You can repair a ship in combat, you just can't repair a ship that's taken damage in the last 6-7 seconds. I often find that a significant number of damaged ships get six-seven seconds between additional damage, in big fights.
Maybe, but that's not so at all in either my fights or those whom I play with...at all.
I'll repeat, while acknowledging that its just me...its never happened at all. Not even a "theoritcal" sense, just not at all, period. If my ship can't live the initial barrage, it won't, and if can live 10 seconds, it will live the 15 seconds for my engineer III to get to it.
And that still doesn't discount the fact you get magnitudes less MLRS then you do engineers III cap wise.. .so if half are targetted in a fight but the other half live they still acomplish what the III MLRS can do. And with targetting mechanics, if you teleport in the engineers III 5 seconds or so after the combat blob arrives you still accomplish the same...
That may tie in to the fact that the AARS I read sometimes get engineer marks but never MRS.
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To put another way...
Having the ability to repair while cloaked while doing nothing else simply is not in any way for me not worth 4k...it just is not, period. Not when a cheaper engineer can teleport to heal it.
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To put it a third way...if my ship can live to survive being damaged...then live with no damage for 10 seconds...it can generally live till it gets healed...since the only way it can be damaged and yet survive with no damage for 10 seconds is that the attacker of it died...which the vast majority of the time means a victorious blob fight.
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so to conclude, if a ship is damaged yet is not attacked for 10 seconds, odds are it lives till it gets healed regardless, since generally for such a situation to occur the player blob is winning anyway, so the fight will be won, so the civilian craft can heal without harassment anyway.