Fortunately, the K-F drive -- the one thing we don't yet have the ability to provide help with -- is intact. At this point, I feel we've built up enough mutual trust that I'm offering a write-in vote that we offer to not only help repair, but to seriously upgrade their ship. Our production subcapital weapons were directly inspired by seeing their improvised ones in the first place, so it's totally fair to offer those as an upgrade, and I'd vote for also making available Enhanced ER PPCs, Gauss Rifles, Artemis-enhanced LRMs, and DHS.
All for offering repair and upgrade, but it needs to be with a price.
Not saying a crushing debt, but needs to be a fair exchange. Free Folk might not take well to charity/ debt, some cultures are unwilling to take that.
That said a few twin GR turrets would do wonders for AA, or ERPPC if they do not want ammo reliant guns.
That said our engineers are going to tear their JS down to planks to fix and improve the ship so they need to offer something of value to us.( at least in their eyes). Maybe some experienced Free folk spacers to help evaluate our space born procedures, and processes.
1- People who have lived in space permenatly for decades should have worked out better processes than people who are normally ground bound and only in spacecapable for a few decades.
2- Scan data / Intel on all of the local stellar neighbors. Sarah might be able to gather more usable intel out of the Free folk scans, ( Keep Sarah a secret). Better intel allows better plans to attack at enemy weak points.
Just a few ideas for Free folk payment that will not break their bank.
Edit :
Jarow any chance of adding the sub cap missile to your budget?