04-18-2018, 12:14 PM
So, many of you probably know already of these two episodes that I've recently uploaded on my channel, featuring two separate examples of using an otherwise very unpopular shipclass - the Repair Ship.
Some of the comments, both on the videos and on Discord, made it seem that the people were seriously contemplating on making the repair ship a part of their shared account fleet, which in turn made me frown a lot and a response video soon followed explaining why it is a waste of money and how the repair ships in their current state do not make any sense to be used intentionally.
But I would love to see this shipclass become more common, especially in larger engagements. However, the way that the ships are designed right now simply makes them impracticle in realistic scenarios.
The current rendition of the repair ships are:
*ships that are intentionally vulnerable and easy to kill
*are supposed to sit outside of the field of battle and provide repairs to ships that escape the combat area
Without going in too much detail, that in by itself is a flawed concept, as, apart from nomads and wild, players have plenty of docking places for them to limp to if they do escape a battle. Restocking on a base right outside of the range of enemy players is quicker, faster and allows to repair damaged external equipment and reload on any ammo used during the fight, BBs included. The only practical use of a repair ship happens to be only if they are participating directly in the fight itself, in which case there is a fundemental issue with how they are currently balanced.
*The ship thrusts at 170ms.
*The ship has little to no defensive firepower.
*The ship has no CM or CD.
*The ship is the size of a gunboat, while having the armor pool of a standard SHF.
*The repair gun arcs are as follows - 90° upwards, 90° to either side. It cannot aim backwards, it cannot aim downwards.
*The repair ship has a SHF shield.
*The range of the repair beam is 500m.
This is, of course, intentional. You must be able to kill a repair ship and the few things that do make the ship good - its turnrate and the ability to bot up quite a few times, as well as a reverse thrust speed of -40.
However, the role of a support ship in realistic encounters only works when it is worth spending a player on. In short, the repair ship as it is now, relies too much on coordination with the rest of the fleet and whoever it is that you are repairing. That is to be expected, but this is to the point where simply having another combat ship in its place is more profitable. The lack of CM means that any well-tracking missile, ESPECIALLY the Silencer gunboat missile and even sidewinders deal huge amounts of damage to you. The fact that capital missiles are now very popular also makes it very possible that if you are caught with your shields down as a nightmare hits - you are toast. The range of the repair beam also makes you stick very close to your target, so if they need to use flaks to repel torpedoes, you will be hit by them if you do not get out of the way in time. A slow thrust speed also makes it impossible to dodge gunboat fire, or even worse, bombers or turret steering freighters.
The repair ship, if flown correctly, can be sufficiently survivable. A turret-steering ship can avoid lots of incoming fire, the reverse thrust allows to dodge snacs if timed right and the turnrate allows you to stick to whoever is it you are repairing and allow them to deal damage to your attackers. However, as mentioned in the video, it requires a certain amount of competence with turret steering. To make sure not to get flaked, to keep an eye on attackers, avoid their fire while healing and keeping an eye out on incoming torpedoes and cap missiles means that you need someone skilled enough with turret steering on a repair ship to make it usable.
The fact that the ship repair is precentage based only makes battleships and BCs feasable repair targets, as their displayed health is their ''maximum potential hitpoint pool'' already, unlike ships with BBs. This means that the other shipclasses are ''not worth wasting time on'' repairing, due to them requiring to be quick on the nanobots button while under fire in the fear of being instakilled.
The ship cannot even be used to justify backing up a cap. If you encounter an enemy battleship in your battleship and you want to ensure victory - having a repair ship makes no difference to you. Neither of you have a CD, so the target can flee. If you had a third person to CD - you would have won either way just because there are three of you in the first place, the repair ship player being more useful as just yet another bomber/cap. These issues all stack up and makes the repair ship one of the least used ships in the game in a day to day environment.
The current repair ship is too complicated to be used in realistic engagements. However, there are ways to make it easier. Any one of these changes could make the repair ship more usable in an average engagement.
*Giving the repair gun 800m - 1k range hitscan beam and putting the repair gun on a 360 slot.
This would allow you to repair ships without potentially bumping into them.
*Giving the repair ship 195ms thrust.
The ship is a large target, it would be nice to at least get some distance between you and your attacker if they are flying a larger ship.
*Giving the repair ship a transport shield.
One of the current meta is to use a double-scorcher/hellfire cloak bomber to instakill repair ships regardless of how close they are to their repair target.
*Giving the repair ship a CM or CD.
Being able to act as a torpedo CDer for whoever you are repairing would benefit you even more than your target.
Alternative:
Having a dedicated, specilized repair ship might not be the way to go.
Giving capital ships their own variant of the repair multitool, while putting it in its own tech cell in order to apply a 50% core nerf to anyone using it as a balance procedure might also work. The current 2% per shot repair precentage should be, in that case, divided by the maximum amount of heavy turrets the gun can be put on. If the shipclass has a maximum of two heavy slots (gunboats), each gun should be split into a 1% repair rate. Etc.
These suggestions come from my own experiences with the ship so far. Your mileage may vary.
Discuss.
Some of the comments, both on the videos and on Discord, made it seem that the people were seriously contemplating on making the repair ship a part of their shared account fleet, which in turn made me frown a lot and a response video soon followed explaining why it is a waste of money and how the repair ships in their current state do not make any sense to be used intentionally.
