Damage Control Techs

[dbenage-cx]

Damage Control techs need further balancing—this includes both the techs and the auto-repair hulls, ideally no repairs should happen immediately after combat except for Logistics, Nanobot and BioAdaptive, and none of them should be complete. Plus, the techs should repair based on current structure not max structure, forcing heavily damaged big ships to limp home for repairs not simply hide for a couple turns

[dbenage-cx]

I'm working a proposal together that affects this, and adds a couple of minor parts.

The idea is to split damage control into 3 general effect groups:

• critical damage - <20% max structure (not much left)
• moderate damage - 20-80% max structure (significant falures)
• minor damage - 80%+ max structure

These effects would be based within certain ship hulls and parts.
Damage control techs would then increase the amount repaired on each effect.

Basic Damage Control - Increases hull line repair rates by 50%, gives access to Life Safety Repair Module part.
Fleet Field Repair - Increases max repair by 100%, gives access to Field Repair Module part.
Advanced Damage Control - Increases repair rates by 50% (stacks with Basic for hull lines)

e.g. Robotic Hull

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Tech                |  Critical  |  Moderate  |  Minor  |    Max repaired
                    |       ( of current structure )    | ( of max structure )
No Tech             |    25%  |    10%       |    0%    |    10%
Basic D/C  (+50%)   |  37.5%  |    15%       |    0%    |    10%
Fleet Field Repair  |  37.5%  |    15%       |    0%    |    20%
Advanced (+100%)    |   50%   |    20%       |    0%    |    20%

With 1xStandard Armor (31 max structure)

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Tech                |  Critical    |      Moderate      |     Minor     |    Max repaired
                    |  0.01 - 6.19 |      6.2 - 24.8    | 24.81 - 30.99 |
                    |       ( repair per turn )
No Tech             |   <1.55      |    0.62-2.48       |       0       |    3.1
Basic D/C  (+50%)   |  <2.375      |    0.93-3.1        |       0       |    3.1
Fleet Field Repair  |  <2.375      |    0.93-3.72       |       0       |    6.2
Advanced (+100%)    |   <3.1       |    1.24-4.96       |       0       |    6.2

A ship with 500 max structure would cap at 100 per turn w/fleet field repair. The actual repair would tend be be much lower
The numbers will need some tuning, but this is the basic functionality.

Hulls:

• Nano line hulls would see a high critical repair rate, small moderate repair rate, and none for minor damage.
• Living organic line hulls would have a low critical repair rate, and decent moderate and minor repair rates.
• Logistics Facilitator would repair off of target current structure, with a max total repair per turn. (e.g. if max total=25, 5 ships at +5 structure) Doesn't stack with drydocks/other logistics facilitators

Parts (internal):

• Life Safety Repair Module - High critical / Very Small moderate / No minor
• Nano Repair Swarm - Very High critical / Very High moderate / No minor - Limited use (gated by additional tech)
• Field Repair Module - Small critical / Small moderate / Very Small minor

Drydock would still be preferred for faster and complete repairs.

Quite a number of changes, so a bit of concern if this should be post-release if something like this is desired.

[Vezzra]

Quite a number of changes, so a bit of concern if this should be post-release if something like this is desired.

Definitely post-release. We've several ideas concerning damage control/repair floating around, so we're kind of in the brainstorming/early design phase for this revision. It will most likely introduce ship parts like the ones you suggest here, and will therefore require non-trivial AI adjustments.

Getting to a general consensus how we want things to work, implementing, balancing and adjusting the AI is just too much to squeeze in before the release IMO.

[MatGB]

Agreed, it's been on my long term to-do list for the last three release cycles but me finding the time, then the AI team having the time afterwards, has been hard and I've been asked several times to put it off, so I did, it was one of the reasons why I started listing my balance projects so others could give them a go as I was finding I had more and more things that were being delayed and I also had stuff to test done by others.

So definitely post release, for the most part, although I think we might want to introduce the battle here/mine gating beforehand as that won't break anything.

Another thing: I'd like to see some damage control parts that are linked to existing abilities, so you could have a nanorobotic repair internal part that'd be expensive, require a nanarobotic shipyard, but have a similar (but perhaps not quite as strong) effect. Same for the Logistics Facilitator, but that would need to be a core slot, require an advanced engineering bay and not be as good—I want more parts that require existing shipyards, they were going to be linked to weapon types at one point early on but the vast variety of weapon types planned hasn't, yet, happened.

I was also thinking that the current 'full repair' ships should instead repair 100% of current structure per turn, up to max, so a lightly damaged ship would be fine but a heavily damaged ship wouldn't be, that would also be relatively easy and also wouldn't break the AI. Introducing that quickly wouldn't hurt even if we replace it with a more thought out version next cycle.

[MatGB]

I was working on the damage control vs mines timing issues and did some tweaks to the existing ship hulls I thought were slightly problematic, they're not the 'final' versions, but they're more balanced for Release and don't really require AI updates.

Changes are: both Nanorobotic Hull and BioAdaptive hull say they repair "between combats", the only description reference to repair during combat is the Logistics Hull, so I've gated all repair techs to only work when no combat has occured and introduced a new partial repair effect for the Logistics Hull to reflect it's ability to effect repairs during a fight. NB this now means that none of these hulls can safely just sit to blockade an enemy system as they don't self repair if any combat has occured.

In addition, the previous "full repair" effects have been reworked so they give 100% of current structure, meaning if a hull is very badly damaged it's not back to full strength almost immediately, I find this more satisfying and more balanced. I gave the Logistics Facilitator a minimum repair value as well similar to Drydocks as it can sometimes be sat there with some really big ships.

With some fairly extensive play with the changes in the last week I've found it more satisfying, that some ships remain vulnerable if they're nearly dead for a turn or two adds more flavour to things and makes those hulls less overpowering in the hands of an experienced player.

NB: I got the main changes in before Vezzra compiled this weeks Test builds, but I got called away before I could finish the stringtable updates, an updated entry showng is availablebut I've basically just described it all so you're good.

(Oh, Basic Damage Control and Robotic Hull are also gated in case that wasn't obvious above)

[Vezzra]

Sounds very reasonable