X4 question: Shipyard repairs vs Engineer repairs

[mr.WHO]

Question to Egosoft:
In X-Rebirth free engineer auto-repair made Shipyard paid repairs quite useless.

Have you managed to resolve this issue in X4?

I do like idea that Engineers should be able to do patchwork repairs like to 30% or 40% of the hull plus the surface elements, while the general repair would need to be done by the shipyards.

P.S. customizable Engineer repair priority (e.g. repair engines first so we can run away, or repair weapons first so we can defend ourselves) would also be an upgrade from X-Rebirth.

[RAVEN.myst]

[1]I do like idea that Engineers should be able to do patchwork repairs like to 30% or 40% of the hull plus the surface elements, while the general repair would need to be done by the shipyards.

[2]P.S. customizable Engineer repair priority (e.g. repair engines first so we can run away, or repair weapons first so we can defend ourselves) would also be an upgrade from X-Rebirth.

[1] Alternatively (or perhaps "in addition"), on-board engineer repairs could (should?) consume resources. Now, I don't think micromanaging this would make for a lot of fun, so perhaps simply abstracted to repairs over time costing credits over time commensurately.

[2] Oh, I SO want this - recent Rebirth example (a mere day or two ago - the wounds are still fresh! ) - a station-bound Construction Vehicle gets attacked by a force spawned by a mission, and takes out the drone bay almost immediately (surprise-surprise!) Other subsystems also take damage. I sort out the situation, but now my CV has no CURVs to build with, and I still have a couple of modules I want to add, so I get a container-ship to fetch some. In the meantime, the CV's engineer gets to work - on the ENGINES! Of a ship that will *never* fly again. Once it has patched up that, it then proceeds to fix 2 turrets - fair enough, though I would have preferred to be able to change this. Once those turrets were fixed, the engineer finally turned his attention to... the JUMPDRIVE! Again, WTF - another component that will never be used again. I eventually ended up ordering and almost completing an additional module construction *without CURVs* (which is slooooow) by the time the drone bay finally came back online!

In the above example, being able to manually override default priorities would have been "rather handy". Furthermore, the default priorities ought to be contextually set - above example is perfect: on a deployed CV do engines and JD last, if doing nothing else, if only to give enemies extra targets to shoot at, but do DB, main shield, and FFPs first (in some order, not necessarily as listed here), then turrets. On other ships, priorities would be different - freighters would likely default to engines (standard and jump) and shields first, while fighting ships could have weapons listed higher up. Furthermore, I would go so far as to say that it ought to be possible to edit a particular engineer's default priorities on an individual ship basis (also on ship-class basis would be nice, but would involve having to add some sort of global interface somewhere - extra design and implementation, so this last is in the "would be nice" category. If implemented, such a feature could be made available at a player's HQ or equivalent station, thereby making it a nice late-game luxury.)

[Morkonan]

I don't know how it's done in Rebirth, but I've always seen any sort of individual asset's capability to "self-repair" as only a stop-gap measure.

On-board "Engineers" serve a couple of purposes. First, and foremost, they provide for immersion and flavor, giving the player the impression of desperate red-shirted Scotsmen, running around with hyper-spanners, climbing into Jeffrie Tubes, trying to give everything "mo powa." Or, even more dramatically, the "Ship's Carpenters" in the Age of Sail, shoring up bulkheads and trying to plug leaks while the ship was pounding away with, and being pounded upon by, cannonballs.

OK, so that has that covered - Immersion. (That's a darn scary word, though, since people often say they desire a level of immersion in a game that they really wouldn't actually like playing to... Nobody ever poops in space.)

Functionally, though, an "Engineer" should just be another defensive system that slightly increases one's durability and, outside of combat, could possibly alleviate, for a cost, certain expenses, including the permanent loss of a ship.

In an X4, I could see, as has been pointed out, a ship's compliment of Engineers, which should have some sort of meaningful up-front cost involved, acting to help add some "tougness" in the form of hull and engine repairs during combat, but not have the capabilities of a full shipyard in terms of extensive damage and the repairs needed.

That might force the issue of a "system damage" mechanic. I like those sorts of mechanics, but only when they don't equate to an "I Win" button in a game. (No magical weapons that automagically render an opponent's ship incapable of combat, for instance.)

So, what we could end up with is either a system-damage model, where Engineers couldn't fully repair certain systems, or a more holistic damage model, where a ship below a certain % in health for aggregated systems, which are already traditionally tracked (hull, engines/etc) must use the facilities of a shipyard to be fully repaired.

