Please, allow us to have repair ships in X4!

[Aven Valkyr]

I was never a fan of ships automatically repairing themselves just because an engineer happened to be on board or by using consumables. Engineers should only be able to do things like speed up shield recovery or flight acceleration. I'd much rather Egosoft introduce a new class of repair ships that are specialized for field repair.

Basically if your cap ship gets beat up in a fight but manages to survive, then just hail your repair ship for assistance. it would jump over to you and use it's own repair drones, etc. to fix you up. That way you could still get fixed even if your (cap) ship's own drone launch bay were to be destroyed. If this new ship class isn't introduced, I'd at least like to see this as a command you could issue another drone-capable ship.

This is exactly my thought. this repair ship would be larger, like M7 sized or TL sized. The repair ship would be armed with a compliment of repair drones and a special kind of laser that shoots out nano bots. The ship would consume items such as energy cells, microchips, raw metals, and nanobots (new market item).

I don't like the idea of the ship itself having some sort of resource in its hold and *very slowly* making its own repairs while consuming the item. I would rather have a ship on hand that can make the repairs relatively quickly, due to the automated nature of the drones, and the ship itself shooting repair nanobots at the damaged ship through its mounted "repair gun".

Of course, if capital ships have repair teams on board, and you still want to go with the whole "repair team" idea, then while combined with the repair ship idea, they could be tasked for other, more critical things like putting out fires, or re-pressurizing parts of the ship. Repair teams could also be mandatory for the repair of any docked fighters.

[spankahontis]

2 new ships could do it

Salvage Ship
Needs consumable Welder Drones to function
Dismantles Cap-ship wrecks & Station wrecks to collect "Resource(s)"
Resource(s) can be used for repairs, or traded to NPC's for £'s

Fleet Support Ship
Uses consumable Welder Drones + "Resource(s)" to repair target ship
Secondary function - Refuel, re-supply ammunition


just a random idea
mostly based around the 'stations will be destructable' comments in the Q&A's

I kinda envisage them being smaller than the Fedhelm, but bigger than the Dwalin & needing 2+ crew

I'd like to see also, Scrap Dealer Ships.
Larger vessels are destroyed that parts of them float around as junk in space.
Smaller Junk vessels serve like mining ships with mining drones that can cut chunks of scrap from the wreckage and sell back to the market as junk and not just scrap metal, but salvageable parts that are more valuable than just scrap metal.

A whole new economy could be built out of this.

[patient zero]

In the real world, vehicles don't carry any "repair resources" other than a spare tire and maybe some fuses or a jug of water for the radiator. Anything more than that requires outside assistance. Small vehicles are normally towed to a repair shop and large vehicles use roadside service.

I would very much like to have mobile salvage/repair service available. If ES doesn't do it, someone else probably will.

[Skeeter]

Would be interesting if maybe carriers had a repair facility on to repair ships. That or mobile repair dock like a support frigate like say from homeworks games.

[Nanook]

In the real world, vehicles don't carry any "repair resources" other than a spare tire and maybe some fuses or a jug of water for the radiator....

Naval ships most certainly do carry repair supplies. And carriers carry spare parts for fighters. Civilian ships by and large do not. But ships in space would be remiss not to carry at least some basic emergency repair supplies and gear since help could be a very long time coming and any hull breach could quickly prove fatal. Even the ISS has repair materials and astronauts trained in doing the repairs.

Spaceships cannot be compared to automobiles.

[patient zero]

Spaceships cannot be compared to automobiles.

Hmmm... well... okay. I'm a professional automobile mechanic and I've done plenty of roadside repairs but I've never worked in a mobile shipyard. Like Skeeter said, that would be a good use for capital ships.

[Nanook]

Spaceships cannot be compared to automobiles.

Hmmm... well... okay. I'm a professional automobile mechanic and I've done plenty of roadside repairs ...

And the vehicle owner is comfortably standing by waiting for the mechanic to arrive and perform the repair, all the while breathing air that's not supplied by the automobile. Get my point?

[patient zero]

Get my point?

Yes, but...
I own 3 boats and I don't carry any spare hull plating in any of them. That's what life jackets and spacesuits are for.
Of course, I don't take them into combat.


Edit: The only point I'm trying to make is small ships have a limited load capacity and if you're expecting trouble there are better ways to deal with it than filling your cargo bay with hull plating.

[csaba]

I wanted to start a similar topic but since this covers most of the subjects I'll just post it here:



Using carriers as support/flagships:

Most people who have played X:R know how carriers especially the 'Sul' line of ships weren't really functioning as their description would let you imagine.

Furthermore with the quadrupling of weapon systems on XL (previously M2, M1, M0) ships, small S, M (M3-4-6) and even some L (M7s, M8s, TLs) sized ships became nothing more than cannonfodder. Drones were an answer to this as "cheaply", en mass deployable XS (M5) sized ships, they however still functioned as an expensive ammo type which required slow cumbersome restocking mechanics using either cargo ships or dockyards.

This meant that drones were only effective against the player and the Arawn (the only ship fitting the M1 class from previous games) was used as a slow moving fort and the Suls were useless as they seemingly traded hard points for a nonfunctioning role.

My idea is:

- Increase carrier fuel storage 100 times
- Carriers can distribute fuel with a teleporter device (no drones needed for fast refills)
- Increase carrier drone capacity compared to other capitals x10
- Carriers can restock other ship's drones (without docking with each other)
- Give carriers ware storage capacity
- Give carriers the ability to repair friendlies with drones. Ships and stations alike.
- Add repair nanites to wares.
- Repair drones consume repair nanites ware
- Limit self repair for ships and stations
- Add Supply restock mode to carriers that work how X:R CV's buy wares for stations
- Remove ware type for drones (production was funky, alternating between 10+ types)
- Add small(civilian), medium(cheap millitary) and large drone (exp. military) kits to wares
- Add an ability to carriers to assemble drone kits (+ a drone control module for stations to do the same)

This will achive:

- Smaller carriers (M7s) like X:R's Suls would be useful
- Drones are more easily replaced, production is more streamlined and you don't have to dock the ships (taking ages) to replace them, just use the restock mode
- The simplified production combined with the new map in X4 will make the use of drones for carriers more viable for the player
- Ships don't repair "magically", but you don't have to dock 10 ships one after the another to get the fleet repaired if you have a carrier
- No NPC station parts stupidly respawning from nothing
- Would give a good strategic target for the player to kill AI carriers
- repair nanites would make a very nice high demand ware for production (would be still more expensive than normal building materials though so they don't cause a logic issue when building stuff)