Author Topic: Repair Questions (solved)  (Read 1398 times)

Offline Mephology

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Repair Questions (solved)
« on: December 16, 2012, 11:13:18 am »
I had a few questions that have come up about repairs that at first glance are not intuitive to me or was not obvious what was going on.
  • Engineers do not seem to repair mercenary ships? Forts and mobile repair stations seem to repair them, do I have a setting incorrect?  It is a little annoying to micro the fleets around my forts to ensure they get repaired.
  • Is there a way to find out where your repair money is flowing?  I recently had a game where I captured a Mark V ion cannon.  The HK that was part of an Exo wave did not like the cannon very much and did about 40% damage.  No big deal expect I had a small fort station near by and it promptly started repairing it.  I was low on cash at that moment so I did not notice the repair, but I proceeded to be low on cash for the next 45min of the game before I tried to figure out what was draining my economy. After turning off all build queues, I was still hemorrhaging resources and I had to check worlds one by one to locate the repair that was happening.
  • I am not sure what I changed, but I seem to have to repair golems manually now. Any thoughts? I attached a saved game with this behavior.  I think the planet to check out is Isabalo.
« Last Edit: December 16, 2012, 04:53:08 pm by Mephology »

Offline Minotaar

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Re: Repair Questions
« Reply #1 on: December 16, 2012, 12:14:51 pm »
1)/3) Ctrls menu, set Engineers Don't Assist Large Project to a higher value (or 0). Mercs and some golems cost more than 400/s to build and so don't get repaired automatically
2) Stats -> Resource Flows

Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Repair Questions
« Reply #2 on: December 16, 2012, 12:34:40 pm »
I tried my best to post something useful, but Minotaar gracefully covered all of it very efficiently. Large projects tend not to be auto-assisted exactly for the reason you noticed with the Ion Cannon. It can literally murder an economy in seconds if it's bad enough, and a MK V Ion IS bad enough :D
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Offline Mephology

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Re: Repair Questions
« Reply #3 on: December 16, 2012, 02:47:23 pm »
1)/3) Ctrls menu, set Engineers Don't Assist Large Project to a higher value (or 0). Mercs and some golems cost more than 400/s to build and so don't get repaired automatically
2) Stats -> Resource Flows


1) On closer inspection. I am a moron.  I read the ctrl box as "Engineers do not assist stand down ships and engineers do not assist with large projects" since there is no carriage return between those entries.  I had the value set to 400, but I had assumed that using the check box would change the behavior of both entries. :facepalm:

2) However, as you can see in the attached screenshot,  the Ion cannon V is being repaired and my economy is in the crapper.  The resource tab does not show the drain (I think it is sorted ascending by metal consumption).  The ctrl tab for engineers assisting with projects more than 400m/s does not seem to apply to forts/mobile repair units and it is not easy to find where the drain is without manually searching.  I could be missing something obvious again.

Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Repair Questions
« Reply #4 on: December 16, 2012, 03:00:35 pm »
2) However, as you can see in the attached screenshot,  the Ion cannon V is being repaired and my economy is in the crapper.  The resource tab does not show the drain (I think it is sorted ascending by metal consumption).  The ctrl tab for engineers assisting with projects more than 400m/s does not seem to apply to forts/mobile repair units and it is not easy to find where the drain is without manually searching.  I could be missing something obvious again.
Or it could simply by a logic bug. I think that if it applies to engineers, it should apply to any repair-capable entity imo.
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Offline Minotaar

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Re: Repair Questions
« Reply #5 on: December 16, 2012, 03:25:02 pm »
2) However, as you can see in the attached screenshot,  the Ion cannon V is being repaired and my economy is in the crapper.  The resource tab does not show the drain (I think it is sorted ascending by metal consumption).  The ctrl tab for engineers assisting with projects more than 400m/s does not seem to apply to forts/mobile repair units and it is not easy to find where the drain is without manually searching.  I could be missing something obvious again.

It should be in there somewhere, have you tried scrolling it or sorting by something else? Just making sure.

Offline Mephology

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Re: Repair Questions
« Reply #6 on: December 16, 2012, 04:52:41 pm »
Ah, I understand what is happening with the list.  Storing up 900k metal and crystal I can see the issue.  Since the cannon is 54,000 m+c/s, it depletes my reserve almost instantly with an income about 2k mc/s.  Once the reserve is gone, only every 5 seconds or so will the mini fort that was repairing it will flash onto that list. While it waits for the reserve to build up so it can tick again, the minifort disappears from the list.  The interesting part is that if you pause when you  have a negative cash flow (like I was), it seems that the list will continue to update.  Since the minifort now (on the next tick) will have zero resource flow it is gone. If you sit there and watch, the large negative flow for the fort will flash and correspond to a global negative flow. I do not think you can unpause the game while in the resource flow tab since it was not obvious to me that I should sit there and watch it with the game unpaused.

Now that I understand the issues, I can totally work around it.  It was a confluence of issues that caused it to be a problem.  I was refleeting after a AI homeworld attack mixed with an exo wave of 2 HK's that dropped in on my main reserve fleet. So the additional resource drain was not unexpected at that point. I did not really notice until about 30minutes latter that I was still not able to have any reserve and tried to figure out why, even after I manually verified that the refleeting was complete and I had paused all constructors. Thanks for the patience with a new player  :D

Offline Mánagarmr

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Re: Repair Questions (solved)
« Reply #7 on: December 16, 2012, 05:26:01 pm »
No problems! AI War is sometimes a bit obscure ;)
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Offline Hearteater

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Re: Repair Questions (solved)
« Reply #8 on: December 16, 2012, 09:56:53 pm »
Just for reference, you will basically never finish a Mark V Ion Cannon from scratch (if you buy one from a Zenith Trader).  I nearly completed a Mark IV once, and that took me around 10 hours game time if I recall.  A Mark V cost 3 times as much.  Mark III is the highest normal Ion Cannon you can expect to complete in a game.  Repairing a damaged one is different obviously, but honestly it is rarely worth it because their health is so low.