button mod. You have to wait for the system in question to actually need some minor maintenance first.) The cost computation does take into account the increased maintenance frequency as well, so you will see actual cost benefits of around 25% overall cost if you perform maintenance when a structure is at 25% maintenance required, even though you will be performing maintenance 4 times as often. The actual cost computation is slightly exponential.

Finally, preventative maintenance is worked into the normal game system by taking advantage of those drones you have sitting around doing nothing. Preventative maintenance will automatically be requested BEFORE the maintenance bar is filled, occurring as soon as 1/4 full for 25% of the normal maintenance cost... but only IF you have drones sitting around idle. Preventative maintenance is regarded as being non-critical and lower priority than all other drone tasks; the structure will continue working fine without it and is not in imminent danger of failing (unlike when the maintenance bar is full), but the eventual maintenance it needs will become more expensive over time if the preventative maintenance is not performed. Once the maintenance bar is full, maintenance will automatically be requested for 100% of the base cost, just like in vanilla; this will happen if your drones are never idle. Of course, if you have a request maintenance button mod, you can manually request preventative maintenance for the lower cost even if all your drones are busy, but this will of course make your other base operations suffer by giving your drones more work (and you must be careful not to do it too early, or you'll incur the 200% cost).

This mod can introduce significant maintenance cost savings / "make the game easier", but only if you manage your base responsibly and have plenty of drones available to service all your structures regularly. If you don't, maintenance will cost exactly as much as it does in vanilla and work exactly the same way. In short, the maintenance system now rewards you for being a good base builder and manager, rather than relying solely on your resource production. It also reduces the chances of all 20 of your solar panels needing maintenance at the exact same time just because they were all built at the same time, both through the inherent randomness in maintenance increase and the possibility of automatic maintenance requests occurring over a much broader span of time.