Now that items like clothing degrade, I would like to suggest the option to repair them to full condition. This could use the appropriate production table to execute, such as the tailor bench to repair pants. You could also link the max condition repairable to the skill of the person doing the work.
In the current state, it devalues the high end (Superior+) gear available from the traders. I can't see spending 100k (iirc) on a mastercrafted power suit. Even if I had the cash, the degrading would just be painful to watch.
...Must test putting valuable gear in the freezer to see if that will halt degrading.
+1
agreed however maybe make a required material say 1 piece of the material used to make the equipment provides 10 durability.
+1, although for balance maybe once items below a certain level of degradation gain the 'Patched' condition, which reduces its maximum efficiency below 100%
I mentioned this in a thread on the discussion forum but it fits here so I'll tack it onto your suggestion to repair items.
Suggestion: Recycling Machine
Feed tattered clothing into it or broken weapons and it will spit back out a very small percentage of raw materials which when collected in enough amounts can produce recycled cloth or steel. Similar to how you can 'machine' out bits from a mechanoid, this machining process (you could even use the same bench) will pull out usable resources from worn out and broken items. It won't be a lot, maybe only a small percentage of the original item since obviously it's tattered or worn out in the first place, but at least you'd have the option instead of throwing old clothing into the incinerator.
Repair should be done on expenses of quality...
solution 1: everytime an object is repaired, it will recover all durability, but will lose some of the max durability based on the repairing skill. When the item reach 0% max durability the item is destroyed instead of being repaired.
solution 2: everytime an object is repaired, it will recover durability based on the repairing skill, but the quality of the item itself will be lowered by 1 becoming over time a less precious item, but still useful... once reached the lowest tier of quality the next repair attempt will destroy the item.