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Repair system overhaul


vylqun

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There are quite a lot of players unhappy with the current Implementation of the repair system, mostly due to the total loss of elements and the inability to restore cores. I want to adress the first point here.

 

A total destruction after x repairs is not the way to go, as it can leave people helplessly stranded. What i would rather suggest is keeping the limited lives of elements for a full repair, but afterward, instead of destroying them, their stats (warm up time, thrust, fuel use, fuel capacity, hp, weapon dmg etc.) should be reduced with every successive repair. This way the elements would be suboptimal, but still useable andbable to get the ship towards a planet or a market and it wouldnt become completely useless.

 

This mechanic however, and the same foes for the current swapping of damaged elements, is tedious if done by handm And games should reduce tedious actions as much as possible. Thus the need for a new mechanic or type of element emerges, the repair element. The idea behind that is to have a type of element, that gives players an active skill when they are linked to it. The repair element would be linked to a container hub, containong new elements, and to the player, giving him the ability "right-click on construct and replace all elements above x number of repairs with new elements". The tier of this element would decide which core aize can be repaired/element-swapped and can be placed on dynamic and static cores, with the exception of T4 which can repair large cores, those should only be placeable on static cores. To use the element ability on a construct, that construct must be either not moving, or parented.

 

Additionally to that, an industry that can turn industry into scraps and parts relative to the number of total repairs (0 repairs -> parts only, 5 repairs -> 50% scrap, 50% parts) is necessary.

 

While i wouldn't limit the use of those elements, the repair-ability element should have a size, weight and, later, power use, that makes it pretty unusable for any kind of pvp ship and incentivises specialized repair ships/ports.

 

I would be glad to get some feedback and constructive criticism on this :)

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That sounds okay to me, but I think they should still be lost after x restores. It's already a compromise having multiple lives, instead of being lost on the first destruction.

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I think we chatted extensively on this topic - and the main issues I have with the current system are unfortunately not going to be addressed, though for the sake of conversation I'll add to the discussion.

Those issues that the current system has created being:
- Discourages of PvP as there is little incentive to get anything useful from the enemy ships if the elements cannot be restored to full functionality
- Discourages salvaging gameplay - for very much the above reason. Basically any element that has been restored once already is worthless in comparison to a fresh element
- Discourages using higher tiered elements (rare engines etc.) over the base models

- Discourages building ships with anything other than base required elements for function - since using decorative elements is heavily penalised. Even if decorative elements have infinite repairability, having diminishing returns means that a ship full of chairs and tables and closets is going to be penalised heavily due to completely wacky weight balancing that currently exists with those said elements (for example, xs lights should not be 70kg NQ)

- Discourages ship testing or risk taking - and in turn exploration
- In a game that is about building stuff, exploring worlds and interacting with players - both positively and negatively - it's a mechanic that makes that core gameplay aspect just not fun.
- Cannot be tweaked or balanced at a later stage to address the above. The only thing you can change through skills or patches, is increasing/decreasing the number of lives before either an element's full destruction or diminishing efficiency - which does not address any of the above outlined issues.

Now there is absolutely merits to an element sink mechanic - which permanent destruction is supposed to create. While my original thought was to propose an over-haul to how scrap is manufactured so that element sink happens at the source prior to repair, after speaking with yourself and several other people I have changed my mind somewhat and would instead propose a compromise:

Element destruction is tied to the destruction of the construct's core, upon which your construct will have a certain % of your elements permanently destroyed requiring replacement - while others remain in their "repairable" state. Higher tier elements would have a lower chance to be permanently destroyed. This basically:
- Solves the issue with PvP as there is incentive to look for and salvage parts off destroyed enemy ships as there is a high chance of decent reward in terms of high end elements.
- Solves the issue with salvaging for the same above reason - there is now incentive and reward into picking apart ships that the pirates left.
- Solves the issue of decorative elements being non desired, as on the contrary they will now have a chance to get destroyed instead of something more important. 
- Creates a clear contrast between a serious crash, and scraping the side of a building with your wing because of lag or the voxels didn't load in in time, meaning players are more likely to explore and fly around more risky terrain as well as experiment with builds.

