The core rule book includes instructions for the penalties of utilizing damaged weapons and difficulties for conducting repairs, but there is verry little information on how weapons break down.

I know a Despair can be used to break a piece of equipment but is this mild damage, moderate damage, major damage, broken until the end of encounter, or broken beyond repair?

Are there other instances where you have equipment break or require maintenance?

I ask because one of my groups might be getting some weapons on a planet where weapons are very hard to come by (and they have no way offworld). Since it is reasonable to assume they will be using these same weapons over and over again with few option to upgrade, replace, or even recharge them I wanted to get a better feel on how to handle weapon storage and maintenance.

I do not want this to be a major part of the game, but feel it should be more often than the occasional despair.

You could add it as an option for three uncancelled threat as well.

Despair just "damages" the weapon, it doesn't specify how bad, so you can probably assume one step unless you want to do worse for some reason.

Also Sunder attacks can damage gear.

Despair just "damages" the weapon, it doesn't specify how bad, so you can probably assume one step unless you want to do worse for some reason.

This is also my interpretation. It's either damaged one step (ie, Sundered) or dropped/fumbled. Guns also have the extra option of running out of ammunition.

For a bit of variety I do 'out of ammo', weapon malfunction, and critical failure, with the failure being damage and the malfunction requiring the weapon be cleared. Since out of ammo has talent and equipment mitigators readily available, I don't think making it a bit more likely is out of bounds.

One of the things I've toyed with doing in combat for threat rolled, is giving their weapon temporary negative qualities, Slow-Firing, Inaccurate, Limit their range band by one step, etc etc to simulate various mechanical failures within the weapon, sometimes its as simple to fix as spending a round reseating their powerpack, or cleaning their sight, to sometimes needing some serious maintenance, for a more serious amount of threat/despair rolled.

I always do, "out of ammo" or minor damage. I had one guy who had a flame projector that never worked because he always damaged it.

Thank you everyone for the feed back. I think I will stick with damaging weapons on through despair and simply require that maintenance be performed when the weapons are acquired. (I.e. Looted weapons have minor to major damage depending on how they were looted, undamaged if stolen from an arms room).

It seemed weird that rules for repairing weapons were spelt out if it only occurs through despair, but I'll stick with the simple approach on this one.

Thank you all again for your advice.