Repair Droids Idea

Kroom

I know that something like this is on the trello, this is how I imagine it would be.

The idea is that the in combat repairs could be handled by repair droids that are operated by crew, this droids will repair damaged parts but they will do it in the roof, outside of the ship, like R2D2 did in The Phantom Menace movie, in this way they will have access to parts that crew cannot access normally.
This is how it may look:

image https://forum.cosmoteer.net/assets/images/765-SZaEWguFgOSEVCX3.png
Similar to a weapon it needs a crew member to handle the droid.
The droid repairing on the roof.

image https://forum.cosmoteer.net/assets/images/765-jCsIUEAHbTNx9us0.png

The Repair droid could be limited to an area of 5-10 tiles.
If the droid finish repairs in the area it will return to the Repair Droid Bay.
If the part that the droid is standing is destroyed the droid will be destroyed too and it will take a set amount of seconds (10 or so) to be reconstructed in the repair bay.

bibletech55

I think this is a great idea! To me, it looks more balanced, yet still more versatile than both repair crew (limited to the inside) and drone ships (probably too easy to destroy).

I think some of the benefits of this proposal include:

1: This method proposes a defensible repair system that isn't automatically OP. For instance, it takes internal space and crew, so effective repair ability has to be intentionally planned when designing a ship.

2: The range of the bots means no burying the robot hatches behind 20 armor pieces or just in the center of the ship; these hatches have fair weakness to cannons, railguns, or any penetrating weapon. Robot range also encourages more robot hatches, and therefore more crew used, making intentional design in repair ability even more important.

3: And I know this is just prototype artwork, but I think it looks INCREDIBLE and personally, I think this would look great in Cosmoteer! If not in the main game, it would also be a great mod! 🙂

I have a few clarifying questions for your proposal as well.

1: Would these robot hatches consume power as well? I think consuming power would make sense, as opening hatches would use electricity, or, in Cosmoteer, plasma batteries.

2: How would this factor into the current repair system? Would these robots spend credits, or would it be free (besides crew and power use)? Would it be only in-combat repair (robots cannot repair outside of combat - opposite of current repair system where repair is impossible in combat)?

3: Should the robots prioritize certain parts to repair? Like crew prioritize control rooms over weapons? I ask because:

Kroom If the part that the droid is standing is destroyed the droid will be destroyed too and it will take a set amount of seconds (10 or so) to be reconstructed in the repair bay.

If the bot is standing over outermost pieces of armor during combat and that armor piece is destroyed, the bot would have to be rebuilt. This could easily happen several times. But perhaps reactors might be a higher priority to repair? Example: Railgun shot hits armor pieces, corridors and small reactor. Would the bot pick a part at random, possibly picking armor piece, then possibly getting destroyed with that armor piece, and leaving the reactor unrepaired? With this in mind, should robot repair priorities be configurable? After the crew A.I. updates, I think crew efficiency greatly increased; that might carry over to repair bots too.

Again, I love this idea and think this could be a great addition to Cosmoteer - thanks for posting such a detailed post with high-quality images! I look forward to seeing how this discussion proceeds! 😃

Also, how did you make these images? They look great!

Sombreroman

Kroom

Personally, I really dig the appearance of these things; it's a pretty awesome model!

Kroom

bibletech55 This proposal is mainly for vanilla as it will need new code to work well.
To answer your questions:

1- It could be that the hatches consume a small amount of power when idle (similar to the control room), also when creating a new droid it could use 1 or 2 batteries and when the droid return to the bay it could reload it with 1 battery. This all can be changed depending on balance.

2- Ideally it will use resources as metal. The repair will be in-combat but it will not create parts that are completely destroyed.

3- Prioritize parts to repair will be the best option, but idk how hard to implement this could be, the player could also target a specific part of the ship the same way weapons do.

I made it using gimp, I will add a similar but very simplistic (not very good sadly) part like this in the "Kroom's Forge" mod.

Lafiel I think droids could posible be handle as bullets if several features are added, like the possibility to auto target own ships, target type of low life parts and bullets that can move by having a ship as frame of reference.
This does not include the return to bay part, as i'm not sure how this could be handled using bullets.

The reparing should not be more than the damage of weapons (less that 500 hp per second, probably?), but several droids could target the same part and repair it very quickly.

I think fighters are more complicated as they need to be build using an editor and treated as ships.

Lafiel

There are three other related major problems that should also be mentioned even though they have been requested years ago: bullets with emitters; lingering bullets; and bullets with storage.

Currently, as in Abh's example drone launcher for supply-, repair- and escort-drones the drones can be "loaded" but
it's not possible to (reasonable) consume the load.
It's not possible to have them lingering or attaching on a ship without re-spawning. Also as spawning has looping restriction it requires excessive duplicates for each and for longer periods of time. I would rather like to have a counter, inheritable counter value & counter-check instead of looping restrictions. If no counter is defined then the default would be just 1.

Sorting for repair priority is costly the larger the range. So range should be smallish. Repairing a part under attack merely delays the inevitable unless repair is more OP than damage dealt. Having the drone or bot target damaged parts while considering the usage of their storage would make them more effective.

Combining this with the droid's destruction when the damaged parts is destroyed leads to another reasonable assumption: the bot could return to be reloaded. This would put it in the same class as fighters to be found in the fighter expansion. This particular feature seems to be a big order at this point but certainly desired.

Lafiel

Kroom Right now it's not possible to mod target damaged parts. They even got inaccessible indicators like fire. Unlocking that alone should be just fine then ship reference frame wouldn't be a problem or needed.

Actually, destroyed parts could be repaired in Abh (at least vanilla) but I've stopped short of that conversion because I didn't extend it to Abh parts yet.

The number of droids working on a part could be limited to the length of the walls. But this might be complicated for the game or require at least a new parameter in the part's stats.

I suppose the droid/drone is a fringe case between bullets and fighters. It would be best if the creation of such a hybrid is possible. But perhaps too complicated to realize and handle, hence, becomes a lag problem for the game?

Loumardes

I think i have an Idea you would enjoy

Instead of a buildin-one-part drone, why not a repair crane part to install on your ships that Can repair parts from others ships

I know you already build small fighters, and you may enjoy building yourself the actual repair ship

And overall, it would bring more customisation and ship variety