- Can be tweaked and balanced at a later stage by reducing or increasing the % of elements destroyed as the core blows up, or alternatively adding a talent tree that reduces the % of elements / elements by tier / etc. 
- Minor crashes which are 99% of what happens at the moment as the player is doing everything right but is lagging / has someone else fly into them / graphical glitches etc. are no longer going to penalise the player - unless the entire ship blows up (which is a reportable bug at the moment anyway if it's not the player's fault). 
- Brings the gameplay to the same level of other MMOs where death has a "random drop" chance of equipment (in this case ship elements) - such as EVE online (yeah I know I know, it's the first one that came to mind cuz space / pvp / etc. Albion / guild wars / countless others have the same principles for equipment sink upon death design)
- And lastly - does what the currently implimented system is trying to accomplish - which is to create an element sink.

So yeah - my 2c on the topic. Either way, the currrent "x lives" system is unworkable for the future of DU in my humble opinion.

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Honestly I think that the Talent Tree Branches in mining / inventory need to be added to the HP tree as it belongs there since it deals with hp and healing. I also think that the HP Talent Tree needs to be changed to actually reduce the number of HP not increase it and instead go into resistences per ore type and tier rather than just into element types.

 

So that you can:

  • Reduce repairs by reducing HP on items or metals
  • Increase Resistances rather than HP
  • Repair faster
  • Repair more per tick with technician skills to make it not take like 20-100KL to heal a ship
  • Ship Mounted repair systems that just use voxels and repair all damages and broken parts and replace fully broken parts as soon 1 by 1 and being able to set priority to replacing parts then healing broken parts, or just repairing damaged parts in any order or to skip non essential items like plants or furnature until last. Along with restoring voxels or honeycombs back to blueprint condition.

Right now the whole system is unnecessary, long, boring, overly expensive, and it needs to be streamlined

 

Right now we have a system with destructive elements in which the cost of scrap to repair a part once is actually more than it costs in most situations to just flat out replace the part every time it breaks or that you could buy three or more actual parts then the cost of the scap for 3 repairs. Its broken and it needs to be seriously changed and streamlined along with the HP Talent Tree.

 

Not to mention there is no need to require like 12-16 wings to fly a ship of M/L+ size. Its overkill and it just shows how weak the skills are. Does anyone remember the last spaceship they saw that looked like a porcupine because it wouldnt fly? Or just sci-fi ships in general that are large but have little or no wings at all? It honestly take away from most of they style choices or the fact that you cant just get XL/XXL/XXL parts tht first tht cont require 50 stabilizers or links to effectively fly with minimal item bloat requirements.

 

 

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After 0.23 it seemed like T1 scrap heals for even less then it did. Not to mention with the over sautrated market and destructive elements it is actually cheaper to replace most items then it is to use scrap to repair them.

 

L stabilizers come stock with 60k hp. Last time I checked the price of an L stabilize min was about 150k. You will easily spend more than that in scrap then to just flat out buy a new part with the money you would spend on scrap if you just sold it and just bought a whole new L stabilizer and 3+ parts if you bypass the destructive elements system and just put a new part on. There currently is no point in using anything higher than T1 since even for the maginal hp it gives per second does in no way justify the double, tripple, quadruple escalating costs when you could have bought 20 actual fresh parts instead of repairing a basic item ones. It is pretty stupid since you can pretty much create a macro with gaming mice and keyboards to just hold LMB and just have it repair while you get things done around the house while it heals 60-100K+ hp if you add hp to Stabilizer Elements. One Stabilizer might take you an hour to two+ hours to heal.

 

It is made even worse that they make most people sit there for hours while they do this and is completely unnecessary if they just had a better version of plates instead of scrap that just healed more or some form of industrial repair droid that just repairs using scrap for you while you do litterally anything else.

