In ARES, your health bar is called chassis integrity, or simply integrity. When you have 100% integrity, your system is in perfect physical condition. At 0% integrity, it is so damaged that it cannot be powered on. (However, it is not necessarily a pile of atomized metal or fused scrap.)

What causes damage?

Collisions: Your integrity decreases whenever you are struck by a projectile or melee weapon, or, in some extreme cases, when you collide with an object like a wall or floor at high speeds. A detailed list of damage sources and their values can be found in Operating ARES: Combat & Damage.

Environment: You will also lose integrity over time gradually while you are overheating, freezing, or under extreme pressure, such as when at the bottom of the ocean.

Dehydration: Finally, it's also possible to overheat (and thus take damage) if you have the Sexuality add-on installed but are running low on cryolubricant fluid. (This level is displayed on the 'CRYO' bar at the bottom of the ARES interface (HUD).) Maintaining your fluid level is especially important if your controller design doesn't have an exhaust fan.

Safe temperatures

You will start taking damage if your system goes above 100° C (212° F) or below 0° C (32° F). Every watt that ARES and your attachments are using generates heat on top of the current environmental temperature; this is typically anywhere from 3° C to 15° C, depending on how hard your cooling system is working and the contribution of other power loads.

You may go a very long time without ever having to worry about temperature. If ARES cannot find a compatible meteorological station (weather server) in the current region or parcel, the environment will always be interpreted as a comfortable 25° C (77° F). Barring extreme power draws, this is very unlikely to result in any problems.

If you do overheat, you'll rapidly take damage and then shut down, entering the 'dead' state. If overheating was caused by an extreme power draw (such as teleporting, recharging emergency power, reloading a weapon, and recharging a shield at the same time), then after a little while your system will cool off and be ready to fix itself (see below).

Extremely cold or hot environments are another story—you may need towing to safety before you'll be able to recover! This can add a fun dimension to roleplay, but if it's not to your taste, you may want to enable DQD mode to protect yourself.

Repair

• After a few seconds of taking no damage, your self-repair nanites will emerge from your controller to begin patching up most of the mess. Repair nanites can only fix 90% of the damage you receive, so you'll slowly lose health if you depend on them exclusively. For example, if you started out at full integrity (100%) and then suffered 20% of your maximum integrity in damage, the repair nanites would be able to restore you to 98% (90% × 20% = 18%).
• One of the most helpful items your owner can buy is a handheld repair tool. This allows for full repair anywhere and does not require rezzing. You cannot repair yourself with a handheld repair tool.
• For full self-service, there are several kinds of repair stations and diagnostics tables (repair beds) that can be used to restore you to full strength.
• Finally, if you are fatally damaged and forced to shut down, the process of reclamation will automatically start after a short delay. This extended form of self-repair will restore you to a small amount of health so that you can get to a repair station or find someone with a repair tool. However, it is quite power-intensive to use, so make sure you also recharge after your resurrection.

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