Thoughts on free repairs?

[Falcrack]

What are your thoughts on the fact that repair in this game at your own shipyards, equipment docks, and carriers are free? Personally, it kind of bugs me, I think it should cost resources. Funny thing is, when ordering repairs, it does indicate it will require a certain amount of wares on the repair/upgrade screen. Just order a repair, click on the "+" sign next to the green "repairing", text, and it indicates how many hull parts and energy cells it will take. But it never actually deducts the cost of these wares.

Is this just a long oversight by Egosoft? Is it actually intentional that repairs should cost wares, but the fact that it doesn't is a bug? Or is the bug the fact that on the repair screen, it lists the cost in wares to make repairs, when it shouldn't?

[LameFox]

Ideally I would think it should cost resources (not credits), and free repairs like what M+ ships do would be limited to below some %.

But I think this would likely require some changes. Firstly either a massive buff to carrier storage capacity or else improvement to the automation of restocking them. As someone who rarely uses missiles for this reason I can't imagine the micro hell of needing that just to repair fighters, I would stop using them. Also capitals, that generally lose and fix their parts over time, might require some buff to compensate and/or additional behaviour to make them seek repairs more often.

So, I can kind of see why they have left it free.


edit: and this would also (even further) preference shield-heavy ships over those that are more likely to take hull damage.

[taztaz502]

I vote keep it simple for now, In a perfect world that wasn't plagued by ravenous bugs i would say that all personnel should have upkeep costs and ships repaired at own station / carriers would require wares.

[vvvvvvvv]

What are your thoughts on the fact that repair in this game at your own shipyards, equipment docks, and carriers are free?

Should require nothing at all, the way it works right now.

You could repair ships for free since x3. Without equipment docks, using repair laser. The ultimate point of game mechanics is fun, and that will not be fun. Those wishing for "realism" can request something else or write a mod.

[lostboron]

I chose "Require wares" because this is what the UI says, but I think the most important is to fix the UI bug, and make sure it costs what it says. If it does not cost any ware it should say so.

[Falcrack]

What are your thoughts on the fact that repair in this game at your own shipyards, equipment docks, and carriers are free?

Should require nothing at all, the way it works right now.

You could repair ships for free since x3. Without equipment docks, using repair laser. The ultimate point of game mechanics is fun, and that will not be fun. Those wishing for "realism" can request something else or write a mod.

What's fun for me is not what's fun for you. For me, having a challenge, having to worry about upkeep and costs, is a challenge which I enjoy. I'm not saying remove the repair laser, I think that should stay free. But anything beyond such minor repairs, and self repair through service crew up to a certain percentage, I think should be something that costs the player and NPCs.

[Alan Phipps]

I think it would be a good gameplay mechanic for in-house repairs to have similar resource needs as with NPCs (not the suit repair laser as that's just so slow anyway). That might get the player to consider more the risks of incurring damage in their actions rather than just shrugging and thinking that they'll just repair anything for free later on.

It would also mean that the player has to keep maintenance facilities and auxiliaries stocked with resources just in case, even when restricted to in-house player use.

These would not be bad aspects for additional gameplay/roleplay and could probably be relatively easy to introduce using extant coding, in my non-dev opinion.

[surferx]

I think it would be a good gameplay mechanic for in-house repairs to have similar resource needs as with NPCs (not the suit repair laser as that's just so slow anyway). That might get the player to consider more the risks of incurring damage in their actions rather than just shrugging and thinking that they'll just repair anything for free later on.

It would also mean that the player has to keep maintenance facilities and auxiliaries stocked with resources just in case, even when restricted to in-house player use.

These would not be bad aspects for additional gameplay/roleplay and could probably be relatively easy to introduce using extant coding, in my non-dev opinion.

Actually, I think having to maintain resources for the repair laser, kind of like the spacesuit EMP, would be an interesting requirement.
EDIT: And add to the immersion/reality of the game.

[vvvvvvvv]

What's fun for me is not what's fun for you. For me, having a challenge, having to worry about upkeep and costs, is a challenge which I enjoy. I'm not saying remove the repair laser, I think that should stay free. But anything beyond such minor repairs, and self repair through service crew up to a certain percentage, I think should be something that costs the player and NPCs.

That works in reverse too which is why I don't want this mechanic. It smells of survival games where it is a time waster, and it is a mechanic I actively hate.

Also, in universe where repair lasers exist, what prevents you from gathering 100 people with repair lasers in your equipment dock? What about repair drones? What if you attach 10 repair lasers to a drone with a duct tape?

At best it could work as an optional rule, that is off by default.

For immersion it would be better to normalize food/medicine costs for workers to sane values, implement wages and income from rent on stations. That would be more fun.

[Falcrack]

A couple things would probably have to happen if repairs required wares.

1. Greatly increase cargo capacity of both carriers and auxiliary ships, to allow enough space for the wares needed for repairs and rearming.

2. Allow carriers to be assigned traders as subordinates, and also receive trade from NPCs, like auxiliary ships.

[BitByte]

If repairs would need resources then player would definately need better control over the ships which is the treshold limit until ship will head to repair itself.
Without such contol it will end up to infinite repair loop and run out of resources all the time.
Personally I don't bother fix any of my ships higher than what service crew can do with their NPC captains (or get higher percentage while I fly the ship). I may fix for example main cannons of destroyers using repair laser in case service crew is not capable handle that. But definately won't fly (or order) ships to fix because of that.

To be honest I was surprised when upgraded from 5.10hf3b to 7.00 (skipped 6.x totally because issues with Xenon colony got doomed when they sent out all S miners & power distribution ships and that occured 48-72h from upgrade) and after 5 minutes of playing spotted long queues of ships in every size (S to L) heading to fix themselves to my aux shps parked around the galaxy.

[LameFox]

It smells of survival games where it is a time waster, and it is a mechanic I actively hate.

This is why the ability to automate is critical IMO. I haven't found this to be very convenient with, for example, missiles with a mobile fleet. Even given the ability to assign trade ships to a supply ship, they're still very limited in effective range. I don't want my fleet to live within a few jumps of the missile bits factory, and wouldn't want it to have that same issue with repair components either.

If they did address that though then I don't think it would be so bad. I just want to be able to set it up and let it do its thing without having to constantly manually order supplies around.

[adeine]

They should require wares.

Ideally nothing in the player's own infrastructure should require money as that negates the possibility of operating as a wholly independent faction (unless you give the player the ability to issue credits, in which case the requirement is moot).

[flywlyx]

I suppose this will have to wait until they fix the AI. As it stands, if you assign a trader to supply your supply ship, it will sit idle in empty space until a random enemy comes along and destroys it.

[PV_]

I suppose this will have to wait until they fix the AI. As it stands, if you assign a trader to supply your supply ship, it will sit idle in empty space until a random enemy comes along and destroys it.

Yeah, suppling issue is the main reason why it should stay as it is.
I would suggest to make assigned S/M traders remain docked at the auxiliary ship until needed or option to get back to the chief station for station subordinates.