As you fly your mission and engage enemy ships, you may be hit by their weapons or you may run into rocky asteroids floating in space. If your shields are active (noted by the blue “halo” around the edge of your view) your ship is somewhat protected. As long as your shields are on, they will absorb most of the impact energy. If your shields are off, any impact will destroy your ship!

Your shields are not perfect, however. Depending on the mission difficulty level, impacts by asteroids, enemy weapons or collisions with enemy ships will cause varying amounts of damage to your ship’s systems.

At any time during a mission, you can bring up the Ship System Status panel (see Main Screen section) to check your damage.
Any time a specific ship system’s status drops below 50%, that system will begin to malfunction. Some examples of problems are:

• Shields may flicker, leaving you unprotected for short periods of time.
• Engines will sputter, reducing your speed.
• If your subspace radio is damaged, your Galactic Map display may not receive updates from Star Command.
• If either photon torpedo tube is damaged, its reload time will be affected.
• Damage to the Long-Range Sensors can cause them to malfunction.
• Damage to your Computer can prevent target tracking and lock-on, and Auto Nav functions in the LRS can be lost.

If a ship’s system status drops to 0%, that system is destroyed and will no longer function.

Your controls will also change to yellow or red to indicate damage.

Once a system is damaged, the only way to repair it is to return to a fully-equipped Starbase (not a Fuelbase) and dock. Once docked, a repair bot will quickly fly out to your ship and make any necessary repairs.

Tip: Missions can be completed with damaged systems, and warping to a Starbase for repair will consume energy and valuable time, which will affect your final mission score! If you can continue to fight, it is often best to do so despite some damage to your ship.