TLDR: The simplest model that still yields the desirable results of having an Engineer mechanic would be one that relies on aggregate damage reaching to a level where, beyond that, a ship's Engineers can only repair a ship to basic, life-sustatining, functionality. Unmolested, they can preserve a ship. But, if a ship receives xx% damage, the Engineers can repair it only up to a certain point, past which it can't be fully repaired unless it visits a full-service shipyard. Engineers are then useful, especially in combat, but aren't overpowered in the sense that they're a one-stop Insurance policy for any ship that they're on.

Building on the idea of Engineers and Repairs - I wouldn't mind seeing a more advanced ship-repair mechanic where the player can, if they have the resources, build, supply and maintain their own "repair yard." They'd have to keep it stocked with hull plating, microchips, weapons, jump drives and all the other fiddly bits that go into refitting ships. But, if they could manage to put this very expensive station into play in the first place, they're at the stage where having to micromanage sending their ships to alien shipyards for repairs is a chore, anyway. With their own very expensive and expensive to maintain shipyard repair station, they could add it to their list of behavior orders for their own ships. THAT way, there's even more fiddly bits to figure out how to automate!

So, without this tool, the player has to order their ships to a faction's shipyard for full repairs. However, with this tool, the player has an entirely new option to work into their plans. They could establish central repair station facilities, add "Seek Repair if Below xx% Health" behavior to their ship's commands, allowing their ships to, instead, go to player-owned facilities, which will have to be defended, just like any other.

IOW - Expand upon this slightly, using the mechanics that are already available in X3TC, for instance, (nothing new has to be figured out) and now we have a new gameplay element the player can use, but only when they reach a certain capability in the game, so it doesn't diminish early and mid-game play and still requires the player to build up the Reputation they will later need just so they can more conveniently repair their ships until they reach this mid-late/late-game mechanic. (They can work towards this meaningful reward that adds even more gameplay fiddly bits. )

[Nikola515]

Question to Egosoft:
In X-Rebirth free engineer auto-repair made Shipyard paid repairs quite useless.

Have you managed to resolve this issue in X4?

I do like idea that Engineers should be able to do patchwork repairs like to 30% or 40% of the hull plus the surface elements, while the general repair would need to be done by the shipyards.

P.S. customizable Engineer repair priority (e.g. repair engines first so we can run away, or repair weapons first so we can defend ourselves) would also be an upgrade from X-Rebirth.

Just think how busy shipyards would be if every ship (player/NPC) would dock for fixing ? Shipyards wouldn't have time to build anything and whole economy would collapse.....

But what I would want to do is to limit engineers fixing to 50% and have stations similar to Cell Recharge Fabs that can fix and rearm all drones/missile.

[RAVEN.myst]

I don't know how it's done in Rebirth, but I've always seen any sort of individual asset's capability to "self-repair" as only a stop-gap measure.

Unfortunately, 100% correct, likely far more so than you imagine - so I'll explain:
In Rebirth at release, no engineer, no matter how skilled, could repair a ship to 100% hull (though could always slowly repair all subsystems), thus necessitating a visit to the shipyard - sounds OKish, right? Well, there are two problems in Rebirth with visiting shipyards:

1. Shipyards use the same dock for building and repairing (I've suggested elsewhere, or perhaps upthread here, that I think they ought to have separate facilties for the two, with more repair drydocks than construction docks), and even to this day, after multiple updates bringing the game up to v4.10, a lot of the time they are still stalled in construction jobs, awaiting resources, meaning that the player has to wait or even personally solve the supply issue in order to get a new ship - so having to wait in order to patch up a ship to full trim would be (and was!) beyond annoying.

2. In Rebirth, saying that commanding ships can be "awkward" would be "something" of an understatement (try a complete and utter PitFA ) - especially once they have been assigned other commanding officers (ie. a ship that has been assigned to a station or as an escort to another ship. In this particular case, the player loses the ability to directly issue orders to that ship, requiring first that ship to be detached from its current assignment (and, idiotically [sorry, ES, but that's seriously how I feel about this], there is STILL no "assign new superior: None" order - one has to use "Join my squad" then, if that ship isn't to keep gravitating toward the player "Leave my squad") before it can be ordered to seek repair (assuming an available dock at a shipyard as per 1. above), or even to restock missiles or simply refuel. Then, once the ship has eventually been repaired, it will either stay near that shipyard (if not "in squad") or start flying to the player (if "in squad"), which can sometimes (albeit rarely) be disastrous (say, for instance, the direct path would take it through a dangerous point.) At this point, the player now has to restore the ship's previous assignment - be it a station's freighter or miner or security ship, or a member of a combat group. Convoluted and tedious. Now, picture having to do this for several ships in a group or several groups, some damaged, some not...

