23,000 LY And A Mistake: Would Fully Functional AFMU's Be Overpowered?

[Lodorenos]

Hello Commanders!

I've only skim-read this thread, so sorry, and sorry for any duplication (limited time, g'ah!)

The automatic field maintenance unit is currently faulty. A recall has been issued; hopefully in a future update (soonTM) owners should find that it is able to repair all modules except a ship's power plant.

Hello Commanders!

Just to add, the AFM will not be the way to repair hull damage.

And the canopy i suppose

Hello Commander nicomak!

Correct, the AFM cannot repair the canopy.

Thank you for the responses, but that wouldn't fix the issue at all. When you mess up and lose hull integrity, everything goes down in percentage.

eg. 98% hull 97% FSD 98% thrusters

Great, you can fix the FSD and thrusters to 100%.

98% hull 100% FSD 100% thrusters

This goes on.

30% hull 100% FSD 100% thrusters

Until eventually: 0% hull 100% FSD 100% thrusters.

Eject... eject... eject...

 

[Perjoss]

If they are worried about certain modules being overpowered in combat then just add a combat state to the game. So for example causing damage or taking damage from another ship would put you into this state, and you'd have to be out of combat for about 30 secs before being able to use certain modules.

Another way would be to just make certain modules have very high power requirements, so you would never be able to use them if you have weapons or shields online. Or go a step further and make it so that certain modules require thrusters to be offline in order to work.

 

[Rivka]

As a tangent, I'd kind of like to see a "mini-deployable" style outpost that you can launch, and use as a temporary "campground" while exploring. Just a temporary thing, you "feed" it with resources, it gives you the ability to dock, rearm, and repair while out in the middle of nowhere.

We could gimp it some, by prohibiting it from making ammo (just utility loads like chaff/heatsink/afmu), and not letting it repair ship integrity. Sure, you can patch modules and hull up, but eventually wear is going to push you back "home".

 

[Lodorenos]

As a tangent, I'd kind of like to see a "mini-deployable" style outpost that you can launch, and use as a temporary "campground" while exploring. Just a temporary thing, you "feed" it with resources, it gives you the ability to dock, rearm, and repair while out in the middle of nowhere.

We could gimp it some, by prohibiting it from making ammo (just utility loads like chaff/heatsink/afmu), and not letting it repair ship integrity. Sure, you can patch modules and hull up, but eventually wear is going to push you back "home".

In all honesty I don't care how they do it, if only I could go out into deep space indefinitely. This is 1200 years in the future. We started flying less than 125 years ago and 3D printers are available (even metal printing ones) for common households. You're telling me that in ALL that time we've made ships travel thousands of times the speed of light but we can't make some robot/machine/function/etc that can fix heat damage? Oh come on.

 

[Growle]

I haven't read all the replies here but there was a video on the wiki by the devs where they mentioned the possibility of being able to physically fly outside of our ships and repair them ourselves.

I mean hell a ship as small as an X-wing had an R2 droid and even the Millennium Falcon had a Wookie...or whoever else was on the ship that knew how to use a hydrospanner.

 

[Vithigar]

Thank you for the responses, but that wouldn't fix the issue at all. When you mess up and lose hull integrity, everything goes down in percentage.

eg. 98% hull 97% FSD 98% thrusters

Great, you can fix the FSD and thrusters to 100%.

98% hull 100% FSD 100% thrusters

This goes on.

30% hull 100% FSD 100% thrusters

Until eventually: 0% hull 100% FSD 100% thrusters.

Eject... eject... eject...

Exactly this. As it stands the AFRU is completely useless for the purpose of extending the endurance of exploration. The mentioned changes do not change this. You're limited by hull, period.

Now, if the intended design is that AFRUs not be useful for exploration then that's fine I suppose, but I'd like to see something definitive saying so. Also, I'd be curious to know what exactly they are intended to be used for.

 

[tasev1]

EVA's would work too.....you would need an EVA or a drone to repair hull/thrusters.

