Repair bots break the game since they are rediculously OP

[LordDragon]

Good post, Weyoun. Also, after toying with the latest patch, it would seem as though the ability to be invincible is much more dependent on total BC hull hp. Without at least 20k hp, the repair rate is mostly an out-of-combat buff.

In otherwords, they seem OK as of now.

I do prefer a bit of realism in the game, as many things actually do contain that ingredient which is essential for immersion. I'll leave the discussion with this: If they DO get a mineral cost (which I would like to see) I would bring the effectiveness back to where it was 1 patch previous. If they remain free, keep them as they are.

I'll now leave the discussion to the group.

[Degra]

In otherwords, they seem OK as of now.
I do prefer a bit of realism in the game, as many things actually do contain that ingredient which is essential for immersion. I'll leave the discussion with this: If they DO get a mineral cost (which I would like to see) I would bring the effectiveness back to where it was 1 patch previous. If they remain free, keep them as they are.
I'll now leave the discussion to the group.

This is not true. The match you're refering to, we had 1 player plant repair stations all the time on hangar deck.
1 repair station heals (Thermal charge fully upgraded!) about 2.66 hp/sec, so with the current lifetime of 15 secs, it will have a total heal amount of 40.
0.66 hp healed per sec and a heal amount of 10 when not upgraded.

With the current lifetime of the repair stations the repair dude can basically just sit in the northern half of the hangar and go through both elevators, setting there 2 stations nearby as well, until the first stations start disappearing again.

It's a small out of combat buff, but not more than that.
Assuming you can set a station every 5 secs, you could have 3 stations active at a time.
This would sum up to a heal of 120 in 15 seconds, which can certainly not be regarded as an alternative to shield tanking.
With my new thought out strategy of using both elevators you could get this up to 5 at a time, 200 heal in 15 secs, equalling 13.3 heal per sec.
Having 8k-12k shields can be quite normal in such a match and the shield recharge rate would be 80-120 PER SECOND!

Unless you teach drones to perform repair station tasks I don't see any real use of them in combat under the current settings except for taking care of the debris.

[DumbMarine]

Lets start fixing problems with the repair station. First of all, the silly:

Seeding the ship with hundreds of stations is silly. Even with the current 20 second build cooldown, you still get more than enough to stick them everywhere "just in case". It uglies up the ship and while I like the idea of having the refiner also be the "put stations in key locations" job early game, a lot of it ends up being wasted effort. The cause of this is the temporary nature of the station. Here's a solution I propose:

Make repair stations permanent. Make it so that buying a repair station costs a bit of minerals. They do not passively heal anymore, instead you must activate them. To prevent "always on" syndrome, let them have an independent energy reserve that they draw from while active. This energy bar starts empty when deployed and builds up slowly. Of course, have an option to deconstruct the repair station to move it around. (the power stored up is lost)

With this change, there's no reason to stockpile a ton of stations anymore. The mineral cost means that repair stations are no longer an automatic given, you have to make the choice to buy them. The energy bar gives the opportunity for dedicated hull-tanking teams to get these set up early, ensuring that they will have plenty of energy once a firefight starts. This is opposed to shield-tanking teams getting these set up later, which means they will have less energy.

Next, the healing rate. There's no log of the healing changes being made, so I have no idea what's going on with it, but the last game I played the rate was so low as to be completely useless. A station heals the hull 3 hp/s? Great, pentashot alone does 192 damage/s, you won't even notice the heal. And at the same time, the debris clearing healing is extremely OP. Seeing that game where a single repair station healed 500 hp/s was just disgusting. The debris heal further punishes debris-causing weapons and makes the healing inconsistent, sort of luck based.

Make removing debris not heal the BC. Increase the healing rate of the stations to something that actually affects a battle. With an energy bar, the repair rate can now be balanced out so that hull tanking doesn't mean permanent invulnerability. Maybe have a 'regular' heal and an 'emergency' heal, with the latter burning through energy? There's options here.

Next is the issue of the damage control role. Setting up the repair stations becomes a legit task. You want to maximize the amount of repair stations you can fit on the hull as well as have them near important areas so that you don't have debris blocking off your power station and whatnot. You no longer have to spend half the game distributing repair station items all over the ship that end up being a waste of effort. Right now, I see untapped potential in debris and fire management. Keeping paths to important consoles clear has the potential of becoming a vital task, and a fun task, whether it's to revive the person on weapons or to make sure the missile loading drone can get to the missile tubes.

Right now, the main accomplishment of debris is to slow down the hull repair guy from placing hull stations. It could be fun, but you lack the tools to actually do this job. The stations can't be placed too close to each other, which means the station you placed to clear debris is now preventing you from clearing the next row of debris. Of course, the suggestion to make stations permanent would remove this. This is something that we shouldn't leave behind, but in the interest of getting the game back on track, here's a quicker solution:

Bring back repair kits, maybe a bit cheaper to compensate for the fact that removing debris no longer heals the BC.

[LordDragon]

This is not true.

What's not true? That I think they seem ok for now? Or that I prefer realism?


Either way, both of you make excellent points in your posts. These kind of well thought out arguments are what we need.

[Capricis]

...

That... sounds like a pretty good solution to me!

[Hopeinmo]

Repair tower bot things maybe could use tweaking, but for the , moment, i kinda enjoy them as anti fire/debris items