Before Uber puts out the next build... (Possible Exploit)

Commanders will now be able to be reclaimed for enormous amounts of time without dying. Repair rates aren't getting touched. This means that we'll be able to get massive accounts of metal by having many fabbers reclaim commanders and a small amount of them repair him. Obviously this will be a problem. Uber, please verify that this issue doesn't exist before putting the new build out as I don't want commander reclamation to become the meta for another month.

I did noticed this in previous Garat's stream, but didn't get any answer on that.

I guess they think about this problem and make repair/reclaim adjustable somehow..

This problem is more fundamental to flux economy and while hacks do work they are very ugly and compromise the integrity of the simulation.

For this particular issue, as long as the com does not have regeneration, and repair is equal to or more expensive than reclaim, and the "cost" of the commander is properly balanced then there should be no issue.

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It's something that can be fixed later. Game still in development.

Related to this I think... I used to build expensive structures for "free" by reclaiming them while building them. I didn't consider it a hack because when the structure was completed it would be at very low health, and if I did not remember to stop the reclaim in time then it would be destroyed shortly after being finished. I decided it wasn't worth the attention so I stopped doing it.

Also, if net energy went negative then the build (or repair) would be impacted but the reclaim would not (or at least not as much) so the reclaim could complete before the structure even completed. It sounds like your scenario with reclaiming and repairing a commander would have the same issue here, if you aren't paying attention you could end up destroying your commander.

I forget whether it was a playtest or the tournament, but Sorian double checked the code from a twitch chat, and confirmed that repair is still based on metal.

It was a playtest I don't remember which one.

In that case then repair is being nerfed to the ground. Commander repair will be almost useless.

Why would reclaim give metal BEFORE the unit dies, AND leave a pile of wreckage that can be reclaimed AFTER the unit dies? That's double dipping.

That's how it works though.

Oh come on. Supcom had this exact same issue.

Protip: It didn't work well.

The difference from the factory exploit is that commander HP is incredibly valuable. And if you make a net loss on reclaiming and repairing there isn't a reason to do so.

I'm pretty sure that's what's happening.

I think Commander repairing will be majorly nerfed, which I think is a good thing.

We'll see.

This isn't a exploit its a risky strat. I predicte it will be common for people rushing to T2 fac to reclaim their com for a bit and then repair him afterwards

I think it's refreshing for it to actually be effective. There was no point to repairing in supcom because it was so ludicrously expensive.

I was referring to a situation where many reclaiming fabbers could be canceled out by a single repairing fabber.

Seems like instead of resolving the perceived "comms too easy to offensively reclaim" issue by bumping commander HP by an entire order of magnitude, that an alternative approach may have been to reduce the efficiency of reclaim operations across the board.

I do think that the commander metal value was too low and independently could've been doubled or tripled anyway. I don't recall exactly but it seemed from the livestream like it was about a 10x increase or so, which feels like way too much to me.

Anyway, regardless of that, why are fabbers necessarily exactly as efficient at reclaim, as they are at build/repair? It's certainly the easiest and most predictable and transparent implementation. But they are different operations, and can each have their own metric, or better yet, they could be directly related values. I'd suggest a balance test of setting reclaim at 1/4 or 1/5 of the build rate for each fabber. Whatever the value or ratio ends up as, it should be consistent in all cases so game behavior remains easily predictable to players, I'd think.

I've always felt that reclaim seemed impressively, almost startlingly fast. If it were 3-4x slower, I think most reasonable cases of reclamation for obstruction removal, urgent metal needs, etc would still be viable. Offensive reclaim seemed to me to be the base problem that needed addressing, and 3-4x longer reclaim time in that case, is a lot more time under weapons fire for fabbers to need to sustain and a better cushion of time for a defender to react.

[edit: continuing]
This would alter the balance to allow commander HP to come back to more reasonable levels for comm repair, as well as nerf other instances of offensive reclaim (such as teleporter reclaim, etc).

I don't think that'll happen.

you can reclaim your commander for just shy of 1000m before killing him. It will cost you the same amount of metal that you gained to repair him but will have a net loss in energy that you used to harvest metal and then repair by x (metal harvested) times 200x.

Early game the energy loss you expose yourself to for the harvest of your commander will be pointless if the metal is just used for more power and anything else you won't have the power for.

with units/structures other than the commander I did some test.

40% of the mass is in the debris field and 60% of the mass is in the units health. If a unit or structure is destroyed you will be reclaiming a maximum of 40% of it's metal cost. Typically only 20% as the explosion tends to take half the potential debris at least.

This is why in units other than the commander it appears the reclaiming bot is doing more damage than the repairing bot despite both working in 10s of metal. This results in a net loss of both metal and energy if trying to repair and reclaim metal from your own structures.

Example.
1000 mass cost. 100 hp unit.
400 mass debris, 600 mass in the living unit.
The reclaiming bot, takes 10 metal per second, but deals damage in relation to the "living mass"
-deals 1 damage per 6 metal, 1.6667 damage per second roughly.
The repairing bot, gives 10 metal per second however the health recovered is determined as a ratio from the total mass of the unit, not just the mass of the "living" unit.
-recovers 1 hp per 10 metal, 1 hp per second

You will always destroy 60% or more of the mass of a unit when you shoot it to it's non functioning state. AKA Debris.
Due to test in game I know the numbers aren't accurate as they are rounded in game so the actual numbers for the reclaiming bots are rounded down to 1.5 damage per second in the above example.

Thus in order to keep a structure alive while reclaiming it, you need 3 repair workers and 2 reclaiming workers for a net loss of 10 metal per second and 5000 energy per second for each set of 5 workers.