Auto Repair for units and structures

I see it as a combat behaviour - you would select fabbers to assist none of the time, assist all the time, or assist so long as your build rate was 100%. Just the same way you can tell doxes to fire at will, return fire or hold fire.

the free part. I'm all for auto-repair, I've been all over it since the begining, I find that structures not loosing health while no engie works on it is a loss compared to FA and same goes for units not having regen (not to mention veterancy) but I don't see why it being free is especially necessary.

I have to say I really don't like auto regen cos it makes small raids or drops pretty much pointless. You can do them, but if you don't do enough damage to take out multiple structures you will always lose way more than your opponent, which is not good.

However, I have to agree that the current solution requires a little too much micro. I would prefer it if we could place repair drone depots which automatically repair structures in a small area around them and require metal and energy to do so.

I don't think they should have regen. Except maybe your commander.

But i shouldn't be free! It should always cost your economy. Isn't it just a behavior which makes your fabbers autorepair?

Nothing which costs your economy should be automatic.

That's why you have a combat behavior, just like for every single combat unit you have, which tells them to "Hold Repair"; "Repair when economy is positive" and "Always repair".

The equivalent for fire at will, return fire and hold fire behaviors that combat units already have.

That sounds unnecessarily fiddly.

Not really... You make "Repair when economy is positive" the default.

Just like fire at will, consume energy, and maneuver are the current unit defaults. What's fiddly about that?

Because I want to be using my positive economy for building things, but now I can't because of this, so now I need to start dicking around with switching it on and off.

It's not really that hard. You just get your idle fabbers to hang out in a place that isn't near units which are not likely to be damaged. Which makes sense.

If you're economy suddenly goes negative, it means whatever is near your fabber ball is under attack.

To be honest, a better way to manage it would be to set the minimum percentage buildrate necessary to repair.

It's going to cost you the same anyway to replace your buildings. Do you may as well do it while their health is two thirds so its a drain on your eco for a third of the time

By auto repair, everyone is talking about your units walking around the map and repairing buildings, aren't they?

Not auto-regeneration?

Maybe have this more of a noticeable thing with commanders as it makes sense but less so with other units.

What if it just repairs it to 50% if below 50%..? Like the upgrade to the commander centre in SC2 in the missions.

This would be cool if it was toggle-able in the UI,
then you could set which building's do or do not auto repair and use up valuable ECO.
Or even better have it so it only occurs if you have nearby "fabbers", it still happens automatically but the more "fabbers" nearby the faster it repairs, then we could have "fabbers" on patrol like many people have stated but without the need for constantly telling each set of "fabbers" on patrol which buildings to repair or not .

(Auto-Repair should be off on buildings by default so they don't consume ECO automatically if damaged, this allows players to pick which buildings they deem most important during battle, and which ones should be allowed to consume ECO)

Regeneration should be a specific design feature of units and structures. I don't think it's a good idea to have a universal rule that all units do it, or that it should cost resources.

For example, raiders benefit from regenerating HP, and it works well with their small HP pools. These units use automatic regeneration as a central design feature particular to their role.

In addition, there are a lot of people in this thread who seem to think making anything an 'option' means you obtain the best of both worlds. Actually, you get all the complexity of both, and such options tend to add little of strategic importance. Making a resource-costing automatic regeneration that is "toggleable" is a truly terrible system. It's overcomplicated and adds nothing.

I believe that making these tasks easier to reduce micro, rather than automatic would be better.

Customizable circular area-assist
Being able to give an engineer a circular assist order with options such as "Reclaim", "Repair", "Build Assist" would make it a lot simpler to maintain the health of specific areas.

While I don't disagree with units having a very slow trickle of regeneration, it may either have a negative impact on raiding or be ignored altogether.

Another option is for damaged units to send out an assist request to nearby idle engineers. But that might be undesirable for some players.

A third option is to auto-repair units only when your metal is capped out and expend that excess metal. Which means that less experienced players (who can never build units fast enough) can benefit from auto-repair but more experienced players (who rarely cap out metal) will have to manage it.

Oh and Commanders MUST have some auto-regeneration.

I'm thinking of it from the perspective of fabbers repairing nearby buildings. Rather than queuing them up to repair buildings.

It would be neat if a structure and/or unit did this.

Had a field of slow repair.

Just suggesting for both unit diversity and control, as if you wanted to turn it on or off you just unpower the structure or move the unit.

I've actually found that if you get fabricators to patrol, that they'll repair buildings. I think. That's what they appeared to be doing.

that's already in? cool! they also reclaim mass when on patrol if i'm not mistaken.

Ok. I haven't seen them reclaim mass yet. They'll definitely assist factories and seem to repair some stuff.