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Ship-to-ship repairs...?


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First off, I see a lot of potential for the ideas posted here. I think that quite possibly, all of the repair concepts that have been mentioned could be used. Also, if a player wants to perform in-battle repairs, there would be a risk, but that is when his team needs to work on protecting him.

 

Just like there are different kinds of engines and weapons, there could be different kinds of repair tech, each with advantages and disadvantages. Maybe the repair arms could handle massive hull repair quickly, but not system repairs. Meanwhile, nanites might be able to do the system repairs, but be insanely slow at armor reconstruction. It would really open up the possibilities to have multiple repair forms. It would also give birth to methods of slowing down an enemy repair procedure: EMP systems (Electro-Magnetic Pulse, in case you were wondering. :) ) to knock out the nanites, residual energy damage to armor blocks that inhibits new material form bonding, etc.

 

As to energy transfer, that is an interesting concept. It could be used for more than just shield recharge too. You could have a ship that utilizes some exceptionally powerful energy weapons, but doesn't have the energy storage necessary to use them for extended periods of time. But if there is a recharge ship nearby..voila...longer shoot-time.

 

As far as "energy leaching" goes, that would, again, give rise to counter-leaching systems. Even if their leaching tech is more advanced than your defense system, there is a chance you could "overload" their ship by sacrificing a large burst of energy directly into their leach mechanism. (If you can't defend against it, you will eventually lose it all anyway, right? :P )

 

Another thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is extending an energy shield to encompass another ship. Energy drain would be immense, but it would provide yet another option to consider when building/using a support ship. "Do I want to shield my ally and do minor/slow repairs, or large/fast repairs with no extra protection?"

 

And then there is the question of remote-controlled constructs and/or autonomous drones. If NQ does implement those, they could be used to repair/shield/recharge ships in combat with less risk to the actual support vessel. Enemies would have to get creative with their tactics in order to take out the drone "mother ship".

 

This is definately an interesting topic, and one I hope NovaQuark considers.

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I'm fairly certain that in their description of the Construct vs Construct stretch goal, they discussed that a ship could have a Repair Element installed that when powered, repairs damaged elements and voxels on the ship. This is sort of like having nanites repair the ship, or having fields reinforce the structural integrity of the damaged areas.

 

We don't have much info on how effective these repair elements will be, but in theory a large-ish ship with a tough hull, ample power, and good shields could withstand a non-stop attach from a couple of small ships. Since attacks will sometimes partially penetrate shields, having a repair module running 24/7 could negate that penetration.

 

However this element repairs the ship that it's on. We don't have any info yet if there are plans for a module that can repair other ships. It would be pretty sick if you could script the functionality of a group of ships to continuously repair each other provided they are at full health, thus a swarm of linked fighters running the script would allow the fighters that have been unscathed to loan out some repair capability.

 

But it also sounds like this might be a tricky capability to code, and probably a high-tier tech to build and install. We'll see.

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The flavor of the mechanic can be whatever it needs to be -- sleeper tech, mana, nanites, etc.

 

One of my criticisms of Eve is that combat seems mostly decided when you launch from the hanger with the ships and loadouts brought. If a game is a "series of interesting decisions made by the player" then most of those decisions happen before the fight. Combat should be fun for everyone. Without support roles the only actionable items in the fight itself for multicrew ships is piloting and weapons.

 

Support gameplay is something I am more interested in as both a player avatar and even as a multi crew ship. I love being the mechanic in Guns of Icarus -- prioritizing repairs, the tool I use to repair, and the types of buffs added to the different elements. I would enjoy similar mechanics being an engineer on a multicrew ship.

 

If we want to go with the nanite flavor a support ship could be equipped with nanite bombs. Shoot them at a baddie to do some damage or debuffs, or shoot them at a friendly to do some repair or buffs.

I agree. Whatever the method of implementing "support classes" of ship technology or crew roles within the ship, I'm interested in it. Combat should not be decided just based on what resistances and damage types you left your hangar with (and enemy targeting skills), but should include multi level cooperation between crew and corporation ships that rewards those who are not only prepared, but can react, respond, communicate, and help the friendly ship that is currently being targeted.

 

It seems that an easy way to implement this at first might be a gun or turret that you can fire at a friendly that either is a cloud of repairing nanites or maybe some plasma that can add energy to their shields or something? JC said there would be different types of damage... Maybe they could add "positive energy" damage our something to that effect?

 

 

Anyways, thanks for your guys discussion. It's interesting seeing what comes out of these brainstorming sessions. ☺

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