An extremely silly question, buut...

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Batman:
Then don't change the ship until someone comes along and tries to board it. When they do, pick a random number of components and damage them. This could represent the fact that sometimes ships could float for millenia in the cold, preserving vacuum of space, but other times a freak meteor shower etc could damage them severely.

The point is, you don't need to track this, but rather leave the ship intact until someone comes and actually looks inside; the Schroedinger's Ship paradox

I do like that, but the only thing is it doesn't allow for an abandoned ship to completely disintegrate over time, unless it disolves to dust when you try to board it. That would be frustrating. "I know there was a ship here somewhere..."

Hmm, but why would you abandon it if you had a functioning SDD? Isn't that how this thread started. Well, I'm confused

ROFL! Good point! I am an idiot for not thinking of that. I suppose the only reason would be that you want to take the chance on recovering it later at least partially intact. Or it could be just meanness. But a minfield would be more efficent.