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- Jun 24, 2013
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Currently, I've never seen anyone actually use astrotech modules (or the other support modules, like shield supply, but that is beside the point). The main reason for this is that if you run out of shields and your ship's hull starts to get damaged (and you miraculously survive this event), you have damaged blocks, and missing blocks. Astrotech can help repair the former, but does nothing for the latter, and most people simply dismantle their ship using the advanced build menu and rebuild it from a blueprint, especially for large ships.
When shipyards are eventually added, repairing damaged ships will become either much easier or much slower, depending on whether they can only fabricate ships from scratch or can complete partial ships. Assuming the former, astrotech modules could be made useful by allowing them to repair completely destroyed blocks (even with the latter, astrotech could still be useful as mobile/battlefield repairs). Obviously, this would require some implementation, and the easiest way to do so that I can think of is for blocks to, upon reaching 0 health, become similar to an open plex door; it is still there, but becomes irrelevant for movement and combat. Once they are repaired via an astrotech module to at least 1 hp, they become normal blocks once more. This would also have the side effect of not disconnecting destroyed computers from their modules, and vice versa.
This comes with a problem in itself; the outer hull layer could be repaired easily, but not anything inside. Simplest solution is to allow piercing/punch-through effects to be used with astrotech, if they can't be already.
As to the question of whether to have astrotech use up resources like metal or crystal, I don't really know. Same goes for ability to salvage 'broken' blocks. If block hp values get a buff (or weapon damage gets a nerf) so that the after-shields stage of a fight becomes longer and less one-sided, that might also help make astrotech useful for repairing after the fight.
tl;dr: astrotech is useless because it doesn't work on destroyed blocks (and because blocks are real easy to destroy), so it should be made to work on destroyed blocks
When shipyards are eventually added, repairing damaged ships will become either much easier or much slower, depending on whether they can only fabricate ships from scratch or can complete partial ships. Assuming the former, astrotech modules could be made useful by allowing them to repair completely destroyed blocks (even with the latter, astrotech could still be useful as mobile/battlefield repairs). Obviously, this would require some implementation, and the easiest way to do so that I can think of is for blocks to, upon reaching 0 health, become similar to an open plex door; it is still there, but becomes irrelevant for movement and combat. Once they are repaired via an astrotech module to at least 1 hp, they become normal blocks once more. This would also have the side effect of not disconnecting destroyed computers from their modules, and vice versa.
This comes with a problem in itself; the outer hull layer could be repaired easily, but not anything inside. Simplest solution is to allow piercing/punch-through effects to be used with astrotech, if they can't be already.
As to the question of whether to have astrotech use up resources like metal or crystal, I don't really know. Same goes for ability to salvage 'broken' blocks. If block hp values get a buff (or weapon damage gets a nerf) so that the after-shields stage of a fight becomes longer and less one-sided, that might also help make astrotech useful for repairing after the fight.
tl;dr: astrotech is useless because it doesn't work on destroyed blocks (and because blocks are real easy to destroy), so it should be made to work on destroyed blocks
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