During our game session last night, the ship got into some combat and suffered strain. After the battle, the ship's mechanic wants to repair that strain, but we had a heck of a time figuring out how she was supposed to go about getting rid of it. We saw the Damage Control action, but that was on the list of actions for starship combat, and I wasn't sure how to apply it out of battle. We also saw that strain heals naturally, but it's pretty slow.

Does anyone know how a skilled mechanic goes about repairing system strain after a fight?

Haven't run the game yet but looking at the relevant pages in the book it seems like you use the damage control action (P233)

Page 243 also states that a ship/vehicle will recover 1 system strain for each full day it has spent taking no system strain.

As for the page 233 rule, I'd say per additional 3 successes or something along those lines, you recover 1 additional strain in combat, and per 2 additional successes outside of combat. Or something like that. I cannot find any other references to repairing system strain just now.

Yeah, neither could we. All we could find were the "natural healing" rules and the rules for the damage control action.

I guess maybe the best answer is to have the mechanic do the "damage control" action, but taking actions out of combat gets into weird territory. How often can she do it? How difficult is it when she's just repairing strain? Can she "take 10" like in D&D and spend preparation time to make the repairs more successful?

In the end I just hand-waved it and said "the ship has no more strain." Maybe I was letting them off easy?

Maybe. Maybe not. I'd call for some mechanics checks, but let additional successes or advantages increase the number of system strain repaired. OR, if just using the damage control thingy, you could go for the passive check resolution in the alternative/optional rules in the back of the book; and then just say: x amount of minutes/hours go by and it's fixed. Or one check per ... I don't know, 30 minutes or 20 minutes? I don't know.

Why not use something similar to the Strain recovery for PCs? A Simple (-) Mechanics check recovers ship strain equal to number of successes, and can be used after an encounter.

Why not use something similar to the Strain recovery for PCs? A Simple (-) Mechanics check recovers ship strain equal to number of successes, and can be used after an encounter.

I like this, but does that rule stipulate how often it can be used after an encounter? I would assume once per encounter, but I'd like to be sure.

Yes, for PCs it's once after an encounter. If you have another encounter, but suffer no Strain, you can still (RAW) make a Simple check and recover more Strain. For PCs I get that a mental high from succeeding could reduce your Strain from where it was when you started the second encounter, but for ships I'd probably houserule that you could only recover any new Strain per encounter.

I'd say let them Damage Control as much as you feel they should be able to. If they had 2 crew members spending all of their turns DCing during combat, then maybe 1 if you feel generous. If they didn't have anyone doing DC the whole time, I'd let them do 2 or 3 checks depending on how long they did it. Plus, you could do combined checks where you took the best of two people's skills and attributes, and added boost dice for anyone else helping.

On page 111 it says specifically that Mechanics can be used to repair starships.

The Mechanics section of the book refers to page 243 about starship and vehicle repairs.

Even so, there's so much you can do with a ship when it is flying. But system strain can reasonably be fixed completely by a skilled mechanic. Hull trauma, not so much. Unless it is just something minor.

Per the rulebook...

Damage Control can be attempted as many times as needed to reduce a ship's system strain to zero (with the caveat that a single character can still only perform one action per turn, of course).

So for using Damage Control outside of an encounter, I'm inclined to just go ahead and hand-wave the strain away unless there are looming threats or the ship is really badly strained. Nobody wants to sit around watch the Mechanic make a bunch of die rolls, and I don't want to have to come up with all the wacky things that happen for all the symbols those rolls are generating. That would just be tedious.

I would add that given the nature of the system, if you aren't in rounds I wouldn't really force multiple rolls, but you could call for one just to adjudicate how long it wwould take to get the systems under control. Per the Mechanics skill description on P. 112, bonus successes would reduce the time needed for repairs (either wounds or strain) by ~ 10-20% ber bonus Suc. with possible secondary effects from Thr/Adv, Tri/Des possibly tying into Obligations/Motivations and/or sidetracking the current objective.

If the ship's Strain only recovers 1 per day on its own, hand-waving it away seems a bit generous. In addition to a post-encounter Simple(-) Mechanics check, I supposed I'd also allow a similar check at the end of an uneventful day where the ship is in the dock. But otherwise it loses that "bucket of bolts barely held together" feeling.

If a mechanic has access to the proper tools and enough time to conduct proper repairs, then technically a roll might not even be necessary since there isn't really any chance of failure. I would agree with Tenrousei, though, and ask for one roll to allow for the chance of reduced time or some other result. After all, who knows when the next enemy might drop out of hyperspace?