The awkwardness of it all has made the ability for a top-skilled engineer to gradually repair a vessel eventually to 100% ship-shape (which was patched in around v3.0, if I'm not mistaken) a VERY welcome change even for players such as me who tend to value plausibility and immersion (to a reasonable point, as you pointed out), and generally eschew magicky unbelievable bits. I, for one, ONLY EVER assign 5-star engineers to any of my capital ships (which I'm using less and less often, incidentally) in Rebirth, because I am simply unwilling to jump through the absurd hoops required to get a ship into drydock. In fact, I tend to not even buy a ship unless I can get it with ALL the drones I want on it right out the box, as I really don't want to face the tedium and ennui of shipyard interaction thereafter - and especially if I want to buy multiple ships, I don't now want to be tying up the 'yard with a repair or a fitting, thereby delaying ship construction jobs - and vice versa! However, I would FAR prefer if the system were fixed so it worked reasonably, thus obviating the need for this (magic engineers) stopgap.

Aside: I can *somewhat* pretend to myself that engineers are able to repair a ship to full health through the use of nanobots or such - problem with this is that the economy (the wares/resources on the wares flowchart) don't really support this notion - would there really be a need for "reinforced metal plating" if nanotech were extensively used, or would it not be reasonable to think that the shipyard would only need "refined metals" fed to it, and nanobots would shape it into the required bulkheads and hull sections etc.

Just think how busy shipyards would be if every ship (player/NPC) would dock for fixing ? Shipyards wouldn't have time to build anything and whole economy would collapse.....

But what I would want to do is to limit engineers fixing to 50% and have stations similar to Cell Recharge Fabs that can fix and rearm all drones/missile.

First part above more or less echoes what I described in point 1.

Second paragraph: yes, I wish it didn't take three separate visits in order to repair the ship + restock missiles + equip/remove drones. The shipyard interaction interface needs to be overhauled, to allow a player to pre-order ALL desired work to be done, up front - at least the current level of multiple confirmations (ever rearmed missiles? It's absurd how many times the player has to confirm the action!) would then have meaning/purpose.

Also, importantly, it needs to be possible to order ships about more directly (from what I've read so far, I'm daring to hope that this is already on the cards.)

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

XR started with Engineers only being able to repair to a max of 75%. With shipyards needed for the last 25% of repairs, costing 25% of hull price IIRC. Given the difficulties with shipyard repair (time, limitted numbers of repair docks, docks getting blocked by stalled NPC ship construction, micromanagement), changing to 100% Engineer repairs was probably the practical way to alleviate the numerous concerns expressed with them. Rather than it being a preferred design.

If repairing at docks is smoother in X4 (hopefully) and costs about the same per HP as building a ship, and Engineers repair to ~75%, I'll probably continue to Just use Engineer repairs. I'd generally rather buy an additional ship (extra weapons/trade potential) than repair 4 of them (the additional surface elements make buying a ship a bit more expensive though). Still, that's an XR perspective, which could change in the X4 ecosystem.

[gbjbaanb]

I do like idea that Engineers should be able to do patchwork repairs like to 30% or 40% of the hull plus the surface elements, while the general repair would need to be done by the shipyards.

I always liked the idea that the player could repair his ship superficially - weld plates over those laser holes, duct tape up the IREs so the tube don't vent, bend the barrel back so they sort-of fire straight, etc but that the kind of serious repair work required to bring a ship back to 100% would need tools and facilities only available at a shipyard (for cap ships) or an EQ (for frigates) or any trade dock for small ships.

A s a game mechanic, that means only being able to repair a certain amount of damage in each combat.

[sd_jasper]

I always liked the idea that the player could repair his ship superficially - weld plates over those laser holes, duct tape up the IREs so the tube don't vent, bend the barrel back so they sort-of fire straight, etc but that the kind of serious repair work required to bring a ship back to 100% would need tools and facilities only available at a shipyard (for cap ships) or an EQ (for frigates) or any trade dock for small ships.

A s a game mechanic, that means only being able to repair a certain amount of damage in each combat.

Hm, I like the idea that the amount that can be repaired is a percent of the damage received. Like some damage is superficial, but other is "lasting damage". This effectively lowers the hull points that a ship has till it is repaired.

So, for example let's say that 10% of all damage becomes "lasting" or "major" or whatever. Now, if a ship has 1000 hull points and takes 500 damage then 50 points of damage is "lasting" the ship now can only be repaired back to 950 hull.

