Auto-Repair, Better Engineer Patrols, or Neither?

My suggestion for ground repair (buildings, units) would be to have a building, which functions as a repair station for a given radius.
This building would house a limited and fixed number of repair drones which operate on their own without selecting the targets themselves.
This would allow for some options:
- vary radius (increase target area while reducing repair "density")
- choose more distant operating center (e.g. at the front line, safer for the building but longer travel times aka reduced repair effectiveness)
- an attacker can destroy drones to prevent short term repairs (drones rebuild if destroyed (in exchange for resources) up to full strength)
- not too much micro management

this idea is for stationary zones, wouldn't really fit mobile units

If you want to repair units in the field, take some kind of egineer with you, thats not a problem at all. In SupCom, the aeons even had an engineer designed for this special task. Or retreat to your base where you have constructed some engineering towers.

Btw.: Engineering towers should also have the ability to reclaim wrecks.

I'd like a unit a bit cheaper than an engineer, just for repairs.

I'd like to see Engineer AI able to be customized and controlled to set up specific behaviors. If I have an engineer on patrol, maybe I just want him to vacuum up metal. Why can't I tell him to not repair units? Maybe I have a few Engineers in the background that are on repair job - but oh wait, they wandered too close to a turret that was being built and now they stalled my economy instead of ignoring it and just repairing. Maybe my economy is stalling anyway and that turret isn't that important - I only have two options, stop building it completely or keep going. Why can't I just say 'build it slower'?

You're right, I forgot about that fact like a fool. Well, my point about the responsibility lying on the player still stands. But thank you for setting me straight, haha.

This's why you get to set their retreat tolerance, just like you set fire states. You could also have a button that explicitly tells a unit to retreat to the closest retreat zone, so you can select a subset of your attacking force and send them for repair without micro.

Because zooming out and right clicking in the general vicinity of one of your patrolling engineers is so much micro.

Indeed, choosing when to cut your losses, pull your troops out and repair them instead of wasting them isn't really so much micro as just a good idea

And pulling every troop out of a battle because he took 50% damage won't end very well for anyone

Independent auto-repair as a result of veterancy was not awesome, as witnessed in SC, and I think that auto-repair for anything other than the commander should not be in the game.

With flying engineers, it shouldn't be problem, so long as we're given the option to send them on a REPAIR PATROL, which means they will not assist in construction projects, and repair damaged units and buildings exclusively.

Making an air pad capable of repairing more than a single aircraft at a time should also be taken into consideration.

I'd actually like to see the ability for anything to assist factories to be taken out, i'm of the opinion that engineers should be for build/reclaim/repair, and that +factories = +units. When you have 30 engineers assisting a factory and making an ASF every 7 seconds like in SC, it's got a bit silly =S

And yeah, the SC multi-airpads were great =)

In SC the repair of a unit (experimental) was as costly as building a new one....in SC2 the repair was free...I would like that a repair does cost energy and mass but that it is cheaper than building a new unit. Meaning a tank would cost 200mass, it is damaged by 50% (100mass) so the repair should not cost 100mass, it should cost 50 mass or so...just as an example...must be balanced though...my number is just a ballpark number.

Also repairpads for planes are pretty cool, loved it in FA.

You're making it sound easier than it really is. Here's what's involved:

1. Select all units that need repair, which involves shift+clicking the set of units that are damaged
2. Zoom out and find where your patrolling engineer is, which may not be easy because he may be in a blob of other units, or may have been killed
3. Tell your units to move to that area

It's enough micro that it's a nuisance.

The first step of your list also counts towards this.

Memory of where you've set your engineers to patrol takes care of the second step, also, holding shift shows your patrol routes, making is even easier.

Right click is the third step. (Depressing your finger about 2 millimeters)


I can see you feel that this is micro, I believe retreating damaged units to be management. Management which will make you better or worse at the game. Automating such a task removes an area of the game you can be good at.

If all you want to do is tell units damaged to a certain extent to repair, then retreat zones and retreat conditions help make that turn into a single button after you've put in the initial work.

Having to do that manually every time is micro-management. It's when you have a repeatable macro order in mind, but you have to specifically execute every step of it each time.

Even if you go to the trouble of selecting specific units you want to repair, having to zoom out and find the place you already know they want to go to is tedious enough to be automated.

The whole idea of units continuing to carry out their previous orders after repairing is also pretty incredible. You really should try out this feature in Zero-K.

I just get the feeling that it's another layer of un-needed complicated-ness that'll clutter things up. I can imagine that it'd be handy to have sliders saying what % HP you should be to go back to a pre-designated place and repair at, and how useful it'd be, but I don't think it really needs to be there =S