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Maintenance Bureau Plus Damage Tax Roadmap

Seven-step build plan for v1 of the Bureau of Colonial Structural Integrity design (Building Maintenance Inspector damage tax + passive auto-repair), the original design behind the Maintenance Bureau Plus mod. The mod has since replaced it at v1 scope with an LLM-gated global repair event and no placed device (Plans/MaintenanceBureauPlus/RESEARCH.md), so this is not that mod's current plan. Reach for this recipe when starting a new auto-repair-style device mod that clones a vanilla prefab, adds logic channels, runs a scan loop, posts chat reports, and ships with BepInEx config.

When to use

  • Building a BepInEx plugin that clones a vanilla device (Mirrored Devices cloning pattern, without mirroring) and adds behaviour on top.
  • Adding logic channels (On, Setting, Mode, Ratio, Quantity) to a cloned device.
  • Running a timer-based periodic scan across Thing.AllThings that filters, sums damage, consumes materials, and reduces DamageState values.
  • Shipping inspector-style chat messages: daily report, incident alert, overdue invoice, long no-damage streak.

Prerequisites

  • BepInEx + Harmony + StationeersLaunchPad baseline wired up per ModProjectSetup.md.
  • Familiarity with the Mirrored Devices cloning pattern and the game's SourcePrefabs / MultiConstructor registration flow.

Steps

v1: Bureau of Colonial Structural Integrity Damage Tax (Passive Auto-Repair)

  1. Scaffold BepInEx plugin (1 hour)
  2. Plugin class, Harmony init, config binds

  3. Reference: Battery Backup Light structure

  4. Clone vanilla device (2 hours)

  5. Implement Mirrored Devices cloning pattern (sans mirroring)
  6. Pick source device (Decision 1)

  7. Register with SourcePrefabs, add to MultiConstructor, register localization

  8. Add logic channels (2 hours)

  9. Patch CanLogicRead/GetLogicValue/SetLogicValue/CanLogicWrite

  10. Channels: On, Setting (threshold), Mode (priority), Ratio (damage %), Quantity (total damage)

  11. Implement repair loop (3 hours)

  12. Timer-based periodic scan (every in-game day)
  13. Iterate Thing.AllThings, filter structures, sum damage
  14. Calculate material cost based on damage type and structure material
  15. Search storage containers for materials, consume them

  16. Reduce DamageState values proportionally

  17. Inspector chat messages (2 hours)

  18. Inspector name assignment and persistence
  19. Message templates for: daily report, incident alert, overdue invoice, long no-damage streak

  20. Post to chat via game's messaging system

  21. Config system (1 hour)

  22. All rates, thresholds, toggles via BepInEx Config

  23. Testing (ongoing)

  24. Single player, multiplayer (dedicated server), save/load cycles

Verification

  • Step 2: confirm the cloned device appears in the kit's build menu alongside the source device and its name matches the localization entry.
  • Step 3: drop an IC10 test script that reads / writes each logic channel on the cloned device; verify all five are reachable.
  • Step 4: snapshot a representative damaged structure's DamageState before and after a scan cycle; confirm damage decreases proportionally and the corresponding material was consumed from a nearby container.
  • Step 5: check chat after a full day elapses; verify the daily report fires.
  • Step 7: save / load cycle. Confirm the cloned device's state (logic channel values, inspector state) persists across save and load. Test on a dedicated server to catch server-only code paths.

Pitfalls

  • Server-side only for the scan loop: DamageState.Damage() checks GameManager.RunSimulation.
  • Thing.AllThings can be large; filter early (structures only, damaged only) to avoid per-frame work scaling linearly with world size.
  • Save / load of a cloned prefab relies on Animator.StringToHash(name) producing a deterministic PrefabHash. Pick a stable name and keep it stable across versions. If the mod is removed, things with unknown PrefabHash fail to load (silently disappear or cause errors).
  • Device.AllDevices can contain duplicates, AtmosphericsManager.AllAtmospheres can contain nulls, power calculations can produce NaN, the power tick runs on a background thread (cannot use UnityEngine.Random), and atmosphere may be null until a player logs in on dedicated servers. Guard accordingly.

Verification history

  • 2026-04-20: page created from the Research migration; verbatim content lifted from F0239 (Plans/RepairPrototype/plan.md:881-912).
  • 2026-09-22: renamed from BCSIImplementationRoadmap.md (title "BCSI v1 Implementation Roadmap") to MaintenanceBureauPlusDamageTaxRoadmap.md. BCSI was the design's acronym for the Bureau of Colonial Structural Integrity (Plans/MaintenanceBureauPlus/Plans/RepairArchive/plan.md:114), the design that became Maintenance Bureau Plus, and the repo does not use invented acronyms for mod names. The acronym is spelled out in the intro and in the Steps heading; the name now uses the mod's name plus the design's own concept name, "Damage Tax". The intro gained one sentence saying the mod replaced this design at v1 scope (Plans/MaintenanceBureauPlus/RESEARCH.md:3, 122, 154); both new sources are in the frontmatter. The original source path Plans/RepairPrototype/plan.md no longer exists: the archive moved to Plans/MaintenanceBureauPlus/Plans/RepairArchive/plan.md, whose section 16 (lines 502-509) is now a stub that links here. No claim was re-verified or changed, so the section stamps stay as they were. Links updated: the Research/INDEX.md row (moved to its alphabetical place) and Plans/MaintenanceBureauPlus/Plans/RepairArchive/plan.md:509, whose relative path had also gone stale when the archive moved two folders deeper.

Open questions

None at creation.