 

Honestly though the problem with repairs lies in the HP tree. The hp talent tree should lessen hp to make repairs more efficient rather than less efficient and addiing hundreds of thousands to a repair bill. It should lower hp but also add in the actual resistances this game is missing to make up for what the hp will do which is nothing when just a handful of locked missles will rip most if not all of your ship up the first barrage. If the hp made any kind of difference and the little we went into the tree before the talent reset did absolutely nothing. It provided no defense just more sinks. If there was resistance and hp actually mattered or that you could reinforce or lessen damage since if you are going down anyways your ship no matter what is pretty much going to blow up no matter if you wasted exp in HP.

 

But if I could lower the HP rather than raise it I totally would. If I could add any sort of pvp defense resistance that made it possible to survive first strike with any form of pvp resistance to different types of elements or ore tiers I would if different voxels had different adaquate resistances to different weapons I might actually add voxels to a ship in layers to block different weapons. Seeing as there is no defense, auto turrets, or resistance to justify the over bloated useless HP scroes I just cant justify repairing at all.

 

Without more efficient types of scrap with plates that just are used by an auto repair tool its a huge pointless time, money, energy, and ore sink that needs to be changed to add more fun. If I wasnt always under the gun I might have enough credits to actually have ships to throw away in JCs epic space war wet dream vision thing. But since im always being griefed by my own mistakes (until we got our hands on a auto-pilot script) most times we crash are pretty much factors beyond our control that stem from the Maneuver Tool nerf & the non locking in place inherant to ships now and basically watching my ship slide and smash into stuff and blow up for no reason, or a ship will just be sitting on a flat surface completely on the platform and either bounce 100m up and blow up or it just suddenly decides to just fall off a ledge again for no reason and completely blow up. It hasent happened in a while but still the most random stuff completely out of our control seems to happen whenever there is a glitch in the matrix.

 

Either way this is completely unnecessary to make people mine and blow mats for this when it adds on hours and hours of mining just because they dont want to make a game you can actually fly in with the stats and putdowns we need to actually fly, or the talents that dont seem to do too much except for specific skills in each tree. Beyond that everything is purposely inefficient to make people crash and especially those without pilot skills to keep them from what they actually want to do and instead add more grind, punishment, with no actual talents to make it worthwhile. Repair speed and amount are a joke.

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On 12/31/2020 at 7:10 PM, Warlander said:

Right now we have a system with destructive elements in which the cost of scrap to repair a part once is actually more than it costs in most situations to just flat out replace the part every time it breaks or that you could buy three or more actual parts then the cost of the scap for 3 repairs.

How are you calculating that? It doesn't cost me that much to repair, assuming I don't buy scrap at ridiculous margins.

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First I want to clarify the following things as the math might not be 100% but its not far off the mark.

 

  • Im not exactly sure on the hp per second but it appears to be roughly 10hp per second using T1 scrap and I have T3 speed and T0 hp per second. But to me it seems like 10hp per second and if not ill give it the benefit of the doubt as a nice round number as an example
  • I am also not about to break something to get that number until such time as I can really pay attention hp per second and I will revise this post
  • I will say I am unsure of the 1:1.25 bonus if you T5 the pure refining skills and

 

First I will use a basic L stabilizer for an example since it has a huge hp pool of 50,326 base hp:

