Auto Repair for units and structures

If your not willing to compromise then you have no point in the discussion, if we get stopped by mechanics of the past, we might as well be developing modern warfare 6.

If the genre is to grow we must consider all possibility's, rather then standing behind what has worked for a different situation.

There is always the middle of the road option like: Fire Suppression System in Starcraft 2.

Having researched an ability, it lets structures restore themselves to 50% or perhaps for
PA: the closest increment of 25%.
Repairs to 100% health must be done by repair units.

Auto repair should cost something, since I feel that if the enemy attacked and hurt your structures, there should be consequences for it, not just something you might just brush off.

You could liken it to:
A) Zerg: automatically full heals over time with no resources (proposed)
B) Terran: Heal only with repair units, costs resources (as is now)
c) Protoss: (akin to fire suppression) Heals some, no cost. (middle of the road)

I hesitated before posting this as the thread already had plenty of suggestions, many of them good. Would anothoer one hurt?
As far as I can see, there is a general consensus against the idea of auto-repair, an opinion I agree with. However, this leads to the problem: how else can we reduce the need for micromanagment?

As I see it, decreasing the need for small-scale management is a task for improving the user interface, not tweaking the gameplay.

For example, if a player needs to repair all the units of a base, he might select the units by dragging a box, and then press a hotkey ("R") which would call nearby engineer(s) to repair those structure. Minimal influence on gameplay, but frees a player's time to blow more things up.
A similar technique might facilitate assisting - a different hotkey, e.g. "A" would call nearby engineer(s) to assist the selected structure(s).

chronoblip, don't give me that coy sophistry of "We know nothing about the game so it's impossible to make assumptions!". It's clear that this project is based on the building blocks of all the RTS games that came before it. Just like how all new ideas in human history are built on older ideas or have a point of reference. Anyone with a healthy RTS library behind them can make pretty safe assumptions on how the next one will be like; Uber Entertainment are not reinventing the wheel here; Planetary Annihilation is just another iteration of the kind of game we all already know; except the maps are spheres and you get to hurl asteroids at each other! It's also clear that those in proposal of this thread's idea are coming from a background of playing other RTS games and are thinking about it in the context of existing games. To state that this project is nothing like anything else and so is 'impossible' to know anything about is dishonest and you know it.

Your proposed solution hardly sounds like an 'emulsion'; more like the difference between one and two spoons of motor oil.

"if done right", "if implemented fairly", "compromise", "emulsion" are all magic thrases used by bad players to make bad ideas sound faintly good.

My purpose here is to show the developers who claim to look at this forum for ideas why this is a bad one.

Your Call of Duty franchise analogy is funny because the idea that Infinity Ward hasn't done anything to change the FPS genre is a lie:

They brought to it kill cameras, regenerative health, martyrdom, silly 'perks' and 'prestiges', and thought it was a bold venture to remove dedicated server support.

This Is a potentially good idea. I'm not saying it's great or perfect as I can't dedicate my attention to picking faults in it- but I wouldn't mind seeing a "repair everything on screen / in this area" kind of thing- it would save a lot of clicking. That is, unless you just set a patrol and leave an engineer to it. Hmm.

Anyway! I think it's fair to say- especially over the last couple of pages- that there's strong disagreement to the self-repair idea. Personally I'd be willing to "try" some possible mechanic for it, but wouldn't be wholeheartedly supporting it, as I think it just isn't going to work.

RTS games do not, traditionally, encourage players to focus on the "major" without focusing on the "minor" things like their actual units. The whole genre as a whole would be stupid if everything just self-healed. As said before, how can attrition work if things self-heal? Even if there's a time-delay, you may as well not have self repair at all because players will work around it by just constantly harassing you or something else.

I can think of amusing ideas for repairing things- let's have ourselves some kind of repair-artillery, shall we? You know, hurls pods full of tasty, helpful nanites at areas and heals whatever is in that area. Wait, no- because it would become redundant the instant the battlefront moves out of range. This hasn't been done before (to my knowledge) and why? It doesn't work, or is very limited. The same as self-repair- Developers know to a degree what really won't work- we don't see a collection of robotic cute animals or anime characters running round in our nice RTS's like SupCom, do we? Why? Because it's a terrible idea. (No, nobody gets to say "I want to see that". Just...no).

We don't need anyone flipping out in the forums over this- discussion is fine- let's all agree to disagree/agree with our opposing sides or whatnot. It's already, as said, clear- that the majority seem to be in favour of leaving self-repair the hell alone. I'm sure we're (mostly) happy just having the commander keep that particular perk to themselves without sharing it with all and sundry.

