New Building: Repair Docks

[Ashenheart]

Hey guys,

I spend a lot (maybe not "a lot" but definitely "too much" because it's downright boring) of time in-game babysitting a mobile repair station as it flies in circles around my ships. As I understand it, this is the most efficient, quickest way to repair a fleet, because engineers are way too slow with a significant fleet that has thousands of ships, and fortresses are unrealistic (should I have to research this big, expensive thing just to repair my ships, when it's main purpose is something else) in many situations. It occurred to me that repairing a fleet of ships is really tedious, and it doesn't have to be. How about a new researchable building, perhaps called the "Repair Docks?" I envision that this building will cost about 1000 research, have a larger (maybe twice as much) repair range than the mobile repair station (since it's immobile) and a low building cap attached to it (maybe you can only build 4 of these, total, to force the player to keep these in tactical locations).

What do you guys think?

[x4000]

What version of the game are you playing?  Mobile Repair Stations were buffed a fair bit of late, and the flying exploit was also nerfed (they can only repair 50ish ships at once now, but do so at very great range).  There was a lot of agreement that the older way of flying them around like you describe was annoying, so later versions have that adjusted.  I don't recall what version that change was made in, I thought that was prior to 3.060, but perhaps it's only in the latest prereleases.  Not sure.  It's entirely possible this may need more tweaking, and I know there are some bug reports about the tugs themselves at the moment, but I think right now the focus should be on making the MRS more useful before going into new buildings -- something like a new building would require you to have supply and also to constantly tear down and build up the building if you need to move it around, which was a goal of the MRS to avoid...

[Cydonia]

something like a new building would require you to have supply and also to constantly tear down and build up the building if you need to move it around, which was a goal of the MRS to avoid...

Well of course the penalty, that your repair facility is stationary, would be balanced by more hit points and faster repair while more ships beeing repaired at the same time. This would be an advantage if you have an important defence-system that you are guarding with mobile military.
This'd be on the one hand, while on the other hand you could, in these situations, just build a space dock to crank out ships to replace the destroyed ones at your important system. This might make a fixed repair dock obsolete, but maybe not. This would depend on the balancing of the rapair dock I think.

I myself like this idea... yet another option for the players to specialize their playstyle. I could imagine situations where this would be useful but what do YOU think? *pointing at the community*

[Ashenheart]

I think options, and variety, is always a good thing. Adding it as a research item would give the player the choice to take it, or not, depending on their preference and playstyle.

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

[Velox]

     I the MRS practically *is* stationary, given its current speed...

     In all seriousness, though, I don't like the idea of anything that involves pulling ships off-station to repair: at least not with fleet ships, where only a small portion are likely to be particularly beaten up.  It would require either continuous sorting-out of damaged units for dispatch to the dock or wholesale relocation of a whole group, which sucks either way.  If the repair structure is in a safe location and the ships needing repair are slow, even worse.  If the repair structure is tough enough to sit at the line of battle .. that's not really balanced.

     In short, I don't see a case for an alternative to the MRS+tug solution once it's finished being polished.

[Voodoomancer]

I think we could make use of some teleporting, autodocking/building tugs, and some control nodes to go with them, hmm hmm? 

[RCIX]

Make sure to try the latest prerelease: MRS now has massive range and is fast enough to keep up with most fleets.

[eRe4s3r]

But he is right, shipyards should repair ships in a large radius as well, because.. you know.. they are shipyards and thats what they do!

You can't insta deploy shipyards and you build them in-defense for that MRS are not suited. MRS are with your fleet, but there is no mass repair ability besides MRS and (fortresses ;p)and some players might not want mobile repair ability, but still want repair ability that is stationary....

Bottom Line, i think shipyards should get a 5000 range repair radius with 0.75 eng rate ;P

[WinterBorn]

Should shipyards only repair when no ships are in the que to build? Maybe "repair" should be a ship slot you build for 15 seconds per unit - so if you qued up 5 "repairs" then the space dock would be in repair mode for 75 seconds. That would be a set and forget option with looping turned on for the dock.  Any engineers assisting would increase the rate as they do now for ship construction.

Should the repair effect be limited to 5 ships at a time (basic free ability, unlocks for more simutanious ship repair capacity or increased AoE or both) The space dock builds one ship at a time so is it reasonable that it could repair 5 as an alternative?
 

[ShadowOTE]

I'd say go ahead and add it. There are plenty of times you might not be able to have a MRS (early game perhaps, or low knowledge games, etc) and need to repair stuff. Yes, fortresses can repair, but they're far worse at it than an MRS. Allowing spacedocks to repair like an MRS within a certain range would be a valuable addition - though I certainly wouldn't make it so you have to "queue up" repairs!

[WinterBorn]

LOL the engineer in me thinks if i am building ships as fast as I can where do I get the resources (people, tools and equipment) to fix broken stuff at the same time?  
If it is a background task (always on and free of knowledge exp) I would expect it to be very slow compared to an MRS which costs knowledge and is designed to fix things instead of make things

[snip] - though I certainly wouldn't make it so you have to "queue up" repairs!

[eRe4s3r]

So repair only when not building seems like a fine solution to me.

[Baleur]

I think we could make use of some teleporting, autodocking/building tugs, and some control nodes to go with them, hmm hmm? 

Then why not just have all the ships auto-repair? Same thing, fewer steps.
Sort of like the control note for auto-rebuilding metal/crystal mines, easier to just have them always auto-build (as was done).
I like the MRS as it is, and i like the tugs