Auto Repair for units and structures

Thinking about shields for a moment and since its been said they are not really thinking about it how about this.

Auto repair for structures should be free always occurring thing. The point of it is to take the micro out for ordering units to repair defenses and structures after an attack.

Heres my design,
Above 90% - Begin repair after 30 seconds of no damage
Above 50% - Begin repair after 45 seconds of no damage
Above 25% - Begin repair after 60 seconds of no damage
Above 0% - Begin repair after 90 seconds of no damage

And then once repair has started, it should be a constant stream of health recovery where from 1 HP to Max HP takes 2 minutes.

All of it can be per unit configurable for balance reasons.

Finally engineer or builder or commander units can still manually repair for a instant boosted recovery rate.

This sounds like a pretty good idea.

Anyone got a counter argument?

I "disliked" the fact that buildings and base components (and units) could be damaged over time, and that I had to have enough engineers on patrol to repair them... but I always considered it a valid gameplay mechanism.

Wear down your opponent to slowly kill them... I mean.

I'd prefer just making it easier for engineers to patrol and repair stuff, rather than having units/buildings do it to themselves.

While I do very much like this idea, I would suggest that another possibility would to have certain units with a repair aura. For example if given to a commander unit this could lead to some interesting tactics.

I'm not a particularly competitive player, so I may have a limited view of the impact.

I think one of the most annoying things in TA was the need to repair random structures and units constantly due to errant projectiles and air debris. I liked that those thing happened, but not that I needed to organize a fairly complex repair order.

In SupCom, I tended to turtle with either shields or engineering towers, replacing the need to direct repair efforts.

As long as the repairs cost the appropriate amount of resources (should go without saying of course, but wanted to make clear)

If it wasn't obvious in my post, I quite like this idea as well.

Erm, not sure. I think I would prefer patrolling units that just repair damaged buildings in an area automatically, but the idea of letting buildings auto repair in case you miss something by accident does sound nice (especially once you have a lot of units). Though in this case, I would prefer the time to be increase by at least triple what was suggested.

It should be helpful in cases where you miss things, but it should not replace having units repair tings at a cost. Sometimes you send several raids at once damaging something little by little. If it just auto-repairs itself that fast each time, it'll discourage a lot of fun tactics.

?
You know you could just set a plane to patrol over the units and it would repair them automatically, no hassle, right?

The only problem I had was when you had buildings that where making units nearby. The planes would automatically go to help with construction, which kept them from ever repairing. Maybe just add the ability to not help with construction, only repairs/resource collection when needed?

Well I'm just taking into consideration that because of the expansiveness of the battlefield on multiple planets, moons and structures, having to setup patrols of engineers for everything or spamming repair aura structures could be a problem. Another reason I said free based repairs is because you have a single pool of resources thats expansive over the entire solar system/galaxy. Auto repair or repair auras that constant drain resources with no easy way to track down the drain or manage everything going on.

If this is a thing, regenerating health should definitely cost energy, and possibly mass (maybe 75% of the energy cost and 50% of the mass cost of a new unit, in the case of a unit repairing from the brink of death to full), so that a damaged unit actually represents a loss of some resource.

Also the "not being damaged" criterion could be a little bit harsher. Perhaps units which are self-repairing also need to be not doing anything to benefit. (although if this is the case, the repairs could be significantly faster than the example above).

Every unit self-healing for free would make nearly successful attacks on high value assets the same as complete failures, which doesn't seem great. If you hit someone's fusion reactor and take it to 10%, they should at least have to deactivate it for a bit in order to let it recover, if they don't want to actually commit units to fixing it.

Alright so lets say this then.

90%, 60 seconds after no damage
75%, 120 seconds after no damage
25%, 300 seconds after no damage

25% and below, auto repair functions destroyed until repaired by a engineer or commander manually/area patrol.

I think the solution should be easier repairing, than auto-repairing. Auto-repairing discourages raids and small actions, since unless you destroy something, it's seen as not achieving anything.

There's flying construction units if the vis is anything to go by, so this kind of repair should be easy to set up.

This is easily fixed with the use of 2 commands IMO.

You can have an assist patrol and a repair patrol.

OR you can have priority of assist over repair or the other way around.


There are ways to do it but it is extra lines of code and i does comes down to money and time.


Rathik

I think it is a very good idea.
But perhaps we can give the constructors a modified area command instead. Auto repair friendly units in a appointed area if there isn't any enemy projectiles in that area (or none of the friendly units is being attacked in that area) for more than 30s.

Well, TA and SupCom already both had patrolling with repair and assist. I don't think it would be all that hard to separate the two, nor should it cost much at all (something that can easily be done within an our by 1 person, if the patrol mechanic is already built in).

Also..... I really hope mike didn't start a signing off sort of thing on this forum. I never did get why people put their name at the end of a post when you can clearly see their name in the left column anyway.

I prefer to have a "repair patrol" unit. If the autoheal is in, then I would like to see a reverse effect, e.g. acid sprayers, flamethrowers, power disrupting.
Then again: if the autoheal triggers quite slowly and does not grant a huge regenerative power (unless there is a unit that is supposed to have it) then why not?

Units should definitelly have some sort of regeneration, scaled up by skilling the unit itself and triggering after certain time without fight, but building... i think they should not have one. As was already sayd, any atack that only damages but didnt destroyed anything would be worthless, any artillery preparation, diversion actions with stealhed units etc. Building regeneration should be definitelly caused by third party, i mean a base builder unit or specialized repair unit (patrolling unit or building like engineer posts in SupCom). The point is that self-regenerating properties of the enemy base should be possible removed by precision atack, or mentioned diversion action of special stealth units.

Wolfox

Units in Zero K begin to regenerate after x seconds no damage. Works there.

The rate of regeneration and the time before regeneration vary between units in ZK though. There are one or two light raiders/skirmishers that are really good at regenerating.

I am also for auto repair, it should be slow and engineers must be much more efficient.

I am more for auto repair on buildings, than on units.
Units should at least have a different rate of auto repair.

I think auto repair could drain for the resource pool, but if so, there needs to be a global command to halt all auto-repairs (to focus on something that could be more important)

As long as it isn't too fast I think its a great idea.

I don't know how many planets, moons or space potatos (asteroids) we have to deal later, but it could prevent you from missing one or two attacked buildings. The times it needs depends on the gameplay later but the idea that evey building unter 25% health can't autorepair is great.

tl;dr: time depends on gameplay later, no repair under 25% health

Great idea zidonuke

I definitely like the general concept.

I kinda units should have to remain stationary (esp. aircraft) for it to kick in as well as their not taking any damage for x seconds.
But I can see this being a problem with patrols...

Well... units could get it, too. But only with lots of hp left.

over 90% health = autorepair (don't know about the time nedded)
under 90% health = no autorepair