Auto Repair for units and structures

This, or have a state toggle which allows you to switch between the two modes.

Yeah^

Some of the TA mods had some very nifty implementations of repair turrets. Basic ones would simply repair in a certain radius, while others were able to automatically build fortifications, and the most advanced ones were even able to cloak.

Whether something like that would work in PA, I'm not sure, but repair turrets are definitely a handy concept. The only downside is that it would reach the point where you want to make sure your entire base has turret coverage in order to ensure that buildings are always in top shape. But in that case, why not have buildings auto-repair over the long term, with turrets supporting important buildings (like static defense) on the short term?

Also, I never realized that units auto repaired in FA. I'll have to confirm, but if that's the case, then the impact of auto-repairing units on the battlefield shouldn't be a big deal.

Well auto-repair isn't bad if the rate is really low, but then there won't be much point what so ever.

Units that leveled up certainly had is, especially noticeable on turrets that could often get scores of kills like artillery, AA guns and nuke silos.

There would definitely be a point to auto repair if it were slow. Say some stray shots hit one of your pgens during a battle, but then it wasn't attacked again for some time. Normally you would have to hunt down all the buildings with minor damage and set an engineer to do a repair patrol, but this way those little damages would be ironed out with a minimum of distraction.

Also, I'm aware of FA veterancy health boosts, I just thought wolfdogg was saying units healed over time.

Indeed, while I am not sure about all unit regeneration (Because it might have been slow enough not to notice) promotions did certainly give it alongside the extra HP.

Is it really so hard for you guys to set a repair patrol order? You actually think getting nano towers to cover your base is a 'problem'? You know- stuff that is common sense and which responsible players would do. You're both just blowing this out of proportion.

We are not fight across a map anymore, we are fighting across entire systems and while a single situation is not a problem it pans out.

And patrolling engineers often get destroyed, occupied in the job of assisting construction or just aren't present. and with players being required to do more then babysit his engineers the ability to add some 'insurance' to our bases for self maintenance while we do the more important thing is a must.

The way SC1 plays won't work here because the scale is very different, so we need to cut away the small scale stuff with something more automatic if we are able to play at any sort of pace.

No, you're not fighting 'across entire systems'. This was debunked. Individual matches are relegated to a single system on the upper scale, and can go to a single planet, with maybe some satellites.

For all this hoo-hah about fighting across planets, there has yet to be any proof that matches in this project will be any more massive than what we have in existing games, and that anything has significantly changed other than the setting. There also has yet to be proof that the tightly packed 1v1 duels of existing games will be rendered obsolete. All the celestial bodies in the presentation video were very comically proportioned, probably to be manageable to the player, and the developers admitted the video was an aproximate representation of what they were aiming for.

Supreme Commander was supposed to be 'massive'; it brought us 80x80 kilometer maps- which got used almost always never. Small scaled 1v1 duels and moderate sized team games remained the de facto method of playing, despite the game's 'massive' appeal. The truth is the games were never just massive, they were extremely scalable.

What I meant was across an entire system, not multiple systems.

And by management, fighting across multiple body's is an increase in scale, whether their surface is the same size or not the management you will have to do is undeniably larger then SupCom as now you will be managing multiple battlefields instead of just 1.

And even then, these suggestions would even be applicable to the previous games let alone this one.

We need to explore every avenue if this game is to grow beyond its predecessors and even the solid mechanics of the current games should be reexamined due to the new set of circumstances, so until we can test these ideas in game we really shouldn't be outright denying things, or rather we on the forums.

It seems that the core of this topic can be broken into two pieces. Forgive me if this has been said before, I'm not willing to wade through two months of Halo references to find out:

• Should units be able to repair themselves?
• Should units act on their own to achieve (limited) goals?

Both are valid questions, but they are separate. I'd say "yes" to both.

Self-repairing units sounds like a unit design question. Honestly I'd like to see some more modular units, where i can optionally select "self repairing" along with "heavy armor" and "amphibious" and whatever else when they are manufactured. Having fewer "types" of units, with more "options" available would be a win across the board in my book.

Units acting on their own is also a great. If a unit is heavily damaged, maybe it should break off the attack and head for the nearest engineer for repair. If it is self-repairing, it could get out of range and beef up a bit before engaging again. This gets back to the AI question (which I understand has been done to death) but minor stuff like this seems pretty clearly a good idea. Units that are just standing around should probably either activate their self-repair systems, or go looking for nearby help. Yes this will drain your resources, but it's better than having half-dead units defending your base.

How is the scale that much larger than fighting across multiple continents INCLUDING the ocean between them. I swear people think because space is large, suddenly keeping two track of multiple areas will be hard. Every RTS I've ever played you had to watch multiple points to know what was going on.

This is different situation, your not observing a different area, your dealing with another conflict on a different surface, imagine playing 2 or 3 games of sup com at the same time and compare the effort of trying to with those games over managing different areas of a battlefield in other RTS games.

This is not the same case at all.

igncom1, can I quote you on that over in the multiple economies thread?

Yeah... it's really not like that at all.

Ok? I am not sure how it applies but go ahead.

I've never gotten a good answer to this assertion. Why is it suddenly like playing multiple games at the same time?

how is it not?

I rest my case.

Supreme Commander's matches were on a single plane yet saw multiple battles happen there too. The dynamics have hardly changed.

'Growing the game' is not an excuse to shove crappy game mechanics into it. This is what my twist on your Call of Duty analogy was about.
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To further respond to your post before. You seem to be underestimating the impact repairs can have in a game if you think they're 'unimportant' even to smaller units. Hundreds of damaged peons and structures auto-repairing amounts to tens to hundreds of thousands(assuming similar numbers to prior games) of free hitpoints. That is the equivalent of gaining a pack of heavy units or a superunit. This is a massive boon and the kind of exponential impact auto-repairing would have on the game.

Yes, with engineers, your can lose them, have them be occupied doing something else, or not have them where you need them. That's the whole point. Engineers are part of your chain of supply and logictics and it's your responsibility to not only keep them alive while the enemy tries to pick them off, but to allocate where you need them most. Sometimes building that important structure or assisting that factory to get more units out will be more important than attending to your existing damaged assets, or you might need more engineers. Players who can successfully keep their engineer fleet alive and thus maintain their assets go on to fight more successfully.