We need a dedicated repair ship.

[alecz]

I'm curious why the current/existing resupply/repair/aux ships are not good (enoug)h for this?

Not only are they useful to repair the ships you use for boarding and the boarding ship, but they can carry spare drones and crew for the boarding and repair.

[MKL81]

I honestly very rarely have a problem with that, just don't blow the engines, problem solved. Have a shortcut to disable your turrets, choose surface elements carefully when targeting. With 7.0 it is even not that important to bring hull to lower levels actually. Just disable their turrets, position ahead on the target flight path and release the boarding crew. What is more irritating - local police/military that will assume that once you board the target it is now great moment to destroy the engines or blow up the target altogether

[BitByte]

I'm curious why the current/existing resupply/repair/aux ships are not good (enoug)h for this?

Because this topic was started before version 7.x at that time Aux capabilities wasn't in same level as it's now.

[Raptor34]

I'm curious why the current/existing resupply/repair/aux ships are not good (enoug)h for this?

Because this topic was started before version 7.x at that time Aux capabilities wasn't in same level as it's now.

January isn't that long ago is it? Last I played before this was KE and I swear it was before this year. So what changed?

[flywlyx]

I'm curious why the current/existing resupply/repair/aux ships are not good (enoug)h for this?

Not only are they useful to repair the ships you use for boarding and the boarding ship, but they can carry spare drones and crew for the boarding and repair.

An auxiliary ship can't repair a vessel with all its engines disabled; the target ship must be able to dock with the auxiliary ship on its own.
Another potential solution could be introducing a tugboat feature. This would make the boarding process more engaging, as it would allow us to tow disabled ships around.

[EGO_Aut]

I'm curious why the current/existing resupply/repair/aux ships are not good (enoug)h for this?

Not only are they useful to repair the ships you use for boarding and the boarding ship, but they can carry spare drones and crew for the boarding and repair.

An auxiliary ship can't repair a vessel with all its engines disabled; the target ship must be able to dock with the auxiliary ship on its own.
Another potential solution could be introducing a tugboat feature. This would make the boarding process more engaging, as it would allow us to tow disabled ships around.

I switch my marines to engineers, and they start to repaire.
Meanwhile they have very good skills.

[flywlyx]

I switch my marines to engineers, and they start to repaire.
Meanwhile they have very good skills.

Yes, but it's still slow, especially if the ship doesn't have 10 or more repair drones.
As a pirate, I'd definitely prefer dragging my target to a quieter spot where I can work without interference.

[aurelcourt]

I'd say we need the Aux Ship to be able to repair and resupply L/XL ships via repair/cargo drones and without needing to dock them together.

The docking of an XL carrier or even an L is awfully long, be it in sector or OOS, so repairs via Aux ship are really a pain... (while being really good for S/M).

What if the Aux ship just needed to fly close to the target and then just stop (without proper alignment whatsoever) and send repair drones (or building drones) to repair hull (just like station building), and cargo drones to resupply (drones which would need a fly path to the target ship though... TBD) ?

[EGO_Aut]

I'd say we need the Aux Ship to be able to repair and resupply L/XL ships via repair/cargo drones and without needing to dock them together.

The docking of an XL carrier or even an L is awfully long, be it in sector or OOS, so repairs via Aux ship are really a pain... (while being really good for S/M).

What if the Aux ship just needed to fly close to the target and then just stop (without proper alignment whatsoever) and send repair drones (or building drones) to repair hull (just like station building), and cargo drones to resupply (drones which would need a fly path to the target ship though... TBD) ?

YES

[user1679]

There were two mods, Moblie Repair Service and Go Fix Your Face, that did a good job with this but they haven't been updated for several X4 versions.

Mobile Repair Services created a new default order that would allow you to set a ship to follow another and act as a repair platform. It would use $$ to repair all the modules / hull, and even had an option to repair other factions so you could earn money. The immersive part of this is your ship would fly around the battlefield and had a possibility of getting destroyed. It added some risk which was fun. It stopped working a few versions ago, I tried to fix it and even updated it to use hull parts instead of $$ but it's still broken, I can't get the ship to properly follow the intended target. It follows for a minute then flies away and never comes back.

Go Fix Your Face was interesting, instead of having a default order, you could tell your ships to go repair at the nearest station. This broke around 7.0 when EGOSOFT changed the function for finding the closest friendly station. I didn't try to fix this one because honestly I liked the Mobile Repair Service method better. It just seemed to fit better to have to buy a ship and send it out with your fleet.

