Auto Repair for units and structures

Doubtful, but possible.

The resource requirements to run of of those repair guns aside the towers themselves are never usually that well armored, or at lest shouldn't be.

Without shields to protect them you could theoretically snipe them with artillery or a quick air strike, before moving in.

and of course, they can only repair 1 target at a time, so you could keep them busy with a raiding unit.

I like how you told Mavor that he should be corrected by the developers.

I got a good giggle out of that too.

[EDIT:] Given that polls are less frequent now. I think it's time for a new signature. ;D

chronoblip asserts(or not) that unless you're in a top tier backer, your opinion isn't valued. Mavor posted that he values the opinions posed on this forum, which makes it a developer statement. What my post implied was that unless a more recent developer statement was made to discard the previous one, e.g. Mavor changed his mind, then chronoblip is a liar. I'm not sure how that's giggle worthy.

Anyway. I realise I got way too sidetracked, so I'll start from the beginning:

My original statement was there was nothing about logic nor gameplay which demanded auto-repair be implemented on any level. A statement which I still hold to be true. This was in response to the previous post, as well as a general sentiment in the thread that it was imperative for at least some level of auto-repair to be implemented. It's interesting to note that the people who want this are using previous games as well as a point of reference.

Now the reason I don't like the proposed time delay solution is because I don't want the game deciding for me some arbritrary time limit for when I'm 'done' attacking the enemy. When I'm sieging, sending waves and raids, it can be over the span of a very long period, or be part of my grand strategy to suffocate my enemy. When I'm done attacking is when my enemy decisively crushes my attempts to invade an area and brings in his own support. Then again, when an attack is 'done' can't be decided by any metric until the gaming nerds get their hands on the game to see what the unit dynamic is capable of.

You can call it maintenace instead of repairing all you want, but it's the effect of the mechanic that matters. And no- it's not 'like you've repaired all your stuff anyway' when an indeterminate amount of time passes at all. It's 'like you've repaired all your stuff' when you get engineers and other repair units to actually go out and repair all your stuff.

If you go back throughout the first half of this thread, you will see no objections to a more sophisticated user interface with more precise commands to better direct engineers. After all, the crux of the demand for auto-repair seems to come from not wanting to 'babysit' engineers. If directing engineers didn't feel like a chore to them, would auto-repairing still be demanded? What is being objected to however is directly changing the gameplay just for the same purpose.

I really dislike yanking repair out of strategic consideration. Basically you reduce the game to a 100-0 or nothing mode.

What is needed are better options for support. Whether repair towers or some sort of patrol zone for engineers. I hated engineer patrol because:

1. It was clumsy adding new engineers to patrols.

2. Engineers never had strong enough config options to make it manageable. They'd wander off and start collecting a tree when I really want that nearly dead T3 factory repaired.

What I like is a system for setting up repair/collect orders outside of engineers themselves. I should be able to apply some sort of strategic layer to the map to set up automatic repair. Then you attach an engineer pool to it and that layer will decide to the rules it has set what the priorities are and allocate engineers as appropriate.

That way you can capture the strategic vision you have for repair and resource in some concrete construct. It is kind of like an analogue to master factories in SupCom. Obviously you can yank an engineer off to do something else and then it'll return to the control layer just like a slave factory would go back to being a slave once its custom orders had ended.

This also doesn't remove repair/collect from consideration as a strategic axis. It just removes the fiddly work involved in managing it.

I am against trickle-self-repair, mainly because iv'e seen a IMO better system in warzone 2100. Unit drops below user specified health and the unit retreats to one of the repair slots on the side of the factory. For buildings there would instead be a "summon idle engineer" when structure drops below user specified health, and of course there would be repair priority when multiple structures are damaged.

There are better ways to handle repair of armies than ta or supcom did. Trickle self repair is the easy, cheap way out.

The irony is; WZ2100 had an auto-repair upgrade to research. If you rushed for it, and defensive upgrades you could turret-creep without mercy.

