Not much to explain: The lower your % is, the longer full repairs take aboard cap ships and stations. Maybe try 5% per second. It has always seemed silly you can dock and magically heal and relaunch in 1 second. Reloading should have a progress bar too, but that's another thread...

[Edit: spreaking of other threads, this has been discussed before: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/26426#322457 Sorry Kierky. Darned broken forum search]

Its equally as silly as nanites in space that you can fire on someone to instantly repair them. I figure stations and cappies just have nanite guns there so when you dock they all fire and vioala! magical insta-repairs!

looks good idea

Terrible idea, if you truly need to grind and suffer other mmos have that feature already for you

Like, its not that bad. There's a way you could do it that isn't stupid and doesn't break it compared to repair modules. Have a very quick repair over time occur when youre in a station or a capship, 5% per second is way slow too, maybe 20% per second.

You would then need to modify repair guns to work in the same way, on successful hit it takes the value of the heal and distributes it over time. I actually would prefer that repair modules work this way in space, or even have a lower rate of dishing out the heal to balance them out, but like.. this isn't really something anybody will quit the game about.

No [phaserlight]s will be given if it never happens.

No one may quit the game over it, but it's generally nice if developers respect the players' time (something Guild does a very good job of). Time sinks for the sake of time sinks isn't good.

As far as the immersion factor, this might have bothered me for the first month or so when I first began, but it no longer does. As Arthur C. Clarke put it: "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

I think a better question is: is there any richness of strategy to be gained from having repairs take time? To me, the answer is "no", because repairs are usually localized at stations or capships (except in the case of the repair gun), and it already takes time to fly to such locations which can be disrupted by other players, enemy ships, etc. Sitting in a station or capship for 15 seconds in order to repair doesn't present a lot of interesting possibilities in terms of strategy for that player, from my perspective.

Of course, that is the game as it stands today; Guild may have other plans that I have no clue about.

I like the idea of the repair gun being more like a mining beam that attaches and gradually heals the ship over time. These beams would also take a consistent amount of energy to use. Better repair beams could take less time to heal the ship leading to a whole slew of possibilities for energy drain/heal time combos/ versions of the repair beam.

The strategic gameplay gain, for example in a battle involving capships, is that if someone were to be severely damaged in a fight but flee to a capship, the attacker would get a break from them for the time it takes them to repair instead of them being able to pop in and out instantly.

Similarly with repair modules repairing over time rather than instantly, if you are fighting someone who gets repaired with a repair module you have a window to hit them and destroy them before all the healing is brought to bear. When it is instantaneous it's very harsh on the opponent of the person being healed.

I'm not going to +1 this, but I wouldn't really be bothered by a short delay of five seconds for repairing in a capship or station. Any more than that would get a solid -1 from me.

I do like TRS's suggestion about repair guns though.

Rin I think the reason it bugs you and other people is because in that time you don't have control of your vessel. That's the one difference between the repair gun example and the capship example - you have control of your vessel while the repair nanites do their work.

What if the same could apply to the capship or the station? If you run into the station your ship is sprayed with repair nanites, whether you choose to leave as your ship repairs is up to you, but either way you gain the health over time.

Then we gain the strategic advantage for the attackers of not having to deal with insta-repairs and you dont have to sit in the station if you dont want to.

Hmm...another suggestion for repair guns. Make repairs intrinsic to each ship. Then to make repairs, add to the repair value held by the ship. This repair "fuel" could then be utilized at a given rate, making repairs to the ship while it lasts. This would mean stations and capships would add sufficient value to repair all damage AND take time to make the repairs. For rep guns this would mean each shot adds a certain amount of repair value to the target ship. The ship then repairs at its given rate until the amount added is depleted. Better rep guns could have bigger ammo. In time, this approach would allow for self-repair modules to be added in game.

It was a strategic gameplay suggestion. If it were immersion I might ask why capships can't insta heal themselves if they have that much repair power in their hangars.

I'm not suggesting some huge wait to ruin everyone's fun. 20 seconds if you are at 1% is a fair wait to get back in the battle. In carrier based combat like border skirmish, hive skirmish, player capships, it seems ridiculous you can dock and be back out into combat at 100% in 2 seconds.

While I agree perhaps in principle, adding delays has a negative impact in the player's gaming experience. Waiting for a progress bar to complete is not fun.

As for repair guns, they already do take time to repair because the shot has to be charged first.

EDIT: A delay for station/capship repairs might not be so bad if the launch button were simply disabled for some amount of time, where the player can continue to interact with other parts of the station interface uninhibited while waiting.

I'm not against the concept of a delay for repairs at stations/capships. However, it can't be something that completely prevents a player from continuing to play. So long as a player can choose to launch while partially repaired, or perhaps pay more for a quicker repair, I don't see that much of a problem with it.

If this were implemented and I didn't like it, what's to stop me from almost instantaneously grabbing another ship? If I were fighting, perhaps I'd have a few of the same ship and leave the damaged one behind to be repaired while I went off to ruin another perfectly good ship?

It would probably be implemented so that you have to be inside the ship for it to repair or something. Otherwise, yeah, I'd just have a plugin to swap me around automatically when I docked.

"I'm not suggesting some huge wait to ruin everyone's fun. 20 seconds if you are at 1% is a fair wait to get back in the battle."

Actually, yes you are. This is an action space fighter game, not chess. Twenty seconds of twiddling my thumbs in the station would ruin the flow of the game. If I wanted to stare at a progress bar, I'd go mining.

Twenty seconds in a capship might not be so bad, but definitely unacceptable in a station.

Related idea: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/28213#341925

Maybe having it so you'd to need to repair your ship manually? Like, aiming the repair gun at the damaged portions?

Okay, so repair in a station is 5x the speed of self-repair or repair from rep-guns, so instead of 20 seconds, you get 4.