Repair costs

[Cintia]

I was wondering what the repair costs are in relation to the ships original costs.

On engineers it's often something like 1.4 per second, but what is it? How much does this relate to in total?

1) Lets say you have a Spire Starship with 1% health left. If you repair it to 100% how much percentage would it cost compared to just building another one?

2) Is this the same or does it differ per ship type? (Is repairing always 50% cheaper for example... or something like that)

3) Are there ways to reduce repair costs?

Thanks a lot.

[x4000]

The repair cost is based on the ship itself, actually -- when you look at the hover text for a unit, the Repair Cost is referring to how much it costs for that unit to be repaired, not how much it costs for it to repair something else.  So in the case of engineers, that's how much it costs for other engineers to repair them.

The rate of repairs is generally equal to the rate of build, but times 5 or so -- so generally, you'll see at least 5x lower costs on repairing a unit versus building a replacement from scratch.  That varies, and using higher-level engineers for repairs is actually more cost-effective because they also boost the speed of repairs with no added per second cost, but the bottom line is that there isn't a single case where the cost of replacement is anywhere close to being as good as the cost of even a 99% repair.  And that's just in terms of metal/crystal, not even considering the actual repair time vs build time, which is also generally superior.

So, definitely repair when at all possible -- tactical retreats to save your ships are quite wise!  This was a great question, I'm moving it to strategy discussion so other people can benefit from it.

[Cintia]

Thanks X4000, another great response.

Good to know that it is always cheaper to repair and especially that better engineers (and the mobile repair unlockable in particular I assume) are more cost-effective.

On another note, wouldn't it be more logical to have fixed repair costs so that it's the same for every ship (the normal ships at least)? The system right now seems a little weird and certain (cheaper) repair benefits are unknown thus impossible to calculate into a ships effectiveness overall.

Have you considered using a simpler system like repauring 5% hp costs 1% of total cost? Thus repairing is always 5 times cheaper (and low crystal units also only need metal to repair).
That way you can remove the repair costs from all the ships and only include it on the engineers.

Not sure if this is more difficult to program though.

[x4000]

At the moment, here's how the system works, it's fairly simple I think:

- The baseline cost is I think 1.7/s metal and crystal to repair ships.
- For starship lines, that goes up in cost by 5x, 10x, 15x, or 30x.
- For Golems, it is 40x.

In all cases it is cheaper to repair than to to build anew, so for players that's really all that is needed to be known for decision-making purposes: always repair.  In the past, repairs were free, and this costing system was added for 2.0 because some players were abusing the free repairs for starships in particular.

My goal, when modeling all this, was to have a baseline cost that was low but persistent, and that was in general the same for all of the smallish ships.  Then for certain abusable ship repairs, mostly starships, to have higher costs based on the increasing costs of those starship lines.  Then later in the expansion, I've also used this to give higher repair costs (which are also sort of build costs) to Golems, making their mechanic work.

It is not linear with the cost of building ships because then that would make it so that Teleport Battle Stations were immensely more expensive to repair compared to, say, fighters -- that would cause immeasurable complexity when predicting the resource outflows of engineers doing repairs, amongst a few other complexities.

I very much see where you are coming from, and in some ways your approach is simpler and preferable, but it's one of those things where there is complexity any way you choose, and so you have to "pick your poison" a bit, so to speak.  In this case, I picked the one that was simplest in terms of player decision-making (easy choice: always repair over build, paired with the most predictable cost outflows possible for repairs engineers).  So that's why I did it that way, anyway!

[Ktoff]

So higher tier engineers repair at lower cost... what about miltiple engineers working on the same target. Does each engineer cause costs, or is it per unit beeing repaired?

Cheers,
K'Toff

[x4000]

It is per engineer -- so multiple engineers will be faster, but not cheaper.

[Ktoff]

Thanks! That is what i thought, but i also thought it was per HP restored and not dependent on the repair rate (i should have RTFM)

[Cintia]

Great feedback.

One last question: will higher mark Engineers also *build* (not repair) ships at reduced costs compared to lower mark engineers? (like they do with repairing)

And if so, how much does it differ?

This would really change the way I unlock engineer technology if they are more effecient in build-assisting.

[x4000]

One last question: will higher mark Engineers also *build* (not repair) ships at reduced costs compared to lower mark engineers? (like they do with repairing)

And if so, how much does it differ?

This would really change the way I unlock engineer technology if they are more efficient in build-assisting.

Ah, great question -- but, engineers are no more efficient in building any ships, just in terms of repairs.  Higher-level engineers will indeed build stuff faster, but the cost scales up with that.  There's not any way to build ships for extra-cheap.

[CogDissident]

Also mobile repair stations appear to repair for free.