No to unit modifying upgrades and buildings.

If you do this solely to reduce micro, you are doing it for the wrong reason.

However, the idea in itself is not bad, though I heavily disagree with having a full recovery in two minutes.
Just have a simple x HP/s recovery independent of the max health of a building. This allows for slowly wearing down a structure, without having everything undone within a really short time.

I am against unit recovery though. Units can run away and could also have other ways of avoiding damage, so they don't need anything additional on top of that.

Also, remember that damage is usually the result of an investment by the opposing player. Undoing that for free discourages attacking which is the bread and butter of an interesting game.

An assumption is different than an assertion. It would behoove you to understand the difference.

You accidentally the English language. The irony is delicious.

Well I didn't state that, so I am not sure who you are responding to. Straw men are dishonest and you should know that.

If you don't understand the analogy, don't try to keep running with it.

What is a thrase?

You did at least notice the second post in the thread, right?

The vocal minority has you fooled.

You are aware of the definition of hyperbole, right?

If your opponent is wasting units just to prevent your stuff from starting the maintenance process, then your opponent is dumb.

What are you smoking?

Why? This sentence should have included a "because".

Just give us buildable repair zones that we can send our units to, and destroy. Also repair zone selection box that works for engies to designate areas would be cool.

No auto repair for structures. That's nuts, unless the faction is organic. Lets keep attrition in the game.

Perhaps when engies patrol they could also repair units?

Btw for those who don't have supcomFA, this is what setting an engie to patrol an area will do:

- Any building that is damaged will be repaired UNLESS there is a lack of resources.
- Any wreckage is auto-reclaimed UNLESS your mass storage is full.
- Engies prioritise (loosely) based on target proximity.

The vocal minority is very much that. If all the Developers are seeing is a majority of people who are arguing against it, along with a lack of any evidence they were ever going to have self-repair in the first place, then no- nobody is being fooled. If anything, we've had people post in this thread just to disagree with the idea, not to agree with it.

Funnily enough yes, I do understand what hyperbole is. I also understand sarcasm, which I do rather well. You're just having a pick at everything now, which is silly. But I'll humour you as obviously you feel rather passionate about this, so we'll play.

If it's part of a strategy, then no- it's not dumb. If you can hold up a maintenance system from starting in order to destroy it utterly with an upcoming attack or with fire support, then of course it isn't. Harassing an opponent enough to constantly niggle the health down from something in an attrition strategy is far from stupid.

I might smoke, but I steer clear of the funny stuff- what I said is true, why would Uber- or any Developer who creates/maintains popular strategy games veer so far off what is a clearly working and unflawed model to make things like self-repair more widespread? As said, they aren't soft in the head- they know what will and won't work based on their experience and from research of other games, they aren't going to do it if they know the community has a majority going "hell no".

Although not aimed specifically at me, I think it's fair to say that yes, we did- hence, we're providing that counter argument. I've already said- as you could possibly do with remembering- that I wouldn't mind trying out a test of self-repairing. My "problem" with the whole self-repair thing is I really feel it's not necessary on most things proposed. It could be justified with Experimentals in SupCom- but not as widespread as it's being suggested here. I'm open to ideas as I'm sure other people are- but bear in mind that the fundamentals of what we're used to, like and we all know -works- is being brought into question.

How many battles would have gone differently if, as we're looking at here- the opposition were capable of such a thing? If there was a longer limit on how long it took for this to kick in, with a really slow rate of repair, it might almost be worth thinking about. We want fun, entertainment but most importantly a formula that makes us want to come back for more. I didn't back PA to see everything healing itself, so I'm entitled to say "actually no, I don't agree".

Neutrino asked for counter arguments, well we're giving them. If the naysayers are more vocal than those who want it, that doesn't mean we're wrong because people aren't posting to agree with you- it's either that people are indifferent or they can see the majority already want things left well enough alone.

If they want to implement something in Alpha/Beta to try it, fine. But this is being raised before either are even close to happening, so excuse those of us who have enjoyed decades of strategy games that -haven't- included this feature, because frankly we don't want it.

Chronoblip, just give it a break. I'm not poking holes at you with comments like "what are you smoking", this is a discussion. If the internet really empowers you that much to behave the way you are, go play on 4chan. Chill out. This isn't about who can spell better, string a sentence more poetically or otherwise. It's about what us, players, want. If you don't like that people disagree with you, relax and take five. Take a leaf out of igncom1's book and respect that other people have different opinions. He's cool like that. Anyway, onto other things.

Sleepwarz, the building option would be nice. Even if it was a case of having a multi-purpose tower that could have it's function changed from defence to repair- either repairing one unit/building quicker or an area as a repair zone.