The AFM unit is like an internal repair droid - it only works on modules because they are all internal. Hull, thrusters, sensors....they are EXTERNAL to the ship. How do you expect them to be fixed without going outside?

 

[Walt Kerman]

Is anyone else reading dark text against a dark background... I've been highlighting the words to read.... but why am I doing this, haha?

 

[Lodorenos]

EVA's would work too.....you would need an EVA or a drone to repair hull/thrusters.

The AFM unit is like an internal repair droid - it only works on modules because they are all internal. Hull, thrusters, sensors....they are EXTERNAL to the ship. How do you expect them to be fixed without going outside?

Well with that logic, so are the fuel scoop, point defense, and heat sink launcher modules.

 

[TankMaster]

Hmmmm....while i've never had to use it, nor even had one fitted, can no one see how getting killed, because you can't repair something, 50kly out from civilization, with the time involved getting that distance and scanning, is a penalty so disproportionate to the effort put into the activity that it makes this far too punishing?, not one single other activity in the game is punished in this manner, not because of the money lost, but simply because of the sheer amount of time lost, especially if you're a casual player, making such a trip can take whole weeks!. If you could keep the exploration data after death then it would make it better (but it would still be too much of a punishment) but as far as i can see, this risk makes exploration far too dangerous, even if it's something not likely to happen with any high degree of probability but when it does happen it's enough of a punishment to simply crush any desire to embark on such a journey ever again and that's not good game design IMHO.

We really should have the option to mine the required materials to repair the rest of the ship, including power plant, it would be an extra module apart from the AFMU and would require mining lasers and refinery (of course) as well as cargo space so fitting becomes a very finely tuned affair but overall the risk of death to exploration should be diminished since pilot error isn't the only danger, after all, you cannot know, prior to entering a system, if you are going to appear between a contact binary which immediately begins to cook up your ship.

Edit: But if nothing is going to be done to diminish this risk then at least make it much more profitable than it is now, i believe exploration is the least profitable career at the moment since the money earned for a 3,000ly trip which takes days can be done in less than an hour of trading, or a couple of hours bounty hunting and taking into account the time involved well, that's just not fair, the risk involved should make this at least as profitable as trading, after all, we're finding whole planets that will make the superpowers of the galaxy and their corporations trillions of cr.

 

[Exeider]

@Lodorenos,

Heck no they wouldn't be overpowered, If you add a charge up timer to it, much like the discovery scanner, so you have to hold DOWN the fire button, they wouldn't be over powered, I would even think not even in combat, where your deciding to heal or fire, it would also me a clue to an attacker if the target stops firing all of a sudden, it lets them know they may be charging an AFMU pulse to heal themselves, so they better finish their target quickly. To clearify though, the charge up shouldn't be as long as the d scanner just behave like it. I don't know 10 seconds? 15?

or would you rather fire it off and it starts to heal you with a Heal over Time up to a certain number of points, so if you just over power the heal rate you still kill your target??

either way it would need to be balanced for combat, but no I don't think it would be over powered at all.

 

[xslam]

Hello Commanders!

Just to add, the AFM will not be the way to repair hull damage.

Does it mean than repair price is a balance measure wich intended to prevent intedictions with large ships and use armour tanking in PVE ?

 

[clavain]

Ummm, not necessarily - I'm at 83% hull on an exploration mission at the moment after a stupid mistake near a black hole, but all my modules are at 100%.

Thank you for the responses, but that wouldn't fix the issue at all. When you mess up and lose hull integrity, everything goes down in percentage.

eg. 98% hull 97% FSD 98% thrusters

Great, you can fix the FSD and thrusters to 100%.

98% hull 100% FSD 100% thrusters

This goes on.

30% hull 100% FSD 100% thrusters

Until eventually: 0% hull 100% FSD 100% thrusters.

Eject... eject... eject...

