Seriously, my players got into their first big ship on ship scrap tonight and were knocked down to about half hull. The ship repair rules seem strange and convoluted. What are the benefits of not doing repairs yourself, surely there is supposed to be a limit on how much you can repair in the field. Likewise it seems really random, i know major repair jobs should have some slip in the time factor but this just seems silly.

The way I read it, repairs in the field work similar to first aid in that once you do the repairs, it's treated as if you treated all the damage. To repair the rest, you need to get back to a drydock.

the tech priest can do, during combat repair, outside of combat, there is a single repair action available described. Then you need extensive docks repair which should be at 1 day per dmg pt to 1 week per damage point.

Imagine Master And Commander movie, they have some material to plug holes, repair the main mast and some tarp to patch up the sails, but it won't top working condition.

I allow a repair roll per jump/exit, if there is material on the planet readily available for an aquisition roll (trying to buy at any cost some spare parts), else it becomes a small endeavor, to gather material top fix their ship in orbit, etc.