Hi all, I was pulling the latest server patches, and I was concerned
about a change to hull damage refit conditions that seems to have been
slipped in with no discussion.  Here's the patch description:

/* Start patch description */

  * lame refit
  Historically ships have been allowed to refit either on their homeworld or
  while docked to their base with the following criteria: shields >= 75%,
  fuel >= 75%, damage <= 75%.  I do not believe that this was the original
  authors intent, as damage is the only of the three critera that increases
  on a scale of good to bad; I believe the original intent was damage <= 25%.

  It is the status quo for non-base ships to be able to refit while docked to
  a base in clue games when heavily damaged.  But to allow a base to do so
  while on home world is disruptive to the game.  The base is the most
  expensive of all ship classes and the only one with a 'regeneration'
  period between base death and the availability of the next base.

  The current refit criteria is currently being abused on pickled to allow
  core bases to refit on homeworld with significant amounts of damage,
disrupting
  the game and making bases virtually indestructable as a result of knowing
  how to split damage to exploit this 'feature' of the code.

  This patch has 2 configuration options to give server admins the ability
  of 'fixing' the refit criteria and limit refits to those with <= 25%
  damage individually for both bases (LAME_BASE_REFIT=0/1) and non-bases
  (LAME_REFIT=0/1).  The patch defaults to the classical criteria to maintain
  the status quo.

/* End patch description */

I know that it's a SYSDEF option, so no servers are forced to change
refitting.  But I don't think that the argument that "the original
server developers made a mistake" holds any merit.  Changing game
design because you don't like the way it is, and saying it was a
mistake to ever be that way, is highly presumptious.  I would strongly
urge community review of this patch and would like to know the
opinions of the Bronco server operators as to whether they support
this change to refit.  On a minor note, clients with a repair/refit
timer will be broken if there is a server configurable refit time
without a feature packet to tell the client about the refit criteria,
as refit conditions are hard coded into some clients.

Bill