Upon reading that we should have auto repaired I was in shock that my 1 unit raid wouldn't. be as effective if this succeeded. Anyways in all seriousness auto repair sounds like it is a REALLY dumb idea because army's that just heal that's madness, the only real auto repair should be the commander and the defences because defences are annoying to look at each one and decide wither or not to waste resources on it. The commander acu thing should regenerate because its ULTRA important and besides army's are just cannon fodder for asteroids and also you shouldn't really allow your base to be attacked in any direction. engineers shouldn't ever be on the front-lines because that's crazy since engineers don't even have a gun :l. You know the could make a system where you can just hit a button for a command for all "inactive" engineers and it can create a grid that's great for repairing, reclaiming. And besides engineers teamed together work great so always let them bring a buddy. And can heal each other and can help repair a army with other army of 2 engineer style groups. Also repair towers that just help reclaim and repair would be great.

exactly how its described in OP is good. Repair should just always begin 30 seconds after the last damage inflicted - if it has any drawback it can be a slight energy cost. This is fine as is though.

So after reading 21 Pages i formed this conclusion (for me):

selfrepair = shields

selfrepair - prevents dmg after an attack (by repairing the units for mass/energy and starts after X sec/min) <=> shields - prevents dmg before an attack (by shielding the first round of fire for energy and recharges after X sec/min)

In both cases: if your attack was tooooo weak -> you don't do dmg to your opponent!
Yeah i know selfrepair is more op! With a shield you need to repair the dmg taken, but we talk about little raids. Snipe one building or try to weaken the defense.

Buildings that can repair units/buildings in an area -> less patrols -> less units needed -> less micro -> less path finding -> less pc power needed? if you have 10 planets and 50 patrols everywhere that cant be good... but we got the new path finding thingy and better pcs

So...

Buildings that can repair units/buildings in an area = shields

i see no point against having the old model... building units.. thats all what you do anyway!

Passiv things for me are a huge problem: Example - You need to know every little number -> autorepair <50% HP disabled -> so i need to look did the attack do 51% dmg to all the things i wanted to dmg, but could not destroy or was it only 49% and i need to now know the time it will take the autorepair to kick in. Or just look at the units the start repairing while the raid is on the way and calculate that. Its like 10% dmg reduction here and 25% more dmg from behind... or the basic 25% magic resist in dota2 that every hero has so that 100 dmg is only 75...

This. The thing about shields is you could destroy them to remove their benefits from your enemy. With this system there is no way to get rid of your enemies auto repair ability. Granted, you both have it, but it just seems weird. Having a specialized repair unit that has an aura (much like the repair field on commanders in supcom) you could take these units out to remove the ability from your enemies.

If you did go with an auto repair system, it would have to be really slow (if it didn't cost anything) and at that point it would be too slow to really serve a purpose.

My two cents added: I agree with a very slow auto-repair system. Just to top things up with a bit of polish and a lick of paint, when a stray bit of debris bounces off the hull.

It should in no way be there to replace complex patrol/repair orders for your engineers, just to tidy up the base in case they miss a little dent.

If it gets regenerating health then I want a refund.

Upkeep should cost your resources and effort.

This kind of **** is why nobody liked Supcom2.

This is the reason god invented engineering towers and construction aircraft.

They both give essentially autorepair.

nobody is going to make engineering towers just to repair structures and complex patrol routes across multiple planets is equally silly. If your base is being raided odds are the strike will be surgical and repairing damaged structures won't do a damn thing to stop it. If your base is being assaulted you either win or you lose. If anything the mass you put into repair towers could have made more tanks.

Lastly, engineering towers shouldn't just be lying around all over your bases. They should provide a unique roll in production - not as cost efficient factory production, factories should be the cheapest way to increase unit production, - they should be useful as the cheapest engineer build power and thus will allow you to flexibly move your build power between different types of factories. That is to say if you have many engineer towers but few land and air factories you could use your engineer towers to easily increase your land or air production on the fly. But for the same cost additional air factories or land factories would be much more efficient.

I haven't seen a single great argument against autorepair through this whole thread and I can't help but think the objection is coming from people's hearts not the brain.

Or perhaps you just choose to ignore the arguments you don't like?
I don't like auto-repair because it remove the need for the player to have to think about repairing.
It remove the ability to choose between taking the risk to not repair a building, or to continue building more units.
It remove the need to plan for the repair that will occur after a battle.

I don't really see any argument in favor of auto-repair except laziness.

Autorepair is a special ability, and not many units need it. The Commander is probably the best choice.

You may think autorepair will work in theory, but theory is very different from gameplay most of the time. Have you ever played a game that had a universal autorepair mechanic that worked?

Warcraft 3. TA:Kingdoms. Zero-K. NOTA. Balanced Annihilation. Spring 1944.

I prefer smaller delays, like 5 10 15 20, but slower repair rates(1-3% a second)