Auto Repair for units and structures

The problem with this is: Imagine you're playing SupCom. You're attacked and a lot of buildings are damaged. You want to delay your repairs to avoid resources being spent for a while, but... Your base starts auto-repairing and costing resources.

Having repair towers (instead of every building repairing itself) would give you centralized points to disable when you want to preserve your precious resources.

Just a note: the argument of "free regen" is equally valid with engies. It's still "free" in the sense that once you make an engineer, it can endlessly repair things for free as long as it's alive. It's just 1 step removed from having to assign a patrol route or scatter them evenly around your base or units.

This is a good point, but you do need another unit that can't move or help with construction. If you have area commands and priority (repair first, assist second), then engineers can automatically cover an infinitely large space in a versatile way, and stay mobile so they can avoid getting killed.

Eww, free HP =S
Since building and repairing use the same system (I assume, that's how it was in TA/SC1), I don't think that'll be the case in PA. It's going to be more like TA than SC2 or even SC1

Heh, I see what you did there.

Except that repairing wasn't free in either TA or SC.

In Forged Alliance there was a building that had a repair aura. You could stack these repair buildings next to one another for a quicker repair (which used more mass) and people could target the repair buildings if they wanted stuff to stay damaged.

Everybody loves more buildings!

Actually, if you're talking about the Seraphim T2 Restoration Field, that wasn't stock, it was added in the BlackOps:Unleashed Mod.

Also you are incorrect about a few aspects of the structure, first it did not consume mass, instead of just had a constant energy upkeep, similar to shields or radar. Second it did not stack, it also only added about a 5hp/s Regen, not a whole lot considering the health values for some of the T2 structures/units.

Mike

Imo self regenration should be implemented as a passive-ability of some units, but not for every unit. What I would like to see are engineers which auto-repair near units for free, if we have flying engineers it would be even better, they wouldn't harm the pathfinding.

I figure since we don't have shield generators this whole concept of auto repair was the alternative.

i think it should go one of two ways, either A) every unit and building(buildings specifically) should have some sort of auto regen that kicks in after they have been out of combat for a few seconds, in fact it might be better to limit such a feature to buildings, because honestly in a game like PA i don't see us doing much repairing to mobile ground units(cept maybe to aircraft using repair pads)

or B) make repairing cost very little if not totally free, one of the big problems with repairing in supcom was the fact that repairing a unit basically ended up costing = to the unit's mass if not more, and for buildings, it was cheaper to just self destruct the building and rebuild over the wreak.

This whole thread reminds me of a passive vs active tank argument.

EVE Online <3

Repairing a building should cost at most the price of rebuilding it on its own wreck, minus some more. Repairing should also be faster than building. Those two conditions should continue to motivate players not to let their structures get destroyed.

If you make repairing free, then you're making the damage of an attacker discreet instead of continuous, which can lead to more random outcomes in the game. If you happen to almost destroy their entire base but fail to actually destroy a single building or unit, and repairs are free, then you haven't cost your opponent anything at all.

It's like not getting your annual bonus at work because you haven't been at the company for a year. One would expect the bonus to be pro-rated.

How about instead of having arbitrary thresholds of regeneration delays, we use a very simple system which accomplishes much the same thing.

Mobile Units: Do not auto-repair.

Structures & Commander: Persistent self-repair, slow but continuous.


However I do think it is important to give players the ability to repair units, as it encourages being efficient in battle, and keeping your units alive whenever possible. How about any unit loaded into a closed cargo bay begins to be repaired at a reasonable rate?

We could also implement bunkers which serve the dual function of protecting your units from air strikes, artillery, nukes, etc. and also repair them, as they are loaded into a closed hold. These could also serve as a new type of base defense, containing garrisoned units which spend most of their time sitting in the bay, and sortie to defend the base from attackers. Side benefits: units in bunkers use basically no system resources, and because they cannot be targeted while being repaired, you cannot abuse repair.

Having field engineer units with magic repair beams is pretty old hat, and has negative side effects. Namely that you can repair units as they are being shot at, which create some truly bizarre situations necessitating arbitrary rules about reduced effectiveness of repair while taking damage, or other such nonsense. And also engineers repair one unit at a time, and both have to stand still, and because it happens in combat there are balance concerns making repair weak anyway... It's just ugly.

I'm fairly certain this thread has gotten a little out of hand. There are some fairly obvious (in my opinion) components that people seem to be missing. I haven't read through every post, but judging by the fist and last few pages, there seems to be some misconceptions.

Auto-repair costs resources
Just like having an engineer go repair the structure, the auto-repair would hurt the player's economy. The idea that a raid will we useless if it doesn't destroy much is a little off. Firstly, the auto-repair activation may surprise a player and destabilize their economy (perhaps an option to disable it for structures). Also, a raid that destroys nothing would probably have been useless regardless of auto-repair existing.

Units shouldn't auto-repair
To avoid an intense focus on micro, units can't auto-repair. It'd be ridiculous having a potentially invincible army. The player could just pull away damaged units, wait a bit, then send them back in. That's not the sort of gameplay I (and I imagine many others) want to see in PA.

Auto-repair speeds should be painfully slow
People seem to be assuming that if their first strike fails, their second wave will encounter every surviving structure at full health. This is also ridiculous. The intent behind having auto-repair was, in my mind, to remove the annoying micro needed to go repair every building that may have received a few damage from random attacks and debris. It is not meant to sustain a defence, it is only there to let the player focus on other things.

There was also mention that repairs could easily be accomplished by some patrolling construction aircraft. Even though they were apparent in the video, they didn't exist in SupCom (unless I am seriously mistaken), so this may be a false assumption. I'd prefer my engineers being busy making things rather than patrolling for potential inconsequential damage.

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That's about all I could notice. Feel free to pick apart my ideas I'm just a casual player that hated all micro.

The problem with this line of thought is that it removes management from the game, not micromanagement. At this rate we're going to end up with nothing to do in the game =P
In SC, you can just send an engineer to attack-move or patrol through your defenses and they'll fix everything, that's not too micro-intensive, and it does mean you have to know what's going on at your bas, which isn't really a bad thing.

We need to walk the line between the game playing itself and being too difficult to play effectively. Unfortunately, some micro is always going to emerge (like keeping mobile arty at a distance), but things like repair towers/decent engineer patrols should sort out this particular topic

I also prefer repair towers over auto regeneration.

You want yout units repaired? Retreat or take an field engineer with you. But don't rely on auto regeneration, not even for buildings. If you want your base to be maintenance free (as in "doesn't require engineer patroles") thats something you should consider in the construction of your base, not something you are given for free.

I think nothing should repair itself, and that there should be a building like the engineering station that just repairs things but with a bigger radius. This way it's easy to keep your main base fully repaired but outlying bases would fall into disrepair unless you built one of these or repaired it manually.

Hmm, a repair 'aura' would be interesting, though would it function even while structures were under attack? Seems strange that the equipment would be there, but wouldn't do anything until a minute later.

Perhaps it could act just like the repair drones from the UEF Commander, with a bit of the engineering stations. They would launch drones which only operate within a certain region, and could be destroyed. The default action would be to wait until there are no nearby enemy units to send the drones out to repair.

Might be a drain on performance with too many of them active though.

EDIT

Well, if you'd like to keep your structures after being attacked, you're going to have to repair them yourself with engineers. That's the whole idea behind it being painfully slow. The only purpose it would have is to repair those 1-10% that may occur due to accidents (random projectiles and falling debris). It would be ineffective at anything else.

Perhaps limit the auto-repair lower limit to 50%. Any structure below that would have apparently been in combat, and thus 'lost' their repairing devices.