Auto Repair for units and structures

Ironically I wasn't really in favor of direct Auto-repair but rather having engineers and factory's to repair themselves, but between the argument that PA will be the same as SupCom and discussing with Zordon being more like taking to a brick wall I guess you win.

I can't help it that I'm always right.

Then I forgot your exact intentions during the moment and so I misread you, and I apologise for that.

Although, I still don't like the idea.

That's fair enough.

"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"

This is what I was personally shooting for, with the ability to allow engineers to use their repair beam on themselves and factory's to have a specific repair build option for fast self repairs.

But I am open to suggestions or constructive criticism, but if you don't think is a good idea them please just say like you did above.

My wish for an ignore feature is steadily growing.

I'd like to point out that this is a game and the primary point is to have fun. QQing about "bad players" has relatively little place.

That said, self/auto repair seems fine. Unless stuff is made to run slowly by being damaged, the point of a raid is to destroy stuff, not just damage it. And I didn't read the entire thread but I doubt anyone is suggesting auto-build.

Well I'm still pretty new to forums and I've really only got my experience of Sup Com to call back on so this will for the most part probably seem unenlightened. Also kind of skipped to the ending pages of the thread.

That aside I'm not too sure how a way to protect a base from artillery without making other tactics non-viable such as raiding. I guess I can see how auto repair structures or auto repair on an individual unit would come in handy from protecting against bombardment to a degree.

Could be that there are passive self repair that can only deal with so much damage and faster active repairs that need to be managed through engineers or dedicated repair units.

I prefer infantry, ships and air units being able to self-heal but it's effects being more limited on larger and tougher units. That way smaller units don't gnaw into resources but remain functional if able to survive whereas bigger or tougher units need to be managed before being capable of surviving a direct assault.

Wrapping up I'd suggest auto repair would work best as a way of keeping the less crucial units and buildings from taking up time but only supplementing larger structures and units. Repairs should take up resources but a great degree less than reconstruction.

As for the issue with raids and artillery, provided there are countermeasures like counterintelligence for artillery and turrets for anti-air/infantry/naval attacks are in place than auto repair will be more of a means of helping a base maintain itself instead of a means of protecting from a siege.

This right here. Patrolling engineers are an inelegant and imperfect solution to the problem. They clutter up your base, not only on a unit basis, but also with batches of commands. They also tend to get distracted easily, going off to assist in construction (which suddenly bumps up your economic costs), focusing on reclaiming, or getting lost on the wrong side of your base. Heaven help you if some of your engineers get taken out in a raid. And while commands-as-entities will help you reestablish those patrols, it's still a lot of unnecessary clutter for what should be a very basic part of base maintenance.

So instead of engineers, you have repair turrets, which should solve the issue, right? Not exactly. While there's a lot less clutter, you still have the issue of where your turret should focus its attention. More importantly, you end up building a grid of turrets in order to keep your entire base covered for maintenance. Kind of a waste of resources, and besides, there's the question of what those turrets will be doing when not repairing. In the end, I suspect most players won't even bother, and so the problem of base maintenance is not solved.

So finally we come to auto-repairing buildings. They don't need to repair quickly, which is entirely the point. If an opponent is repeatedly attacking you on short notice, the repairs won't occur quickly enough to matter. And if the followup attack takes much longer to come, it's like you repaired it anyway.

Now I'm not saying this should be the only solution. It's definitely a good idea to back it up with engineers or turrets to ensure you're repairing essential buildings quickly before the next raid. But at least this way, base maintenance takes place with a minimum of micromanagement.

And yes, there is a scale issue. Perhaps it could be avoided in Supcom with smaller maps, but in PA you will very likely be going off-planet, which is the purpose of the game. As your attention divides, your ability to perform these menial tasks dwindles.

Again with the assertion that engineers are a 'hastle' to 'babysit'? They really weren't. I thought I had refuted this.

For a fervent Spring player, I thought you would know better.

@sylvesterink

Which game do patrolling engies auto assist construction? I have only played Supcom/FA, Supcom2 and a TA mod for spring (many years ago).