[Ezarkal]

I do like idea that Engineers should be able to do patchwork repairs like to 30% or 40% of the hull plus the surface elements, while the general repair would need to be done by the shipyards.

I always liked the idea that the player could repair his ship superficially - weld plates over those laser holes, duct tape up the IREs so the tube don't vent, bend the barrel back so they sort-of fire straight, etc but that the kind of serious repair work required to bring a ship back to 100% would need tools and facilities only available at a shipyard (for cap ships) or an EQ (for frigates) or any trade dock for small ships.

A s a game mechanic, that means only being able to repair a certain amount of damage in each combat.

It also open up opportunities to come up with repair ships of some sort, that can come and assist/complete another capital ship's repairs (and dock smaller ships). Kind of like the support frigates from Homeworld 1.

[mr.WHO]

Just think how busy shipyards would be if every ship (player/NPC) would dock for fixing ? Shipyards wouldn't have time to build anything and whole economy would collapse.....

But what I would want to do is to limit engineers fixing to 50% and have stations similar to Cell Recharge Fabs that can fix and rearm all drones/missile.

Yes, I think that was the reason why this wasn't resolved in X-Rebirth.
However in X4 this ca nbe mitigated by adding more docking ports to Shipyards or even maing separate "repair dock" module to not obscure the production dock.

[Alan Phipps]

... and those 'ship repair dock modules' needn't even be exclusively on shipyards but also perhaps could be on some heavy industry or technical stations that can request, store and/or produce the necessary resources and enablers. At least for S and M size ship repairs perhaps.

You don't have to take your car to the brand manufacturer's main showroom and workshop to have your car engine serviced or a few bodywork dents bashed out!

[RAVEN.myst]

It also open up opportunities to come up with repair ships of some sort, that can come and assist/complete another capital ship's repairs (and dock smaller ships).

+1
This would add extra tactical depth - though I wouldn't want them to be able to operate under fire (or at the very best, at a MUCH reduced effectiveness, and with considerable risk) - so not equivalent to clerics magically healing other characters in a high-fantasy swords-and-sorcery game.

... and those 'ship repair dock modules' needn't even be exclusively on shipyards but also perhaps could be on some heavy industry or technical stations that can request, store and/or produce the necessary resources and enablers. At least for S and M size ship repairs perhaps.

+1
This could be modified by higher cost and/or slower repair rate, perhaps, on account of not being "fully specialised", but I don't think this would be necessary really, or even desirable.

[Kitty]

Well.
I don't know about XR, but I made a script for X3TC/AP that allowed marines to repair ships. To repair a ship, it had to be still (0m/s), or docked in a big ship (TL, TM, M1...).
Well, well well.

This was not very fun. Why ? It was too unbalancing.
I really want to be able to repair my own ship, at an affordable cost. It is interesting to be able to repair ships that we buy at the gates before selling them. The drawback is the time we spend. But with this script of mine, the repairs became really free, which was not fun.

Conclusion: I still want to be able to repair my ship, and, to some extend, I want to be able to repair most of it with mainly time as a ressource. I think that repairing ships beyond that has to cost, either time, money, or ressources (like: you have to consume 1 teladianium + 1 microship for X hull damage).

But, but, but... the OP was asking his question to EGOSOFT. I am not EGOSOFT. Now I stay mute and wait for EGOSOFT answer.

[RAVEN.myst]

@Kitty: I'm the same as you in this regard - if something is made too easy, it stops being fun (for me, in-game fun is largely dependent on a sense of achievement derived from overcoming some challenge or obstacle.)

In the vast majority of games, the most fundamental resource is time - one expends time in order to acquire other stuff, including the redeemable currencies. In C&C, tiberium is not strictly speaking the resource, the time spent harvesting it is - and the time reinvested into expanding harvesting operations, as well as production times, etc. How one chooses to spend time determines how well the player will do, as well as how that game will look (ie. play style) - meaningful choices about prioritising time allocation. Even in chess, a *turn-based* game with equal number of moves per player, white has the tempo/initiative advantage, and at top levels of play, the vast majority of games end in a draw, while the majority of the rest are won by white - just from that one small temporal advantage (black is always playing catch-up unless white makes a blunder of black executes a tempo-gaining play.)

The tricky thing with time-as-a-repair-resource in the X games is that we quickly end up multitasking, and so long as the repairs can be relegated to a parallel background task, that time expenditure is inconsequential and meaningless. This is why the EVA suit's repair laser, while rather "magicky", is still not too bad in balance terms - the player (assuming no mods or exploits) HAS to personally spend time using it rather than be doing something else; thus, using or not using the repair laser is usually a "meaningful decision". Automated background repairs over time, however, can take care of themselves while we go on about other business - and so we are not making an either/or choice - and so it becomes effectively bonus, "free".