We could really do with some input from the Dev's on this one, at least enough to know if they're considering it or not. At least it would end the repetitive ping-pong match of "We want it", "No we don't" that seems to be the trend lately.

I've never seen a game mechanic shot down on purely theological grounds alone. Even political threads end up with less mud flinging. :lol:

Self repair is a tool, and like any other tool it has a time and a place. Some units are going to need it. Most will not. I think the default stance should be to go without repair, and only provide it where the gameplay demands it.

I would like to see some kind of auto-repair.
The reason is, that there probably won't be shields. So there wouldn't be a artillery/bomber counter. And in my opinion it's very annoying, if you have to repair a building manually just because a single artillery/bomber managed to shot.

I would prefer some kind of building, so the effect of auto-repair will be limited to some area. Perhaps a building which permanently consumes a fixed amount of energy and has a fixed amount of hp/s-repair. Similar to shields it wouldn't work without energy and also consume energy steadily.
The hp/s-regeneration could either be shared among all damaged buildings in its perimeter or perhaps it would repair one building after the other. However, since it doesn't consume mass, it wouldn't be able to support building new buildings.

This. As I've said, I would only like to see repairs that aren't performed by engineers performed by a building. I'm not against that- a repair tower with a zone or something like that would be fine. If it worked much as you say, but only drawing resources when functioning, I'd be with that idea. I like repair/assist towers, I really do.

The internet, a wonderful place for "debate".

I'll put it this way- if I thought for a minute that it would potentially be used en-masse or would be that popular, I'd go with it on the principle of trying it. I've yet to see many, if any, players even making use of the functions for "hunkering down" in SupCom 2, for example- only commanders have ever used it in my experience. Introducing a self-repair ability for your average ground slogger or half your buildings just makes me cringe. This isn't Red Alert or that genre of RTS- we don't want to see spanner icons as things repair or similar without something performing the repairs.

This is why I suggested that engineers be able to repair themselves forcibly rather then a regeneration, the same for factory's in being a construction in their build menu to have the factory take time an resources to rebuild itself.

Rather then a kind of regeneration, but the vocal minority said that it was "Full of bads" a line that is becoming overused in this forum.

I take it you have no argument then, chronoblip.

I want to see that.

One reason why I would make them constantly drawing resources is, that your economy may crash when there suddenly is a huge amount of damage to repair. With fixed consumption of resources it won't affect your economy in this way.
A fixed income would also prevent players from spamming these repair-structures, since too many idle repair-towers consume huge amounts of energy without giving a benefit.

I don't recall this ever being an issue in games like TA/FA/ZK. Generally, automated repairs consumed resources on a much smaller magnitude than unit construction. That said, on PA's larger scale it could be cumulative, so while I don't think it would be such a big deal, tools to help manage it will definitely be welcome. (ie the economy heat-map, an empire tree, etc).

Whether the buildings autorepair themselves after a time, or they require a turret/patrolling engineer is another matter. I lean towards the former, as it requires less micromanagement and would be friendlier to PA's scale, though the option to repair it manually should also exist so that you don't have to wait for the building to start after a delay when keeping it alive is critical. (No repairs should be free, of course.)

Also, I don't think that units should auto repair themselves, at least not in the field. At very least they should make a retreat to a location where they can be repaired. This is important as the decision to retreat for repairs also comes with sacrificing the battlefield presence of these units, which is an important strategic consideration. Buildings, on the other hand, can be forgotten more easily, since the player concentrates on units more often. So automated building repair makes sense from a maintenance standpoint.

Are we talking exclusively to structures or all units here? Apologies that I CBA to read everything that's been said on the matter.

However, mobile units in sup com had HP regen and it didn't impact the game a great deal. Mostly because the effects were negligible. As for structures, I don't recall any structures having HP regen at all. In fact, I think it was possible for fire to damage the structures when they were severely damaged, prompting the player to respond quickly. I can't guarantee the integrity of that information because it is from memory. Though I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.

Most people seem to be in favour of an engineering station of some description or another. I am in favour of this if it is implemented in the same way as in SC:FA. These stations were more flexible than someone new to the game might imagine. Particularly at T3, they were a great way of increasing your build power. Incorrectly managed however, they could stall your economy.

I would be in favor of having 2 engineering stations, one for reclaiming, repairing and possibly capturing.

And the second for assisting, possibly to replace buildings destroyed in its radius.

Because there is something annoying about building a bunch of engineering stations and then seeing them all assist a construction, get attacked and then not have them preforming their duty's and they try to finish assisting the construction of whatever they tried to assist.