  • at basically 10hp per second it will take 100 minuites and 6,032ish scrap to fully heal without any HP talent tree mods.
  • 6023 scrap with no crafting talents may be 6023ish scrap but with 0 talent it takes
  • in worst case scenerio stuck at a crash site is a loss of 20 ore per craft as it is 65 ore for 45 pure which takes 134 crafts to make and wastes roughly 2,676 ore to make the scrap.
  • +5 scrap at T5 if you run it on a machine with a schematic
  • If you have talents in ore/pure/scrap then you pretty much get a 1:1.25 with T5. That bonus making 6,023 scrap will shave off 1,505.75 scrap but still take you 4,517.25 scrap to heal the L stabilizer
  • If you run it in a machine with T5 Talents you can effectively make 6 scrap per 45 scrap since the cost goes down and with making x6 with a cost of cant remember if it was 45/45 or 50/50 at T5 but I could be wrong since I didnt spec back into it fully again after the talent reset. But generally speaking it will cost you much less with T5s
  • I also dont know the numbers for the better grades (basic, advanced, rare) Im sure rare T1 scrap has to do something just not sure how much
  • at 10hp per second it will still take you 75.5 mins to heal and a fraction less if you opt for T5 Repair speed.
  • With the +5 bonus for 6 scrap per craft with schematics brings the total of scrap needed to craft down to 1005 to make the 6023 scrap needed to repair the full wing and certainly relects in the price

 

Current market prices for each of the T1 ore: It is simply the lowest price and does not reflect distance or what market, planet, or moon. The price can be much higher but at best case scenerio I will use the lowst price)

  • Iron / Hematite: 20h ea = 120,416h (no talent) & 90,345h (T5 talents) or 20,106.6-- (with +5 bonus from scemaatics) per full repair for 1 L stabilizer
  • Quartz: 19.99h ea = 120,399.77h (no talents) & 90,299.8275h (T5 eff prod Talents) or 20,089.95h (with +5 bonus from scemaatics)per full repair for 1 L Stabilizer
  • Coal: 20h ea = 120,416h (no talent) & 90,345h (T5 eff prod talents) or 20,106.6-- (with +5 bonus from scemaatics) per full repair for 1 L stabilizer
  • Bauxite/Aluminum: 19h ea = 114,437h (no talents) & 85,927.75h (T5 eff prod Talents) or 19,095h (with +5 bonus from scemaatics)per full repair for 1 L stabilizer

If you even think about using T2 scrap the price instantly doubles the cost of the above mentioned prices or the random fluctuations of the market on any given day betwen ore/pure/scrap between all the different ore types. If you dont go into all of those to get that bonus you are not really saving anything if you dont have all the perks.

 

How much do you ask is an L stabilizer worth right now? (again im just pulling the best case scenerio lowest posted number on the market and could be much higher depending on location or off world)

 

  • 107,000h

 

So then you have to ask how much time does it take to reap the benefit of having all T1 ore processing skills to get that savings by bbeing able to choose the lower price ore option on the market at will?

  •   I have T2 in basic ore refining & T2 in Ore Production, T2 in Scrap efficiency, and nothing in Scrap Production so my numbers will be off im just adding all the Talents to the que that I can for an example +/- a week or so to get all the T2s.
  • Just to get that savings bonus not including the industry side will take 63 days +/- the T2 skills I already had.
  • im sure there is a lot of industry bonuses as well I just dont want to go that deep lol.

 

So unless you are rocking T4 across the board to likely break even without waste making scrap and im sure industry is pretty good with the Schematics. But for any solo or common person likely will not have the talents like that with some much else you are being pulled to do or quality of life improvement talents along the way. I wont speak for your situation but that is basically the breakdown.

 

It is pretty much the same story with other parts too. You can check it for yourself if you like im just calling attention to the hypersaturation in the market and how its pretty much cheaper to flat out replace a part each time then this poorly designed repair system.

 

I hope that helps

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On 1/5/2021 at 8:51 AM, Haunty said:

How are you calculating that? It doesn't cost me that much to repair, assuming I don't buy scrap at ridiculous margins.


It's not about the cost though. People would be happier to pay 2x / 3x more for scrap instead of the current 'X lives" system.

Which NQ has said they will revert in the "we heard you" post by JC when it comes to non pvp damage.
Which doesn't fix the problems that it has created when it comes to pvp / salvaging therefore. 
Which they haven't done so to date and have gone completely silent on. 

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