 

[DDFitzy]

Just adding my $0.02,

Using ammo is ridiculous to me, how do you fix anything except Swiss cheese with bullets?
I much prefer the idea of using materials in cargo/refineries to 3D print certain parts, not all parts, some should only be available through purchase (although stocking up should be allowed for exploration)
It should take time to do a repair and any system being repaired will have to be powered down during repair.
When we get the ability to move around the interior the repair unit should only be a 3D printer. The player should have to fix damage manually by getting to the damaged section, NPC passengers could do this if they are mechanics.

My overall suggestion is almost a mini-game approach to the ships mechanics. I'd like for example, engines to have multiple ways of working by plugging in cables, tubes and components in varying ways and adjusting parameters of those components. The stock configuration will be mostly reliable with average stats but the player can tune it for more top end speed at the cost of reliability/acceleration/heat-output/power-use or whatever combination suits their needs. Some configurations will simply not work others will be explosively bad (for when we can board other ships, you will get a warning in your helmet HUD)

This opens up repairs to the player, for example a battle has left your FSD inoperable so you power it down and repair it you get the drive working but at some kind of reduced capacity eg.

• You bypass the damaged feedback inhibitor the FSD will work once, but the whole engine will fry (all/most components will be destroyed) when you exit SC; but you just need to get to a station.
• The damaged component is a power recovery system which once removed increases heat output and consumes more power. Perhaps to a point where you have to disable non-essential systems and limit your time in SC, stopping to cool down.
• You had to plug both field generators into the one remaining capacitor, you will have to reach 400+ m/s for the FSD to kick in (This means you have to go and fiddle with your thruster system to get more speed)
• You have to steal the power injector from your life support, you have fully repaired FSD but it's a race to the station before your air runs out
• For players who don't want to get into the nuts and bolts a reboot/failsafe option will have a chance of recovering the drive at a reduced capacity

When walking around space stations you may find an NPC parts seller who will sell you after market parts for the engine or repair your existing parts. Starport services will only deal with stock parts.

 

[Eldrazzi]

Pretty sure DB mentioned (sometime around Xmas or thereabouts) that EVA actions would include hull repairs at some point in the future. I keep envisioning the Space Engineers blowtorch but I'm sure it'll be something else. Still, EVA hull repairs would be a better option IMO.

 

[Tistuto]

I really like your idea of the 3d printer in the way it would be nice to add some activities to exploration,
Some tools are already here for that, bringing mining to be able to collect some ore to repair your ship while being xx xxx Ly away from human space sounds like a neat idea,
it would be like a little punishing event that could drive you away from your path to find some specifics systems a bit like fuel scooping is doin atm.

 

[cpy]

Repair tool is great, mining to get more repair "ammo" would be even more fun. Sadly i misclicked yes in poll.

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Pretty sure DB mentioned (sometime around Xmas or thereabouts) that EVA actions would include hull repairs at some point in the future. I keep envisioning the Space Engineers blowtorch but I'm sure it'll be something else. Still, EVA hull repairs would be a better option IMO.

YES PLEASE! I love SE and blowtorch repairs in space would be such an OMG i want to marry this game kind of thing. Well blowtorch might be "copyrighted" by SE but hey, smashing stuff with hammer is still cool right?

 

[Ben_BigBen]

Seeing as we're in the future I'd expect the AFMU to actually be a nanite controller/factory of some kind, so I agree with the consensus of all the bullet points 1-5 - especially the mining part, perhaps with a different required metal/mineral for different modules as it would give a purpose to mining again !

 

[Briarée]

YES please, improve AFMU

i would really LOVE it to be usefull and repair EVERY part of my ship.

also, as it was mentionned earlier:

- mining / refining / manufacturing the "ammo" from belts
- should take time (current seems OK, maybe twice this time for critical things like thrusters / hull)
- should be done with hardpoint retracted


this way it would be awesome, mostly for exploration but also other people, and clearly NOT OP since it can't even be used in combat

 

[Belsameth]

Should be fully working, albeit slow and with expensive ammo (and/or a possibility to mine it)
Would also be an extra reason to pack it to prevent SD when Thrusters or sensors hit 0%.
Care should be taken that it won't become the Shield Cell for hulls tho, but that much is obvious.