For people who don't want to be in the Jeffries tubes fixing stuff, what options do they have [for repair]? Just limp home and get it repaired by a service station?
TL;DRPlayers who don't want to do engineering can skip it and run stock settings, but then they'll regularly pay for repairs and item replacements, while engineering-minded players can extend item lifetime or get a more effective ship.
Yes. One thing that is even now written behind me on my whiteboard, which is the main goal that we envision for the engineering gameplay, is that player decisions matter, and one of the decisions can be: it's not my gameplay, I'm not into engineering. And it's a valid decision. It's your choice, it's your game, it's your ship, whatever you want to do, you can do it. But that has the consequence that you probably will run with the stock settings for the items that you bought, and you regularly have to go to repair it. So you have to pay the money to actually be able to repair it. And sometimes you might even need to exchange the items for money, so you have to buy a new item to have it then exchanged on your ship, and stuff like that. But if you then have the other player type who is interested in, no, I can maintain my items myself and I can adjust them to my demands, you can get a bigger or longer lifetime of the items out of your ship, or you get a more effective ship, so you are more effective in the sense of...