Damage Control · Game Mechanic Compendium

Definition

Damage control is a body system moved by player action: damage to the player’s ship lands in its systems or compartments and stays until the crew repairs it, usually during the engagement and at a cost fighting also needs, while fire, flooding and lost air worsen. Hit location places damage on a part, hit points total it, and critical hits are one trigger. The injury system is the nearest archetype: located harm on a body that lasts until the right remedy, applied after the fight. Here the crew repairs a vessel’s parts mid-fight. Systemic elements spreads fire through terrain; here fire stays inside the ship.

How the parts interact

The system stores the ship’s damage by part: destroyed boxes on Star Fleet Battles’ ship display, critical damage at a location in Battlefleet Gothic, damaged systems, fires and breaches in parts of the ship in FTL. Combat feeds it. In Star Fleet Battles hits past a downed shield go onto a Damage Allocation Chart, and each hit on a warp engine cuts speed by one. In Battlefleet Gothic each hit rolls for a critical on a 6, and a critical can knock out weapons or engines, start a fire or breach the hull.

The damage feeds the ship’s abilities, and the crew feeds back. Star Fleet Battles repairs one shield box for each two units of energy allocated to damage control, energy not spent on weapons. Battlefleet Gothic’s capital ships roll one die per damage point left in the end phase, each 6 repairing a system or putting out a fire; Blast markers halve the dice, and several criticals at one location must all be repaired. In FTL breaches let the air out and a destroyed oxygen system suffocates the crew, crew are moved into position to repair, a room can be emptied of air to put out a fire, and hull damage is repaired only at stores. Barotrauma’s crew fix leaks and operate the pumps as well as manning the guns.

Variations

Allocation chart (Star Fleet Battles): a roll on a chart picks the system destroyed, and energy buys repairs.
Critical and repair roll (Battlefleet Gothic): rare criticals, repaired by dice in the end phase.
Sections and crew (FTL: Faster Than Light): systems, fires and breaches sit in parts of the ship, and crew are moved to them.
Crewed vessel (Barotrauma): players inside the submarine take the repair jobs by class.

Components

Hit points recur in the tabletop examples and FTL, and hit location in the same three, a chart, a critical table or a chosen target. Critical hits trigger damage only in Battlefleet Gothic. Barotrauma reads cooperative play and class roles instead. Repair by crew during the fight, fires, breaches, lost air and flooding have no catalog mechanic. No tabletop role-playing example is cited.

History and provenance

The earliest documented use cited is Battlefleet Gothic (1999), whose rulebook has crews welding hull breaches and putting out fires in its Damage Control step. Star Fleet Battles (1979) is an earlier candidate, cited only from a later manual. Silent Hunter 5 (2010) shows compartments’ flooding and fire on a damage screen, and its chief engineer leads a damage control team. FTL (2012) put the form in a roguelike with a moving crew, and Barotrauma (2023) shares the crew’s jobs among up to 16 players.

Notable examples

Notable examples, in chronological order. Notes describe how the system works in each game; the components are the mechanics it combines there and the parts its own working parts; the latest reference is a widely played game from 2020 or later.
Game	Year	Medium	Parts	Components	How the system works
Star Fleet Battles Task Force Games	1979	Board & card	No term fits	Hit Location, Hit Points	In the later Cadet Training Manual rules cited, hits past a downed shield are placed on a Damage Allocation Chart that destroys systems such as warp engines and phasers, and each two units of energy allocated to damage control repair one shield box at the end of the turn.
Battlefleet Gothic Andy Chambers, Gavin Thorpe and Jervis Johnson (Games Workshop)	1999	Board & card	No term fits	Hit Points, Critical Hits, Hit Location	A 6 on any hit causes critical damage, rolled on a table, that knocks out weapons or engines, starts a fire or breaches the hull. In the end phase a ship rolls a die per damage point left, each 6 repairing one system or putting out one fire, and Blast markers halve the dice.
FTL: Faster Than Light Subset Games	2012	Video	Exposure	Hit Points, Hit Location	Weapons aimed at chosen systems knock them out, and hits start fires and breach the hull, so air runs out and a destroyed oxygen system suffocates the crew. Crew are moved to repair systems or put out fires, a room can be emptied of air to smother a fire, and hull damage is repaired only at stores.
Barotrauma Latest FakeFish and Undertow Games (Daedalic Entertainment)	2023	Video	No term fits	Cooperative Play, Variable Player Powers	Up to 16 players crew a submarine and operate its reactor, engines, weapons and pumps, with six classes of different skills and tasks; the crew fix leaks between manning the guns, or let the ship go down in fire and flood.

Provenance

Earliest documented use: Battlefleet Gothic (1999), board & card. Confidence: low. The earliest documented use cited is Battlefleet Gothic, whose 1999 rulebook has critical damage that knocks out weapons and engines, starts fires or breaches the hull, and a Damage Control step in which crews roll to repair it. Star Fleet Battles (1979) is an earlier candidate, but the damage allocation and damage control rules cited are from its later Cadet Training Manual, so its date is not firm. Naval and space wargames of the 1970s and 1980s remain unsurveyed.

Sources

Amarillo Design Bureau. Star Fleet Battles Cadet Training Manual. Rulebook (D3.2) Shields; (D4.0)–(D4.4) Internal Damage and the Damage Allocation Chart; (D9.0)–(D9.2) Damage Control. Damage past a downed shield destroying interior systems by chart, warp engine hits cutting speed, Excess Damage boxes, the damage control rating, and energy spent to repair shield boxes. Read as hosted rules text on a rules site.
Andy Chambers, Gavin Thorpe and Jervis Johnson. (1999). Battlefleet Gothic. Games Workshop. Rulebook The Shooting Phase: Critical Hits, Crippled Ships; The End Phase: Damage Control; Boarding Actions. Accessed 2026-10-30. Critical hits on a 6 that knock out weapons and engines, start fires or breach the hull, repairs needed for each critical, crippling at half damage, and end-phase repair rolls halved by Blast markers.
Subset Games. FTL: Faster Than Light (Steam store page). Website Accessed 2026-10-30. Power distribution, weapon targets chosen in combat, orders to the crew, pausing, boarding, and the release of 14 September 2012.
Fraser Brown (Destructoid). (2012). Review: FTL: Faster Than Light. Article Accessed 2026-10-30. Repeated hull breaches, oxygen running out, a ship consumed one square at a time, a fire put out by the captain, crew bringing weapons back online, missiles taking out systems, and hull repair only at stores.
Ari Margo (Gamer Horizon). (2012). FTL: Faster Than Light Review. Article Accessed 2026-10-30. Suffocation when the oxygen system is destroyed, fires local to a part of the ship, a vacuum made to put out a fire, and crew moved into position to repair systems.
FakeFish and Undertow Games. Barotrauma (Steam store page). Website Accessed 2026-10-30. A co-op submarine simulator of up to 16 players, on-board systems including pumps, six classes with different skills and tasks, fixing leaks, the ship going down in fire and flood, and the full release of 13 March 2023.
Ubisoft. (2010). Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic manual. Rulebook Subsystems / Damage Management Screen, p. 15; Crew: Chief Engineer. Accessed 2026-10-30. Compartments' integrity, flooding and fire shown by sector, and a chief engineer leading a damage control team to repair critical damage.

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Updated: 2026-10-30
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West, James, Jr. (2026). "Damage Control." Game Mechanic Compendium, updated 2026-10-30. http://localhost:4321/systems/damage-control

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