Auto Repair for units and structures

Only thing the towers in SupCom lacked was the ability to reclaim wreckages, wouldn't have hurt that much if they had this ability. Oh, and those towers worked quite well! You placed about a dozen of them around your base and they would make up for the same amount engineers. They deployed drones which were autorebuilded whenever destroyed so you could run your base without any micro. And it DID work very well. Only feture SupCom lacked, was to controll which tasks those drohnes may perform and which not.

Sure nano turrets are fine. They have many uses so are likely to be used a lot.

Agreed.

Also, if that's the reason he wants auto-repair, I have to retract any support (even though it wasn't complete) I had toward this. How can you not glance at the minimap/zoomed out view, and not see the enemy in your base?

I'm late to the party here, but I'll quote the things I agree with;

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So, no to auto repair, yes to repair being important via something like repair only costing 70% of the original cost and/or repair focused units(but as raevn mentioned, with Air engines it shouldn't be hard to do)

Mike

I am for Auto-Repair on structures, but not without limitations.

Specifically, it should not be possible for auto-repair to kick in so long as Power Income is in the positive, unless there is still stored power available. This means the flimsy power structures would be the main target, over trying to just chip down the enemy factories. You raid the resources and power, while you build up the big push to take down the factories and commander.

Forcing a negative power income should be one of the key ways of chipping apart a base with constant small actions.

Easy to explain away, as the auto-repair functions are secondary systems and thus power gets diverted from them in order to keep the structure online and operational in low power conditions.

I think the problem that you're trying to fix, is that in games like however, there's little point in repairing units. Since you're pretty much always making them, there's little incentive to haul your army back to base and set a few engineers to patrol through them.

Perhaps a better way to solve this would be to make repairs cheaper, but not automatic, such as 50% cost? The technological framework of a damaged unit is still there, the engineer/repair tower just has to fire the nanoloathe over any damaged plating =P

I just don't like the idea of a base that was taken down to 1/2 hp being back to full by the time of the next assault for no cost to the defender, I don't see how it would improve things?

EDIT: actually read the entire thread and yeah this is pretty much what people said, ah well, there's my thoughts anyway =P

I think the problem is that people assume auto-repair to be free. In particular for structures.

When auto-repair could easily be made to cost resources while it is doing it, at the same cost as if you had an Engineer do it, but you just did not have to go micro an engineer over to do it.

Same result, just less micro needed.

Further, one can look at it as it takes more time to let something auto-repair then just task an Engineer onto it. Which when the Auto-repair function kicks in it would act like 2 Engineers repairing the structure, at the cost of 2 Engineers worth of resources. While only 1 actual Engineer is working on it.

Perhaps that's the key - we may not have auto-repair on mobile units but we do on buildings. It would make at least a little bit of sense in that if you had a remote planet you'd want installations to be pretty self-sufficient. Mobile units would be able to adjust their position to maximize the regeneration process, but a fixed structure would require greater attention.

That seems to be the only reason I can think of...but even that could be countered with the thought of "why do you have buildings out on their own without sufficient protection/support?"

I think you meant "mobile units can adjust position to minimize damage, but a fixed structure cannot."

I didn't, but I can clarify my intent. Whether repairs are being done by a stationary or mobile unit, I can move my mobile units closer to reduce the time for the engineer to travel, and to prevent exposing the engineer to danger.

With a fixed structure I have to take the risk of losing the engineer to go out and repair it, and that may mean not being able to repair at all, let alone in a timely manner to keep a defensive tower up for the next wave of attacks.

Exactly, all this auto-repairing can easily be replaced with a lovely repair tower structure that one can plonk in a base, like the engineering stations in supcom, that send out little drones to fix things that have been shot at

And then you run into the problem where you need to halt base operations in order to get that repair done. Unless they make it so you can micromanage the drones, which then defeats the point in reducing micro needs which is the purpose of the suggestion for auto-repair.

I am not against Engineering stations, they helped me many a time in SP in building armies of expierimentals in mere minutes. I would like to see them in.

Ah yes, that was an effort come to think of it ><

I was thinking more of a dedicated repair structure, that can't assist with construction/factories, and that only auto-repairs (or maybe reclaims too)

Could even be used to auto-rebuild dead defences, although that might be pushing it

Creating repair paths or making repair structures has never been fun for me, so I consider it a "chore" micro that doesn't bring fun. I liked the way it is in Supcom2 (no delay, immediate regen, but very very slow). If you needed to repair a particular structure you could focus on it. Otherwise it would very slowly get back to full health if it survived. Repair structures are a bad idea imo - might as well implement shields...

It's hardly a chore, it's 1 building? And micro is directing units around to do very specific tasks that they couldn't achieve on their own, building a little tower that'll repair your base for you is the exact opposite of that

Free repairs are one of the many reasons a lot of hardcore RTS players didn't take SC2 seriously, rescources coming out of nowhere are not generally a good thing in an economy-focussed game

Which the answer would be: make auto-repair have a cost as if there was an engineer working on the structure already.

Though to be honest SupCom2 did abandon the whole economy aspect and went with straight up costs like all the other RTS games on the market.

Um no, it's not just 1 building. You make that unit, and it will be spammed like everything else. Make the repair stackable and it will promote some ridiculous turtling strats, especially if there is arty. That is fine though. Supcom2 had the pgen repair upgrade for UEF and shields, which indeed was some epic turtlage when you got that going, but for me that type of gameplay isn't as fun as fighting with moving units.

To each his own, I fully support the most simplified basebuilding model possible though (defense structures, economy structures, factories). If they add arty they should probably think about adding shields or repair structures though, as a counter. There needs to be an arty counter which doesn't involve epic engie spam/patrol micro - that's not fun at all for me. So maybe if there's no shields there should be stackable repair structures... it sounds like a mess though.

Also, maybe you haven't played SC2 enough to realize that while autoregen was present and immediate, it was very well-balanced. I'm not sure how it was in SC/FA, but in SC2 you can hardly rely on it for serious repairs if you're hoping to win a game. It just relieved some of the pain of spamming engineers and assigning patrol routes.

Neither in SupCom, you had repair towers (in 2/4 factions), but their purpose was mainly to assist in production, preventing you base from getting crowded with engineers. They also could repair damaged buildings, but no matter how many of them you spammed, they could not "outrepair" anything beyond T1. I used them mostly to eliminate the crashdamage of enemy bombers which would otherwise deal damage to my defenses over time.

Also, don't forgett that turteling is a legit strategie. You give up the economy of a far spread base and you waste a major part of your unit limit on defenses on defending a very small area while your enemy can crush you with wave after wave of the strongest units - units you can not afford. Or simply drop a meteor on your head, it's not like you would ever be able to get out of your turtleshell.

Sure, I'm not against turtling necessarily, and I like doing it mostly to troll noobs in SC2, because it hardly ever wins against good people except in FFAs. I guess I could get used to repair structures, but I still think very slow auto regen is a good idea instead.

I think we're both just used to different things, they're two valid ways of doing it to be honest

I just don't like the idea of every unit being able to self-heal, even if it is very slowly, not quite sure why though. Maybe just because I love seeing automated things happen, like engineers scurrying around fixing stuff in a base =P