Fabricators Stopping Assisting/Repairing – Bug or Feature?

http://pa.lennardf1989.com/Tracker/index.php?do=details&task_id=2937

I consider this to be a bug. What about you?

Easy example. Fending off an early enemy raid with your Commander and you set fabricators to repair your Commander. Filled with lust for more robot wreckage, you send your Commander headlong towards the enemy eyes glowing bright with anticipation at the resulting explosions. However, the fabricators finished repairing you, so now they're sitting around doing nothing, while the Commander walks on away from them.

So. The short of it. When setting fabricators to assist the Commander, the fabricators stop assisting the Commander when the Commander is fully healed.

I believe when fabricators are set to assist a Commander, they should continuously follow around the Commander and repair and assist building as needed. Fabricators should continuously follow the order I gave them until they receive another order.

Am I making sense?

What do you think?

Feature. Default behaviour on a damaged unit is repair, not assist.

Repair and assist are different. You can queue other commands after repair. Can't do the same with assist.

If that wasn't the case, you wouldn't be able to queue up multiple repair commands.

If you tell fabbers to assist a commander, they will indefinitely follow him around assisting him.


I.e. if you order your fabbers to assist the commander, they do what you tell them. If you order them to repair the commander, they repair until fixed, then become idle.

I am not sure what the priority is for assisting a unit actively nanolathing. I don't know whether they assist with the lathe or repair the damage inflicted.

You have to bear in mind which command is the default for right click, potentially using the correct hotkeys to change the command to the desired behaviour.

Why should repair and assist be different commands?

Why should the fabricators just stop what they're doing? Why not follow the Commander around?

The easy example is stated above. You're fighting and your fabricators repair the Commander and then stop, but half a second later the Commander is damaged again, but the fabricators aren't repairing again.

This could become an issue with regular units as well with the combat repair bot that will be added soon.

Because, clearly and obviously, as I just posted, you cannot queue assist commands.

The fabbers stop what they are doing because their job is done. They finish repairing the commander, so they go to the next thing in their queue. Assisting is only completed when the assisted unit is destroyed.

So make up your mind. Are you ordering your units to blue cross repair your commander? Or blue circle assist it? Because default contextual command on a unit with less than full health is to blue cross repair, and assisting and repairing are not the same command

Edit : read bugtracker, noticed I reiterated everything there.

Should assist or repair be the default command?

It's neither here nor there. Whichever is default contextual command will result in funny behaviour for people expecting the other. It's a case of knowing your hotkeys so you tell the game what you want to tell it.

By default a unit will assist another. So by default, medics will assist full health units, but repair damaged ones.

With the exception of the commander, do you really want your medics walking into enemy guns with their patients? Particularly if the units survived one battle independently of the medics?

Agree with stormingkiwi here. If you have the fabbers to assist a 50% health commander which is building what should they do?

Currently they repair commander first and then start to assist him and I don't see anything wrong here.

Always your Captain Obvious...

Currently, they repair, then assist. Which is the order I agree with.

I just think they should continue to follow around the Commander/unit when they're finished repairing so they can continue repairing it when it gets damaged again.

The Repair command should simply have the fabricators continue to follow and repair the unit until given a different command.

I think any bots assisting the commander should always repair him and always help him build with a priority of Repair > build. Therefore if com is building and hes damaged any assisters are repairing him instead of assisting his build.

Maybe try have the commander build something behind where you want to walk? But yeah dont see why it doesnt work as you would like. But this would just make com rushes harder to defend against.

It would make the micro less intensive.

And it also makes it harder to defend against comm rushes because it's harder to keep the defending commanders alive.

And it'll be about more than just Commander rushes when the combat engineer gets added into the game.

Do you think this have to be special for commander repair or any other unit? If for every unit, are you sure you want your engineers follow those pretty kamikaze bots that going to die in 10 seconds?

Should that affect area repair as well?

A bunch of good questions that should be answered.

I think if I specifically set a certain unit to be repaired, the fabricators should follow. If I set an area command, they should follow around that entire group and repair everything selected within that group. We're gonna have combat engineers. They're supposed to be in the thick of it.

That's just me.

Maybe allow us to set which is default action when clicking on a unit that can build things - assist or repair - then we can use which ever behavior we prefer.

I guess that can be handled by UI so it's might be useful mod for those who need it.

Bu that's the assist command.

If that's how the repair command worked, you would not be able to queue repair commands. That's why there is a difference between them.

Use the assist command, if you want fabricators to assist the commander. Use the repair command if you want fabricators to repair the commander.

Essentially you're "problem" is that you're not telling your fabbers to assist the commander, but you want your fabricators to assist the commander.

That's because of a contextual command problem, which I think should be solved like this,

but by Uber, not modders.

Except, when you right click on a commander while fabricators are selected, the fabricators go and repair the Commander then help it build whatever it's building.

But if the Commander is walking, the fabricators just stop and sit around doing nothing when the Commander is repaired.

That's inconsistant.

Feature.

Scenario #1:
I want my units to repair stuff and then stop when done, so that they appear again when I look for idle units ("F"). In this scenario, I make sure I am repairing, not assisting.

Scenario #2:
I want my units to repair THIS and THIS and THIS and THIS and then follow THAT around. I would queue repair commands and end with an assist.

Scenario #3:
I want my units to follow THIS until it dies, then THIS until it does, then THIS until it dies and then return to base when that's all dead. I would queue assist commands and end with a move command. (I frequently do this with fighters escorting bombers.)

Scenario #4:
I want my units to repair something forever and ever and never appear on the idle list even if the thing is fully repaired. In this scenario, I make sure I am assisting, not repairing.

So it's important that repair and assist are different commands. They mean different things.

Whether the default should be repair or assist may be another question but I like it the way it is.

The main thing I'm wanting is for fabricators to continue follow around and repair the unit as needed until given a different command.

I'm fine with repair and assist being different commands.

I should also remind everyone – currently repair and assist are currently the same command. So what you and stormingkiwi are advocating for means changing the game in its current state.

How are repair and assist the same command? They are distinctly different. Are you running mods, maybe? When I tell my fabrication bots to assist my commander, they follow him around forever. When I tell them to repair him, they repair him and then stop. I can't recall ever telling my fabrication bots to repair something and end up with them assisting it.

I can also tell my fighters to assist, which obviously does something different than telling my fabrication bots to repair.

I can also area-repair. There is no area-assist (which would be useful, actually, for fighters, like to have them queue an assist command on everything in the target area).

I wasn't describing a change. I was telling you how the existing commands play out right now today.

No mods.

When I click on my Commander with the fabricators, they repair the commander, then help it build.