[Nikola515]

Another problem that I see is modules are so easy to destroy in battle.... For example one missile can take out one or many turrets at the same time so we would have ships going to fix them self for every little scratch. I think modules should be able to fix them to 100%. As for hull it should be able to fix it self to 50%.

Another thing they can do is to have main shield cover whole ship and when depleted modules are exposed.

[Kitty]

This is why the EVA suit's repair laser, while rather "magicky", is still not too bad in balance terms - the player (assuming no mods or exploits) HAS to personally spend time using it rather than be doing something else; thus, using or not using the repair laser is usually a "meaningful decision".

That's my point when I spoke about time as a resource for repair. Player time. Time for an automatic (and not free) repair is another question which is less important by an order of magnitude.

[Morkonan]

...Unfortunately, 100% correct, likely far more so than you imagine - so I'll explain:

In Rebirth at release, no engineer, no matter how skilled, could repair a ship to 100% hull (though could always slowly repair all subsystems), thus necessitating a visit to the shipyard - sounds OKish, right? Well, there are two problems in Rebirth with visiting shipyards:

1. Shipyards use the same dock for building and repairing .... beyond annoying.

2. In Rebirth, saying that commanding ships can be "awkward" would be "something" of an understatement (try a complete and utter PitFA )... Convoluted and tedious. Now, picture having to do this for several ships in a group or several groups, some damaged, some not...

Uh.... wow. I'm sorry. (I feel someone should apologize for you and XR players having to deal with this, so I went ahead and did it. )

That's amazing, though. I'm very excited that someone can take what is a fairly simple gaming mechanic and twist it up that much to make it a gamer's primary occupation. It's... innovative, but in the wrong direction.

It sounds like someone roleplayed complex code to mimic a theme instead of providing roleplaying opportunities with simple code that lets the player establish a theme...

"Hey, stoopid, go fix yourself and then go back to doing whatever it was you were doing." - X3TC

vs.

"OK, listen up people, because we're not going to explain this twice. This has come down directly from Central command and it's going to push us all to our limits. To complete this mission and to achieve our objective is going to require the dedication and commitment that I am sure you are all capable of and that I have come to rely on, these many years of service. Some of you may not make it through this, but we will all work together to succeed. OK, here we go: The first step in replacing the Hotcup Mk IV Coffee Filter is...." - XR

[RAVEN.myst]

Uh.... wow. I'm sorry. (I feel someone should apologize for you and XR players having to deal with this, so I went ahead and did it. )

Bwahahahah! Ermm... thanks, I guess

That's amazing, though. I'm very excited that someone can take what is a fairly simple gaming mechanic and twist it up that much to make it a gamer's primary occupation. It's... innovative, but in the wrong direction.

"Busy-work" elevated to an art-form? Though, to be fair, I think it's partially the result of unexpected interactions between side-effects of some otherwise alright ideas, such as shipyards not insta-building or -repairing, but rather taking time to do so, and those jobs stalling when the shipyard is out of resources - great and immersive, in the abstract, but turns out there should, for starters, be more docks to accommodate the traffic, which includes NPC shipwrighting jobs. However, I'm afraid the UI command deficiencies are downright indefensible, in my opinion...

It sounds like someone roleplayed complex code to mimic a theme instead of providing roleplaying opportunities with simple code that lets the player establish a theme...

Hell's bells, that's quite a convoluted sentence. Or perhaps I'm not quite awake yet, given I've just filled my coffee plunger - which at least avoids the whole issue of...

The first step in replacing the Hotcup Mk IV Coffee Filter is...."

Talk about starting my day with a good laugh - thanks!

[ezra-r]

I like the idea of shipyard making repairs to ships, specially hull.

But Rebirth had two main problems and I bet that was the cause of boosting engineers was the sheer amount of time it takes to send a ship and get it back fully repaired. I mean if the process of docking your ship, providing there was a hangar ready, takes more than 30 seconds, something is wrong.

Also, repairs depended on shipyard available resources right? so chances are you could get your ship stuck, or stuck for no reason because shipyards have been for the most part of Rebirth's life buggy in one way or another.

[pioupes]

it may be necessary to ensure that for repairs the vessels are not obliged to go in the hangar but next to the shipyard and that specialized drones fly to the ship to repair it. this would make it possible not to occupy a hangar