Everything you just said seems to be along the lines of repairing not being priorities properly, which is fair enough if you left it to the AI. There is no way that a patrolling engie or one of those often mentioned magical assist AI's could know what you as a player want prioritised. Where I disagree is your solution of making every building repair itself. Where is the economic cost in that? It should cost resourced to give health to your units and structures and you want to suddenly make it free? What if i crippled your economy, I still couldnt attack your mega fortress of doom because it will just regenerate itself using its mystic powers.

On the other hand, you could say that auto repair does have a cost. This is actually worse for the defender as it is possible for you economy to be spontaneously crippled. What is there to stop me building 500 T1 scout planes and going kamikaze on your base? The splash damage from the crashing planes would to small amounts of damage to buildings everywhere and your resource demand will go through the roof as auto-repair kicks in.

The manual approach which is what is used in existing PA games is the best middleground between this. It allows you to focus your repair capability where it is needed most while also acknowledging the economic impact of the repairs.

I still don't believe a base should magically maintain itself. If a player wants a base maintained, they should do it themselves. By all means, make the interface clever enough so that this is easy to do, just don't to it without the player's express instruction.

Alas, Halloween is over, but allow me to present The Horror:
http://youtu.be/UCaZNHFXD6U
Horrifying! It repairs its own damage! It can't be kille - oh wait.

Now the twilight extractor does repair quite a bit faster than what I'm suggesting, but even still, it's not fast enough that it would hold up to any meaningful attack. And what I'm suggesting wouldn't make engineers or repair turrets obsolete either. It simply allows those units to be put to a more specific use. If you're expecting another attack very soon, you'll certainly want to ensure that your base is in shape to handle it, and that's where patrolling engineers will help, as it repairs much faster than auto-repair. Need to maintain a set of defense buildings? Your repair turret is much more reliable than auto-repair. But for those couple of solar collectors sitting in the back that have 25% health left, if they're untouched for 5 minutes, is there any harm in them auto repairing?

As for the cost, at that low a repair rate, it would be insignificant, assuming it even charges the full cost of the unit for the repair. And even then, at a slow rate, I wonder if it wouldn't be an issue to simply eliminate the cost. Supcom's veterancy system certainly had a larger impact.

Forgive my ignorance, as I haven't actually played (despite having it installed) TA in rather a long time- but did all structures self-repair like that? I honestly don't remember!

Asides- yes, the horror! :shock:

In all seriousness though- if there was a decent enough delay before repairs initiated, which can be interrupted by further damage (goes without saying) I'd be with the idea. I think. It would depend on a lot of factors- like scaled healing depending on the structure's maximum HP.

I've still not got a definitive decision on if I think it's best if it's standard across the board or should be an upgrade, though.

Personally, I still like my engineers. Yes, I know- they have their faults. I'd love to see some kind of toggle that defines behaviour a-la-TA or similar that allows a choice of what the unit does while patrolling- such as repair only, reclaim only or a mish-mash of choices.

True, it could overcomplicate things but from a gameplay perspective, it would be nice. I do miss my toggles from TA.

I can't help my nature that implicitly doesn't like things that heal themselves- I'm afraid I'm with BulletMagnet on this one when it comes to "magical healing"- It's always been a matter, to me, that if you neglect to check the health of your own units/structures, it's your own fault for not being prepared enough to repair them.

So as suggested above, interface changes. I can go with that, no argument.

I have not read all the posts but ...

Neutrino said that it sounds good

Any counter arguments?

I totally disagree:
MY counter arguments:

you do not know which unit it repairs first
if all units are repaired simultaneously it slows down
Repair one at the time but than quicker which first?
if it supports structures until the construction ends (SC:FA) and does not repair
if you can use the repair drones for example to reclaim
the radius most times is irrelevant (manually control SC:FA)
COSTS:
The costs of repairs is lower than build a new one (attacking player has a great disadvantage, hurt units will be repaired at low costs + defending player can reclaim the destroyed units of attacking player)
The cost of repairs equally to new one you can build a new one and double fire power or repair them if all factories are building and still have resources
I do not think swarming drones look cool

Therefore I claim that repair itself is a bad idea!

