[ShivanSlayer]

I was playing Operation Crucible and during the mission where I destroyed the Cthulhu, the shockwave from the Cthulhu's explosion disabled the engine of the support ship.  It could no longer reload me and I couldn't order it to depart, making support unavailable for the mission. Never once in many years of playing FreeSpace have I ever been softlocked out of a support ship like that

[Goober5000]

Huh.  Well, congratulations I guess?

[Mobius]

Congratulations, you saved Capella!, ehm found a fatal flaw in support ship management.

Jokes aside, this is an interesting occurrence. I guess one way to solve the issue, in fanmade projects at least, would be increasing the relative hitpoints of the engine subsystem so that getting it to 0 would imply that the ship is completely destroyed. Another alternative would be setting up a system that protects the engine subsystem of in-game spawned support ships.

[Trivial Psychic]

How about making it possible for a support ship to call in a support ship? 

[Grizzly]

Congratulations, you saved Capella!, ehm found a fatal flaw in support ship management.

Jokes aside, this is an interesting occurrence. I guess one way to solve the issue, in fanmade projects at least, would be increasing the relative hitpoints of the engine subsystem so that getting it to 0 would imply that the ship is completely destroyed. Another alternative would be setting up a system that protects the engine subsystem of in-game spawned support ships.

You can skip all that and give them the "repair disabled subsystems" flag, that allows ships to repair subsystems reduced to 0.

[Mongoose]

Huh, I thought the game would force a support ship to self-destruct if it was disabled. Not sure what I'm thinking of instead.