More hit points?

We had a discussion about this previously, actually.  Your ship repairs x hit points a turn, where x is some percentage of its total (IIRC).  It does this as long as it is not at full hp, even if that would take it over full hp.  So for instance if it repairs 2 hp and you're at 7/8 hp, it will be at 9/8 hp.

I don't think it's that big a deal, personally.

You also gain hit points with 'experience'.

If you had a 20HP ship that had many battles with other powerfull ships, it might not be uncommon for that ship to end up with a 25 or more HP rating. The trick is to let it get damaged down to as few hit points as possible, then withdraw it to let it repair.

From my experience, ships only end up with more HP than the max, when you are repairing them in orbit.

Sentient species taste better...

From my experience, ships only end up with more HP than the max, when you are repairing them in orbit.

That is what I am seeing. Is that intentional?

I'm guessing it wasnt intentional, but that the devs didnt think it was a big enough bug to spend time addressing.

Sentient species taste better...

That is not my experience with DL. You can gain experience HP without ever orbiting.

You guys are talking about two different things.

You're talking about 20/20 hp to 25/25 hp-hit points gained from experience.

They're talking about 20/20 hp to 25/20 hp-hit points gained from repairing.

This isn't to say that you're not talking about repairing as well, but ships repair more hit points per turn while in orbit, so typically that's the only place where you'll see current hit points be more than max, although it can and does happen, less often, in open space.

That's my understanding as well.

Do those extra hit points stay with the ship or does the game "fix" it on the next turn or something?

I don't really see this happen since my ships never take any damage . Yea just kidding.

Any "extra" hit points (i.e. 25/20 hp) "stay" with the ship in question, that is until it takes damage again.  Any hp gained from experience is permanent hp and will repair/refill if given the opportunity.

If you have some good repair bonuses, the extra hp can be significant, to the point of enabling a ship to survive an encounter that would have killed it with its normal max hp.  And that allows it to participate in and survive more combat, which increases its hp, which you can leverage with the supramaximal repaired hp, and so on.

And if you're truly anal about it, you can let the ship repair in space until it's only down a point or two, then put it in orbit to maximize the over-repair bonus.