If you really want that damage does not matter the choice is Shields

it protects every unit until it breaks down
it does no other thing else than protect units and structures
There is good timing when shield is up and down you can easily destroy it

And if it is necessary to use mass to repair units or structures why not use mass when the shield takes damage or is rebuilding ... than you use energy and mass.
-> which is basically the same repair does although much better manageable

From my opinion repairs and shields are the same,
both protects units at low cost:
Shields at the beginning repairs during and after the attack.
Micro will be immense important cause if one defending unit takes damage and the attacking unit is destroyed, the whole attack is still in progress but repairs will start to take place.
And shields just look cooler that drones and I think everybody would want to control repair drones manually making it damn micro.

I really would want to have a comment on that especially from Neutrino and if I missed it please link me to the articles where this was discussed from previous users.

I'm glad people care enough about the game to make this many posts about a trickle self repair feature

This.

Although, I wouldn't mind healing stacking, or giving a trickle-heal that stacks with regular healing, or incorporating both and make healing units work better and work in-combat.

On the other hand, a base that disintegrates over time just from falling scouts is a real hassle to deal with.

Really, the only question on self repair is a matter of convenience. Should a Commander heal? Absolutely, it is too important to lose. Should engies heal? They often venture alone, so it would be really nice. Should bases heal? Engies can take care of that, but a little self maintenance can't hurt. Should cannon fodder heal? That'd be as disastrous as if bots in SMNC healed. It's cannon fodder.

Healing is itself a form of free income. It's not a good idea to get carried away with it, lest healing becomes more valuable than the resources you can pull from the ground.

Repair is slightly different, since it demands support units and can have its cost adjusted as needed. TA was pretty basic in this area, as repair had a fixed rate and only cost energy. Supcom1 was cruel, as repair used standard build time and cost 100% resources (except where veterans and repair systems healed for free). Supcom2 had its own system, where it was free and quick but capped to one engi per unit(an engi that spent more time reclaiming than repairing, in fact). I'm not sure any of those systems are really good.

I'd definitely would like some sort of "base list" with "building with lowest health" as an option if we aren't doing auto repairs. You could then expand on this idea to just zoom right to said base/building, use a hotkey to select nearest/idle engineer, repair said building, have quick look around and then press a "return to battle!" button, or maybe a location hotkey to go back to what you were doing.

Dang, apparently I can't take a day off. :lol:

There are topics and polls showing what people on the forums do or don't want which Uber doing the opposite of what any "majority" or "vocal minority" expresses. This is because of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum, as regardless of how many people are posting from either side, unless the idea or argument has intrinsic value, it just isn't significant enough to be worth considering.

Put differently, if the pinnacle of the "don't include" argument is that a lot of people on the forum don't want it, that's at best a weak if not outright invalid reason to not include the mechanic.

If the maintenance mechanic is such that your opponent has to feed units to prevent it from activating, and this decision is strategically significant, the mechanic is probably too strong and would need to be nerfed.

The mechanic should not be so powerful as to require strategically significant decisions to be made with regard to it. This is also why I have tried to refer to it as "maintenance" versus "repair", because of the following:

Maintenance (def 3) - care or upkeep, as of machinery or property: With proper maintenance the car will last for many years. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/maintenance?s=t)

Repair (def 1) - to restore to a good or sound condition after decay or damage; mend: to repair a motor. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/repair?s=t)

I will clarify or expand, since I've done a poor job of this so far, and say that I do not believe that the mechanic should be so strong as to replace or be equivalent to an engineer providing direct repairs. This mechanic still falls under the large-concept idea of an auto-repair, so there's no good reason to start a new thread, though if people were working under the assumption that I wanted a different implementation then I can understand the confusion.

They specifically decided to make something which isn't based on a popular model, which is one reason why they wouldn't have been able to sell it to a publisher. It's a niche game, intended to deal with a market that isn't being addressed by existing games.

Also, repeat of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum.

If the comment wasn't aimed at you, why did you need to note that I obviously didn't take your position into account? That's a bit of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man, justified with some http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_generalization, and a touch of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition thrown in for good measure.

Then you and I probably agree on more than it may appear.