But I would love to see this shipclass become more common, especially in larger engagements. However, the way that the ships are designed right now simply makes them impracticle in realistic scenarios.
The current rendition of the repair ships are:
*ships that are intentionally vulnerable and easy to kill
*are supposed to sit outside of the field of battle and provide repairs to ships that escape the combat area
Without going in too much detail, that in by itself is a flawed concept, as, apart from nomads and wild, players have plenty of docking places for them to limp to if they do escape a battle. Restocking on a base right outside of the range of enemy players is quicker, faster and allows to repair damaged external equipment and reload on any ammo used during the fight, BBs included. The only practical use of a repair ship happens to be only if they are participating directly in the fight itself, in which case there is a fundemental issue with how they are currently balanced.
*The ship thrusts at 170ms.
*The ship has little to no defensive firepower.
*The ship has no CM or CD.
*The ship is the size of a gunboat, while having the armor pool of a standard SHF.
*The repair gun arcs are as follows - 90° upwards, 90° to either side. It cannot aim backwards, it cannot aim downwards.
*The repair ship has a SHF shield.
*The range of the repair beam is 500m.
This is, of course, intentional. You must be able to kill a repair ship and the few things that do make the ship good - its turnrate and the ability to bot up quite a few times, as well as a reverse thrust speed of -40.
However, the role of a support ship in realistic encounters only works when it is worth spending a player on. In short, the repair ship as it is now, relies too much on coordination with the rest of the fleet and whoever it is that you are repairing. That is to be expected, but this is to the point where simply having another combat ship in its place is more profitable. The lack of CM means that any well-tracking missile, ESPECIALLY the Silencer gunboat missile and even sidewinders deal huge amounts of damage to you. The fact that capital missiles are now very popular also makes it very possible that if you are caught with your shields down as a nightmare hits - you are toast. The range of the repair beam also makes you stick very close to your target, so if they need to use flaks to repel torpedoes, you will be hit by them if you do not get out of the way in time. A slow thrust speed also makes it impossible to dodge gunboat fire, or even worse, bombers or turret steering freighters.
The repair ship, if flown correctly, can be sufficiently survivable. A turret-steering ship can avoid lots of incoming fire, the reverse thrust allows to dodge snacs if timed right and the turnrate allows you to stick to whoever is it you are repairing and allow them to deal damage to your attackers. However, as mentioned in the video, it requires a certain amount of competence with turret steering. To make sure not to get flaked, to keep an eye on attackers, avoid their fire while healing and keeping an eye out on incoming torpedoes and cap missiles means that you need someone skilled enough with turret steering on a repair ship to make it usable.
The fact that the ship repair is precentage based only makes battleships and BCs feasable repair targets, as their displayed health is their ''maximum potential hitpoint pool'' already, unlike ships with BBs. This means that the other shipclasses are ''not worth wasting time on'' repairing, due to them requiring to be quick on the nanobots button while under fire in the fear of being instakilled.
Conclusion:
In 99% of the cases such a player would have been more useful to your side if they were in a capital ship.
As already mentioned in the video, it also makes no sense to put a pvp-newbie in a ship like this. Even if you consider that the loss of such a player during an engagement would not have made much of a difference because of their lack of PVP skill, they would have been more useful if you had given them a dual-nova bomber and told them to lob torps at the target from 4k range, within relative safety.
The ship is too specific.
In 99% of the cases such a player would have been more useful to your side if they were in a capital ship.
As already mentioned in the video, it also makes no sense to put a pvp-newbie in a ship like this. Even if you consider that the loss of such a player during an engagement would not have made much of a difference because of their lack of PVP skill, they would have been more useful if you had given them a dual-nova bomber and told them to lob torps at the target from 4k range, within relative safety.
The ship is too specific.
The ship cannot even be used to justify backing up a cap. If you encounter an enemy battleship in your battleship and you want to ensure victory - having a repair ship makes no difference to you. Neither of you have a CD, so the target can flee. If you had a third person to CD - you would have won either way just because there are three of you in the first place, the repair ship player being more useful as just yet another bomber/cap. These issues all stack up and makes the repair ship one of the least used ships in the game in a day to day environment.
The current repair ship is too complicated to be used in realistic engagements. However, there are ways to make it easier. Any one of these changes could make the repair ship more usable in an average engagement.
*Giving the repair gun 800m - 1k range hitscan beam and putting the repair gun on a 360 slot.
This would allow you to repair ships without potentially bumping into them.
*Giving the repair ship 195ms thrust.
The ship is a large target, it would be nice to at least get some distance between you and your attacker if they are flying a larger ship.
*Giving the repair ship a transport shield.
One of the current meta is to use a double-scorcher/hellfire cloak bomber to instakill repair ships regardless of how close they are to their repair target.
*Giving the repair ship a CM or CD.
Being able to act as a torpedo CDer for whoever you are repairing would benefit you even more than your target.
Alternative:
Having a dedicated, specilized repair ship might not be the way to go.
Giving capital ships their own variant of the repair multitool, while putting it in its own tech cell in order to apply a 50% core nerf to anyone using it as a balance procedure might also work. The current 2% per shot repair precentage should be, in that case, divided by the maximum amount of heavy turrets the gun can be put on. If the shipclass has a maximum of two heavy slots (gunboats), each gun should be split into a 1% repair rate. Etc.
These suggestions come from my own experiences with the ship so far. Your mileage may vary.
Discuss.
(if it actually worked)