Separating HP from Metal

Reclaiming your own unit should turn it back into a nanoframe. Reclaiming enemy units is basically a weapon so should damage HP.

I can agree with both ways. The crazy thing, is that currently an excellent player should build tons of power reguardless, but in a metal stall they should actually prepare fabbers to reclaim the commander or structures of huge cost down to low-hp.

In one hand, its very risky to do but it basically means anything you build you can collect morgage on. Kind of strategic. Also, it is sort of neat having the option to attack an enemy for either it's HP or Cost depending on which is proportionately lower.

On the other hand, I think it is important to have a hook in the game for this, because this game will not work very well when modded if the link is mandatory.

Another reason I kinda think I like the vanilla game having fixed ratio cost to build rate, is that it makes any eco calculation up front simple, no variations in time or anything like that.

Fine. Atrophy for all metal < 100%. Which is how construction currently works. You reclaim to 99.9%, your unit starts atrophying after 30 seconds.

And if you reclaim an enemy unit partially? Or should reclaiming enemy units be impossible? That is also an alternative.
In Zero-K you can't reclaim enemy units.

it makes sense reclaim works on enemy units.

here is an idea. What if repair healed, and reclaim and build were instead attached to "max health"?

meaning you can still strip a unit down to partial health or even destroy it. But if stripped, repair heals but only to the amount of metal value it still has. If not stripped, repair heals it fully. Damage does not strip value but damages health.

while that is an alright idea, still like the current quirks of health and metal being linked in vanilla. At least when numbers aren't as wonky as combat fabbers

That's actually a pretty awesome idea.

I don't understand the point of this. What is wrong with repairing costing mass? It's realistic and simple. Everything being proposed involves a lot of non-obvious rules.

Well you could reason that it's like metal makers from TA in that the fabricators are converting energy to metal to rebuild them.