Repair units balance
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The repair in supreme commander are ineffective. 75% is too expensive. For example, repair in Starcraft is only 25% and mechanics are very often used. The repair looks too bad compared to nano-repair or Air Staging Facility or regeneration aura. Why not buff it? At least up to 50%
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You have to keep in mind that repair in faf works a lot different than in sc2 because reclaim exists. If you save a 10% hp ML and bring it back to your base instead of repairing it you can instead ctrl k it, reclaim it and rebuild a new one with a lot higher mass efficiency. In practice there is almost never a scenario where you repair for the efficiency right now. You mostly use it when you quickly need some extra hp on structures like when you're in danger of getting power sniped, but in such situations it does not matter whether the repair costs 25% or 200% of the original cost since you want to repair it anyway.
Ofcourse once you lower the repair cost some new scenario's might open up where you can use it but it is quite hard to properly balance it because different units will benefit a lot more from it. For example repairing a mega is 6,5 times as efficient as repairing a fatty. On some units, like on t1, a change like this will barely have an effect, but meanwhile for t3 navy it comes close to the threshold of making it viable to just repair your battleships.
Issues like this is why the repair cost was changed from 100% to 75% a few years ago and not any further. Yes we'd like it if repair was more viable in different scenario's and more commonly used, but balancing a core game mechanic like this is pretty tricky and will probably cost quite some time. Considering that there is already another feature (ctrl k) that mostly does the same job that people want repair to do and it applies to most scenario's the result was that repair isn't high on the priority list atm, especially since the balance team lacks manpower right now.
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Repair is almost useless, should be fixed so that is viable, this is much more important in my mind than nerfing the mongoose again
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@thewheelie
ctrl + k variant and then rebuild new unit is not working for regular units, if the factory is far away
i like the idea of reducing repair cost mostly because it make vet system more viable too
imagine have t2 com and repair damaged ilshavohs to gain them chance to get few vets more, for example
regen aura is strong but you have no way of focus it effect on the most damaged unit, repair can be good addition to itsounds intresting for me, repair feature is used too rare in the game, would be nice if it will gain some buffs
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Repair is even more useless if you consider regeneration.
Mass is lost right now if you repair, the unit wrecks does not become worth more despite the unit absorbing even more mass.
Set the mass cost of repair to zero, keep or increase the energy cost.
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Etf when people Ctrl k their units they march them back to base first
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As a former combat medic, I personally love the idea of repair being more viable.
Repairing battleships should totally be viable. But I think what would be best on big ticket items (like ships) would be a mechanic that does not have efficiency or viability stuck at one point. Whether to keep your ships at the front with Frontline repairs, a safer forward base with repair, or bringing them back to be reclaimed should be a situationally informed decision. I have further ideas but keeping it on repair, we could use this to put in some factional differences. Perhaps something about cybran makes it better for them to cannibalize, (can mantis reclaim) making mantis reclaim more meaningful. While UEF can be repaired more easily (33% cost?), Making sparkles vital. And Aeon just suck or something IDK. Give them a prayer ability that shuts them down and does an auto repair for some mass cost idk. We can finally use the CGs kneel animation.
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@thewheelie What do you mean in the lacking manpower?
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Today: units have HP which is expensive and slow to repair (exceptions: high regen from upgrades and vet, air staging), and some units have shields which are free to repair.
Can we take inspiration from various other games and have both "core HP" and "armour", where only armour is fast and cheap to repair, and where "core HP" may affect a unit's performance?
I'm not sure how viable this is to implement on SupCom, but IMO it would be a much better incentive system for keeping units alive than the veterancy system.
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In this case Valki has an interesting idea to reduce the mass cost and increase energy cost of repair. Another thing to consider would be adjusting the speed of repair to make it superior to ctrl-k and recycling the mass in. Even if it's not more mass or energy efficient, to get a t4 healthy and ready to fight very quickly again could sometimes be useful.
To go in a bit different direction, if we were willing to consider adding anything to the game, a land repair facility could be an option (similar to air staging). Anyone remember this from Red Alert? Not sure what would be appropriate mass/energy costs or speed of repair, but it could be interesting. I expect this might be difficult to implement, given the massive difference in unit sizes from t1 to t4s...but maybe just a very large building that can accomodate one t4, or 2-3 t3 units at once, 4-6 t2, or 10 t1 tanks at once? or various tech levels of repair facilities that have different capacities (similar to transports).
Repair does need some kind of buff though.
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@thewheelie is this the official response of the team?
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No
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Another thing to consider is that making repair more efficient will just add to the defender's advantage already present. Defenders will be able to get the reclaim from the dead unit and repair their own units easier. So most likely any increase in repair efficiency would need to be balanced with that in mind as well.
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@Sheikah that can be traded-off against the reclaim value of wrecks. IMO it may be a little high (on land)?
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There is this weird mismatch where repairing land units is basically never feasible but repairing air units is....free???
I think the free air unit repair is actually detrimental for the game because it enforces that however wins a single air engagement gets all his units healed, making a comeback even harder and once again making T3 air dominant above all.
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You wouldn't repair air units if it was done by engies either, reason it is feasible is air staging.
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@sheikah attackers also can have bonuses from it
for now the attacking player have a longer delay in supply (his factories is far away), so it's quite hard to hold captured territory
but if for example t2 com can pretty fast repair all damaged units it will be easier to hold this territory and then attack once again
also attacker's units might already have veterancy so when they will be full hp - they will be stronger than equal enemy army, that's really intresting
Overall, nothing changes: do not fight the battle you cannot win
But a win in battle will be more rewarding (because your survived army will be stronger than before, after repair)
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@sheikah Repair is already used by defenders on firebases - I see repair most often used to repair a T2 PD that is under attack.
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@sheikah said in Repair units balance:
Another thing to consider is that making repair more efficient will just add to the defender's advantage already present. Defenders will be able to get the reclaim from the dead unit and repair their own units easier. So most likely any increase in repair efficiency would need to be balanced with that in mind as well.
Repair is already used by defenders on firebases - I see repair most often used to repair a T2 PD that is under attack.
Buffing or expanding the mechanic might see attackers start using it too.
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