How often will we encounter malfunctions and fires in normal gameplay?
TL;DRFresh ships should rarely malfunction and older, worn ones more often, with fires mostly a result of combat damage or pushing components hard, and balance to be tuned after player feedback.
Every time it's the same answer. Fresh ships: very unlikely for any malfunctions. There might be some that are happening, but very minor ones, so you can even ignore them and live with them. But if you have a ship that has several hundred hours and the wear and tear is really, really low or really, really high, then you have to maintain it more often. But we really want to make sure that it is not annoying for players. But this is something that we will balance once we have it out there and players give us feedback on it.
For the long-term maintenance, it's more about some items being a bit less reliable. If you keep using it, it's kind of a way of telling you, hey, use something new. And with salvage and all the ways you have to get components, it's really not that hard. Or you have to pay more attention to your components. But stuff like fires or anything really critical that is crippling, your ships aren't going to randomly burst into flames; it's more of a consequence of damage control. You're in a fight, you take a direct hit to a relevant component, you get an electrical fire. But you shouldn't expect to be cruising around Stanton and suddenly three rooms are on fire and you die.
But we also want to reward player choices there. That is, if you decide to run your ship at only 20% of the performance it could run at, like have the power plant always run at 20%, so basically underpower your ship, that also has an impact on the malfunction rate. So the less you push your ship, the more likely it is that there won't be any malfunctions. But also the other way: if you are in a combat scenario and you want more than 100% out of your ship items, sure, that will dramatically increase the chances for malfunctions.