Miner laser heal

[bbot]

Simple suggestion - make the miner laser heal allies (and the battlecruiser) at 75% of the speed it damages enemies. Make it a teir2 miner upgrade (nanobot beam?), and don't allow move and heal. Secondary request: Add "repair battlecruiser" as an order that can be given to a miner by AI console.

This would have a few effects:

1. It creates more defenders advantage, which in my opinion is the thing most lacking from cruiser command - most other strategy games have some sort of advantage to the defending side (turrets, auras, mothership core photon overcharge, wc3 call to arms, whatever) to offset the fact that aggressors are usually much more surgical in their strikes and get the advantage the more the defenders are spread out. With this upgrade, a defending wraith could hover near a miner, and potentially ward off even 2 enemy wraiths, provided the defending wraith stayed near the miner (preventing pursuit of the fleeing aggressors).

2. It allows the miner to be used in a different role than just mining, it becomes more of a utility craft. It could allow strike teams to heal (slowly) without having to return all the way to the battlecruiser. Keep in mind when a miner is doing this, it isn't mining, so there is still a tradeoff that has to be made (and more decisions like this make the game a more interesting experience).

3. It allows people to emergency heal the battlecruiser by launching all miners and repairing the thing from the outside. This is still a slow process, but less frustrating than doing the same with minelayer. Minelayer expends energy much faster than it recharges it, plus minelayers cost money, and you need at least 2 or 3 of them (and players in each one) to be able to effectively pull this off.

Edit: 4. It also allows the miners to be useful when there is no need to mine late game.

IMO, I think adding a few more ways that each player can contribute to different situations regardless of if they are a combat role or not helps fix some of the repetitive aspects of CC. I feel most games usually play out pretty similarly, and if players were given more options of how they could spend their time within each role, it could make the games more dynamic and fun.

[Siretu]

I kind of like it. A few things to point out though:

* I don't think the miner repair will ever be useful in healing the BC if it heals 75% of the damage it deals.

* This kind of makes it intrude on the minelayer's healing role, but it could be that the miner is more fit for a healing role but it would be good to remove the mine layer healing in that case and give it some more stuff.

[bbot]

Glad you think it is interesting!

I think BC repair should be a slow process regardless. Yes, it would be slow for one miner to do it, but all miners (lets say 4 or 5) could do enough repair that it becomes practical over maybe a 5 minute period (numbers pulled out of ass). Also, if the "order AI to repair" feature is implemented, if an AI is doing the repair, even if it takes awhile, the AI won't mind.

In the situation where the battlecruiser needs repair (team flees, ship badly screwed up), with this change, there is an interesting judgment call that need to be made then - do we prioritize mining, or repairing? Also, if the AI can be ordered to repair, it helps make the drones more useful in the 'help fix the ship' situation, freeing up players to do other important jobs, like upgrades or power management.

[Dreadnought]

and what, turn the beam to light green when mining/healing an allied ship, then dark green when you accelerate the beam

[slapshot]

I think the current minelayer repair is too klunky to use anyways, but if it's significantly faster than the miner repair (which it should be), then it won't interfere too much - it's like having a wraith replace a destroyer when dealing damage to the BC.. as long as the more expensive/specialized ship is better, there isn't any issue.

[DinoChicken]

I think the current minelayer repair is too klunky to use anyways, but if it's significantly faster than the miner repair (which it should be), then it won't interfere too much - it's like having a wraith replace a destroyer when dealing damage to the BC.. as long as the more expensive/specialized ship is better, there isn't any issue.

Just replace the hull/shield healing of the minelayer by ripping off an idea from the subjugator (what? its not stealing if we are ripping off ourselves right?) Make it a place-able tower that heals nearby damaged allies (and upgrade it to ALSO spray shield repair goo to upgrade it to properly help in BC fights and late game if you want to invest in minelayers) and gives minelayers survivability on longevity on the front because they can heal themselves, the question is can a minelayer have multiple healing towers? will it be a limited stock? upgrade the amount of towers you can have per minelayer at a time?
but it should help because the problem is that both the minelayer and the benefactor have to be stopped or else you have ramming and that gets nobody anywhere