I'm pretty sure the mods are abandoned, I reached out for permission to fix/upload them but did not get a reply. It would be great if someone would fix Mobile Repair Service

[grapedog]

while i like the idea of a repair ship, i'd rather just see more ships in the game that are universal for a bunch of functions instead of just repairs.

maybe allowing the player to buy equipment like we do with the bomb launcher and faster jet pack.... add a large repair laser that could be fitted into a ship perhaps would be an option. So there isn't a dedicated designed ship from Ego, but the player could pick one ship and then attach a larger repair laser to it. Then when he needs it, he can pull it out of storage and get it to where it needs to go.

[Targ Collective]

We already have ships that can repair all classes - this is exactly what Support Ships, like the Terran Honshu, are for. What we don't have is rapid-response ships that can deploy drones to repair other ships, which I agree would be a nice addition. Right now drone swarms don't affect station construction, and repair drones only repair the host vessel - this could be done just with scripting; choose an M ship that can launch drones - like the Falx - and script in orders for the drone swarm: Only repair parent vessel; Prioritise parent vessel repairs; prioritise repairing other vessels. Scripting these orders, for someone competent, should be easy enough; the real trick it the UI to turn the script on. That's a discussion for the Devteam and modding crowd, as I tend to play Vanilla these days until I grow bored and need mods to extend the life of a game.

[Raptor34]

The thing is letting more ships have repair capabilities, like repair lasers or repair drones, makes a lot of sense. However that also runs into the issue that it makes everything more samey. Like the SC2 copypasta where you just use ghosts to counter everything.
Otoh, aux ships needing to dock is an issue too.

A temporary suggestion I like is allowing an aux ship to be more generous in how it repairs a ship, like coming alongside it, a repair bubble or something.

But ultimately, I think what they should do, probably for X5, is redesign an aux ship so it deploys/unfurls out like a builder ship into a repair station, like the L/XL maint bays, that way you can have ships simply enter a stationary dock from one side, and then exit the other end. It'll sure as hell make more sense than the current system where you just dock nose to nose and it automagically repairs the whole ship, which then leads to the first sentence of this post as to why we can't just do it in other ways instead. Having an aux ship unfold out a whole drydock like thing to repair a ship would resolve that issue.

[flywlyx]

A temporary suggestion I like is allowing an aux ship to be more generous in how it repairs a ship, like coming alongside it, a repair bubble or something.

That would only make sense if the auxiliary ship could position itself correctly within the fleet. After losing countless auxiliary ships to Xenon stations, I doubt that will be achievable anytime soon.

[Raptor34]

A temporary suggestion I like is allowing an aux ship to be more generous in how it repairs a ship, like coming alongside it, a repair bubble or something.

That would only make sense if the auxiliary ship could position itself correctly within the fleet. After losing countless auxiliary ships to Xenon stations, I doubt that will be achievable anytime soon.

They already occasionally work with that nose to nose thing. This would just be that, but more relaxed.

[flywlyx]

They already occasionally work with that nose to nose thing. This would just be that, but more relaxed.

At this point, I’d be satisfied if they just stayed stationary next to the flagship, had a repair turret, and fixed anything within a 10 km range—prioritizing engines, of course.

[Raptor34]

They already occasionally work with that nose to nose thing. This would just be that, but more relaxed.

At this point, I’d be satisfied if they just stayed stationary next to the flagship, had a repair turret, and fixed anything within a 10 km range—prioritizing engines, of course.

That's what I mean by repair bubble. Though I think more like 1-3 km. And they fix by sending out repair drones.

[flywlyx]

That's what I mean by repair bubble. Though I think more like 1-3 km. And they fix by sending out repair drones.

A distance of 1-3 km won’t work. The minimum "safe distance" for XL capital ships in the game seems to be around 5~10 km. This means the AI intentionally keeps them at least 5 km apart whenever possible.

[Raptor34]

That's what I mean by repair bubble. Though I think more like 1-3 km. And they fix by sending out repair drones.

A distance of 1-3 km won’t work. The minimum "safe distance" for XL capital ships in the game seems to be around 5~10 km. This means the AI intentionally keeps them at least 5 km apart whenever possible.

Just have them fly in when they need to "dock".

[flywlyx]

Just have them fly in when they need to "dock".

That sounds too difficult to implement. Even fighters struggle to dock with carriers properly, so having multiple capital ships maneuver close to an auxiliary ship seems nearly impossible.