Ability to link astromech repair beams to cargo, and replace destroyed blocks.

[KuramaFox]

It could work something like this.

1. A ship gets damaged. You want to repair it at least partially.

2. You get into a repair ship which contains a cargo hold full of blocks, which is linked to the repair computer.

3. You shoot the damaged ship with your astromech repair beams. In the event any of the repair beams hits a damaged block, it will repair it as it does normally. In the event none of the beams associated with the computer hit a damaged block, it will instead randomly re-add lost blocks to the ship, so long as it has the required block in the cargo hold that is associated with the repair computer.

It may be required for the cargo container that is linked to the repair system to contain a blueprint of the ship you are trying to repair so it "knows" where to place blocks (and which blocks to connect to which other blocks). Warning: using a different blueprint than the vessel you are repairing may have amusing results (the repair beam does not remove parts, but may still end up trying to build one ship on top of the gaps of another).

4. It will perform the block re-placing even if it doesn't have enough blocks to repair all the damage. It will, of course, stop being able to repair lost blocks on the vessel when it no longer has the necessary parts to do so.

This means that if you wish, you can just stuff the repair ship's cargo hold full of energy reactors, shields, and other particularly common parts. The result would be a functionally repaired (or mostly so) vessel, which may still have a lot of craters in its armor that need patching up. If you want, you could then even repair the hull manually to make it look like you welded plates over the holes or something, so that the ship doesn't look brand new. You could just leave the holes there too.

Thoughts?

 

[Valck]

Second result of search for "astrotech" in titles only across all forums:
Making Astrotech and Scrap Useful
plus a dozen mentions all over the place...

I'm with Lecic on this: Repairing blocks should be reserved for shipyards, or manual repair. Astrotech should work the same as a big cousin of the "healing" gun, ie. repair damage but not replace missing blocks.

 

[Zedrackis]

While I'm incline to like the idea at face value, but it does raise the question of making shipyards obsolete in some respects. I think I would rather see mobile shipyards and just have the astrotech done away with. It seems like a module that was a novel idea when it was put it but could only be used in game breaking ways after the addition of shipyards to the game.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

This is an idea I fully support. If properly implemented we could also get an alternative to shipyards and blueprint spawning. Stations could also be constructed this way instead of just poofing out of thin air.

 

[nightrune]

This is an idea I fully support. If properly implemented we could also get an alternative to shipyards and blueprint spawning. Stations could also be constructed this way instead of just poofing out of thin air.

I definitely think it should put blocks back based on cargo and a blueprint. As well as be used to construct stations. SCV anyone? That said I don't think it should give massive advantages during combat. I'm in favor of it killing shields/power while you use it. It would make reconstruction fighter bays very strategic.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I definitely think it should put blocks back based on cargo and a blueprint. As well as be used to construct stations. SCV anyone? That said I don't think it should give massive advantages during combat. I'm in favor of it killing shields/power while you use it. It would make reconstruction fighter bays very strategic.

Yeah it would have to be balanced in a way that you can't just have a self regenerating ship. That could be as easy as turrets cannot reconstruct their own ship. If you did have support repair ships in combat they might likely be easy targets.

 

[jayman38]

Yeah it would have to be balanced in a way that you can't just have a self regenerating ship....

I disagree. I think a ship should be able to fully regenerate if it has the inventory to do so. However, tech beams should be super-slow, and probably non functional in combat (when shields are regenerating at a lower rate). And as long as the regeneration rate is half that of a shipyard, or even slower, then shipyards will not become obsolete from this change.

And yes, tech-beam support ships will be a high-priority target, like medics or other valuable support craft in any other game.

 

[Dire Venom]

Great idea!/
With some cons added to balance it (shields disabled etc) it could be quite useful.
I personaly really dislike using shipyards since I need to build enourmous ones for my ship and large ones dont look good on my stations.
I would much rather Shipyards bounding box act like the old docking bays.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I'm with Lecic on this: Repairing blocks should be reserved for shipyards, or manual repair. Astrotech should work the same as a big cousin of the "healing" gun, ie. repair damage but not replace missing blocks.

I really think that if astro techs do not get some ability to actually replace blocks then they might as well be removed from the game, regardless of how effective they are at repairing damaged blocks. There is like no fight that you will take damage and not loose blocks, as soon as your shields go down a single hit from a cannon and you can loose a ton of blocks. The scale at which ships only scratch each other is fairly small.