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Small ship autoheal / docked heal rates

Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2013 4:50 pm
by naroom
The way healing works feels a little odd: docking is an instant heal to 100%, but there's no way to heal out in space. I propose changing both.

First, out in space:

It's no good pulling off a brilliant escape, with only 2HP left, only to be smacked by an asteroid. Particularly annoying: When you wrap around the map, only to smack into an asteroid you could never have seen coming. Ouch!

It would play much better if small ships had a very slow auto-heal, maybe 1HP per second. It could be increased via a Small Ships upgrade as well. Heal rate could increase by 1HP per second per upgrade.

The psychology here is that, when combat is over and adrenaline is fading down, you're still vulnerable, but you still WON. And the longer it's been since combat happened, the less relevant that combat should be to your current status.

Neatly solves the problem where everyone launches at once in the start of the game and crashes into each other. That initial damage will just heal away. Likewise, new players in miners will not be punished quite so hard for smacking into every asteroid before they figure out where the X button is.

A fully upgraded auto-heal might make for some interesting strategies, too. For example, a team of destroyers could use their auto-heal to continually harass the enemy BC, making them much more viable as an end-game choice.

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Now docking:
On the other side of it, dock = insta heal would benefit from a change too.

When docking a damaged ship, it should take some time before you can jump back out in it. Maybe 30 seconds to heal 100% of the ship's max HP (15 seconds to heal 50% of the max HP, etc). That will give small ship pilots a bit of time-out: they can go refine, build missiles, do a nav ping, etc. It would help break down the boundary between "bridge people" and "small ship pilots" that is especially present in early game.

This could really help newer players who have gotten used to running miners and are looking to grow into the more advanced roles on the ship. If you get damaged, go in for a bit, and see what needs doing on the BC.

Re: Small ship autoheal / docked heal rates

Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2013 5:34 pm
by Siretu
This is something that's been discussed for a long time. The problem is that when you launch a ship, you launch a new version of the ship so health is reset back to max. I can get around this but then I'd have to basically program in a custom regeneration. What I'd like to do instead is to save the ship somewhere in the hangar so it uses the same unit all the time which regenerates normally, however it will take some time to fix to make sure it works properly.

As for adding default hull regeneration, I feel like it's a good idea but it makes shield generators less useful since the shield generators are usually got for the regeneration.

Re: Small ship autoheal / docked heal rates

Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2013 5:41 pm
by Racism Minerbane
Redo how the hanger is set up so it has open pad slots that the ship itself docks in and little scv's repair it in dock.

Re: Small ship autoheal / docked heal rates

Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2013 6:33 pm
by Siretu
That's what I'm planning to do, but it requires some work. Also, what would you think of lowering the amount of ship slots to 6(maybe 8)? So each ship gets its own launch pad.

Re: Small ship autoheal / docked heal rates

Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2013 8:50 pm
by Red-Rocket
No dont lower the slots of ships, just make the hanger more vast and maby show the ships like in WC3, that would be cool with the animations, maby seperate 4 docks to one side and 4 docks to another. Make it vast because im thinking as far ahead as boarding parties where there will be alot of fighting and many exploring the ship

Re: Small ship autoheal / docked heal rates

Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2013 8:53 pm
by Red-Rocket
Oh and if there is an auto heal, make it an upgrade (+level*repair rate+hull %) and start it at 0 repair rate, just to keep things interesting =)

Re: Small ship autoheal / docked heal rates

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2013 3:58 pm
by Racism Minerbane
Boarding parties will be great, I can't wait until I can land starting miners on the BC and steal the starting corvette.

Re: Small ship autoheal / docked heal rates

Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2013 3:08 pm
by Red-Rocket
so...are we going to implement this idea? where 5 upgrades 0/1/2/3/4/5 per second?
10Y 25B 5G is what i suggest

Re: Small ship autoheal / docked heal rates

Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2013 4:32 pm
by Tempest
the way ship repairs work is odd, changing this without making an easy way around it will harm all small ship effeciency including wraithing and mining mainly. Wraiths when pegged by an asteroid early game usually just dock, miners being pegged all game will dock also, if they have to wait for repairs or want to avoid docking this will result in even easier miner kills over all and less minerals coming in all together; which will lead to longer games due to harmed upgrade rates.

i suggest a small ship upgrade including hull repair in space over time as well as an increased rate of healing when docked. The process of making this change will be so difficult it seems xD this will also prevent chomper tanking and docking. however it will make the heal upgrade on the power transfer more viable to all teams. which would be my new recommended form of hull repair as well as the upgrades. stacking this hull repair sci shot with a default hull repair over all can make for some small ship tanking methods as well as a decent over all restoration for all small ships.

Re: Small ship autoheal / docked heal rates

Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2013 9:03 pm
by Red-Rocket
or we can give it an item, 2hp/second
like....40Y 30B?