That said you backed PA to let Uber do their thing, because unless you're in the 10k category, you aren't entitled to demand anything of Uber specific to game mechanics. If Uber starts doing things differently, and you don't like it, then perhaps you shouldn't have just given away your money based off an assumption which may or may not be satisfied.

Third time I'll just drop this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum.

Ooh, I get to post a different one more than once: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition.

To assert that because something hasn't worked in the past (or someone can't imagine something working), it won't ever work, is the hallmark of many dying businesses and stagnant industries. The rejection or acceptance of an idea based on whether or not it's been tried, or people can wrap their heads around it, is what forced this game to move to a kickstarter support method, because they've said they probably wouldn't ever get a publisher to support the game with the goals they have in mind.

It would be one thing to have started by saying that "I doubt this feature will be good, but lets see what it looks like when we get to alpha beta" versus saying "hell no".

Opinions are like buttholes. Most everyone has one, and it's wise to clean yours up before you show it off, otherwise all people will see is crap.

When people use their passion to express how strong their opinion is, as opposed to using that energy to build a strong case to support their opinion, it's funny to me and demonstrates an immaturity in communication skills. If people really cared not just about sharing their opinion, but being heard, they would spend time making sure that they are presentable, and not just spewing words into a post as it suits them.

Now, add to that we see folks coming in regularly to share their opinions without even reading the whole thread? It's just fuel on the fire that is slowly burning away the remaining credibility of the "vocal minority".

When your argument is an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority and the only real authorities aren't commenting to the level of detail required to support the assertions you are making, then your argument is a logical fallacy and there isn't much to discuss.

That this is why I put the caveat of time, in that once alphas and betas come out, there can be authorities and experts to discuss the topic and provide the feedback needed to balance or remove mechanics. They may very well come up with the same opinion as you do, but they will have information and video and all sorts of data to support their opinion, instead of just guessing.

You don't have expertise, I don't have expertise, and really nobody has expertise because the game isn't playable. So making assertions about game play in a game you can't play doesn't need a direct counter because the argument itself is circuitous and invalid.

The argument some people should be making, but aren't, is that up till now it's been relatively easy to visually represent all that is going on when it can be boiled down to just two dimensions. It won't be possible to represent everything as conveniently with a sphere, so there is concern that stuff will be missed during the learning curve with the UI, or that the UI won't have the information at all. The counter being that if it's a learning curve that once you've learned the problem disappears, and if the UI is lacking then we'll need Uber to fix it.

As per usual, though, neither argument holds much water because it relies on the game being further along in development than it is to make any conclusive statements or forward progression.

User CP > Friends & Foes > Manage Foes

I'm not sure if it's been pointed out yet, but if the auto-repair is free and automatic, then there is no functional difference between vehicle health, and vehicle shields. Shields are already stated as not in the game, so this auto-repair feature (whatever form it takes) should probably cost resources.

Also, it would be good if unit performance degraded when damaged, perhaps in the order of mobility, targeting, firepower. This way unit "damage" doesn't feel so much like a shield and begins resembling actual battlefield system casualties. But... that's kind of getting off-topic.

The arguments I brought up, and the arguments against auto-repairing throughout this thread are not fallacious. They have been thorough and articulate.

I already explained that your proposed solution of a time delay isn't sufficient for what the opposition is on about. This same opposition which has experienced every major RTS title to date, picked them apart, opened them up to better understand the craftsmanship behind them, and squeezed as much optimization out of their game as humanly possible, which helped produce better feedback than anything else which went on to keep those games thriving. These players are neither stupid nor lack vision. I also explained to you why your sophistry of "we know nothing about the game so it's impossible to know", which I notice you've used in more than one thread now, doesn't hold water. You never confronted any of this, but instead chose to poke holes in my imperfect grammar, when you knew fully well what the argument was. This isn't helping the case for you, me or anyone.

If developers think crowdfunding is an excuse to infuse irrational ideas, they do so at their own peril. Kickstarter games have only become popular because people expect a certain craftsmanship from them which became lost in the bureaucracy of industry produced games. The moment all these indie developers turn out to be incompetent hacks, Kickstarter's reputation will go down the crapper, if it hasn't already begun doing so.