I love the new update, and the repair costs are something I've been looking forward to for a while. I've got a couple of suggestions that might help make it a bit easier on the newbies, though.

Suggestion #1

If you're on an Escort Mission, or a Border Skirmish, or any other mission involving an allied capital ship, repairs aboard that ship should be either free or hugely discounted.

If I'm flying cover for a Constellation-Class, and I'm down to 10%, I doubt the people in the hangar are going to say, "Hey, nice flying out there -- you really saved our ass in that storm. So what'll it b-- Whoops, looks like you're out of credits. Tough luck, man, I guess we can't repair your ship. Oh damn, look at the sensors, Hive Quee--*BOOM*"

The same goes for stations. If I'm doing a trade run across grey space for Xang Xi, and I get attacked by a squad of unbots, I should be able to dock at a Xang Xi station and get a major repair discount. At the very least, I should be refunded any repair costs at the end of the mission.

Suggestion #2

Scrap metal needs to have its value boosted a bit. Now that newbies are going to have to pay out the wazoo because the big bad Orun Collectors are shooting at them while they learn to fly, they're going to need a bit more income than your average Basic Combat Training mission provides.

I suggest the base value of scrap metal is bumped up 100c or so.

"But wait!" you say, "What about the dynamic economy? Won't a ton of newbies selling scrap to stations drive the value back down almost immediately?"

In my eyes there's an easy fix for this. It stands to reason that scrap metal would be a key part of repairing and building ships, and that the repair yards would use any they could get their hands on. Thus, almost any scrap you bring to the station would be bought immediately by the mechanics, since odds are, if you're fighting bots, you're going to take at least a few hits. Any scrap not used for repairs would be snapped up by money-grubbing shipyards who figure Leber's too intoxicated to notice carbon scoring on his new 'Taur.

We could either let the dynamic economy take care of it, or just fix the price at whatever value seems appropriate.

'just fix the price'?!

You motherless commie bastid.

Um....yeah....what Lecter said. Stinkin' pinko commie! Just kidding.

Yeah, let the dynamic economy (when we get it) take care of the price. Good call on the requiring scrap metal to do repairs, though. For missions defending a faction, then yes, repair discounts make sense. For trade missions, it depends on who the mission's for and if they expect you to need those repairs.

Repair costs are a minor issue for me when I fly grey space. I make it back to station in about 10% of the time so meh :)

The three nation capital stations should give free repairs to anyone under 3/3/3 imho

Not free... but capitols would be more popular hubs. It might be expected that they'd stock up on the rare parts no one else has. Cut the costs there by 50% I say. I'd travel to Dau to repair all my Valks.

Not free... but capitols would be more popular hubs. It might be expected that they'd stock up on the rare parts no one else has. Cut the costs there by 50% I say. I'd travel to Dau to repair all my Valks.

Hopefully this is interim to boosting ship costs. As it is, many places cost more to repair than they do to buy the same ship new. This would be fixed by making all the ships cost 5 times more though.

On the cheap repairs for low license levels, the items available to those players shouldn't be that expensive (relatively) anyway, so it is common sense that as you can buy better and more expensive stuff, your repair costs will also go up.

IMHO, repair costs are FAR too steep, especially given the minescule reward for participating in combat-oriented missions and events. For example, if you're fighting the sedina hive and you need to repair your Hog more than once every 5-6 missions, you're losing more money than you're making. I spent well over 100k yesterday repairing from botting missions that netted me less than half as much in rewards.

Granted, the rewards should be greater now that repair costs are part of the equation, but the real problem as I see it lies in the repair costs themselves rather than the rewards.

WHY would it cost 10,000 cred to repair a hog TD in grey space that still has 99% armor remaining? Such high repair costs would suggest that in fact every critical component of the ship is damaged and in need of repair. This is clearly not the case, since a ship is still perfectly operational even when reduced to 5% armor, and that's the key word: Armor. When you're repairing your ship, all you're really repairing is the armor, and armor should not cost nearly that much to repair or replace. In fact, assuming there's no shortage of raw materials at the station, any repair bay worth its beans should be able to craft, repair or assemble the necessary armor plating without needing to import ship-specific components. Nanites can do it in the convenience of space for a fraction of the cost of docking and repairing it in a station where it should be comparitively easy, and that's just wrong.

If/When subsystem damage becomes a reality in VO, I can understand higher expenses to repair the damaged subsystems in addition to armor repair costs, but that's not currently the case.

So here's what I think needs to be done:

1) reduce ship repair costs across the board.
By as large a factor as 3-5 in some places... armor repairs need to be significantly more affordable than the ships themselves, EVEN in areas where the ships cannot be purchased.

2) make exceptions to repair costs.
Ship repairs should be free or drastically cheaper at stations owned by a faction for which you are currently working - i.e., if you're taking a combat mission for the Serco/Itani, they should repair your ship for free while you are taking it, and other stations should offer you vast discounts while performing escort or hive hunting missions, etc. Also, your nation and faction standing should play a big part in how much it costs to have your ship repaired. You would get enormous discounts if you're admired or PoS, while if you're disliked, it would cost significantly more.

3) Add an option in the station to have your ship automatically repaired when docking.
Optional, that you can turn on and off, of course... and while you're at it, how about an option to automatically refill ammunition?

While I'm not a big-time PvP player, what makes this game fun and worthwhile to me is that you have some challenges and distinct dangers in getting around, and there are no significant penalties for getting hurt along the way. Steep repair costs put a damper on the anything-goes aspect of the game and help remove one more thing that VO has going for it to make it different from and better than every other pathetic MMORPG out there.

Ok, as a general response:

1) There should be no place in the universe where it's possible to buy a given ship for less money than it costs to repair the same type of vessel. The multiplier only exists if the ship is not available locally. If this isn't working in some places, please let us know (as Ray posted to the 1.7.x thread in General).

2) I have no problem with adding more specialized repair discounts, based on mission activity and the like. I'm not sure exactly what form this will take, but I welcome continued suggestions.

3) The repair numbers may still need to be tweaked a bit, on a universal basis. I haven't had a chance to actually play very much since the update (and I hadn't tested it prior to release), but I will check it out this coming week, and get a picture on what it's really like. Repairing 1% for 10,000c seems a bit strange, I'll have to talk to Ray about more about exactly how it's implemented, and test.

4) There are plans in the works to give newbies more interesting mission-driven goals with direct economic return. Unfortunately, there are some technical problems with implementation. I could just inflate the value of scrap, but that's pretty.. well, lame. In the interim, I may just throw together a scrap-collecting missions that pay out higher values, and make it only available to lower-level characters, as a short-term fix.

I will make it a priority to look into the economic balance of the current situation this week. We can probably do something to improve things. However, it won't be truly "fixed" until the entire economic system is redone, and our value system is re-assessed.

"I could just inflate the value of scrap, but that's pretty.. well, lame."

How about tying scrap value to repair cost? is that perhaps somewhat less lame? it stands to reason that more scrap = less scrap value = more material for repairs and less cost for materials.

You could bump scrap value just a hair, and then tie it in with repair costs, so that as more people sell scrap and drive its value down, they also drive down repair costs. It would help balance repair costs especially around capital and starting stations where newbies hang out.

INC: I actually paid 10k for a repair once when my hull was showing 100% - I must have bumped the docking bay just hard enough to scratch the paint on my Hog TD, and when I entered the station I was at 100%, but the 'repair' button was lit, with a cost of just over 10,000. I clicked it experimentally, and sure enough they repaired my ship from 100% to 100% for 10,000 cred.

It seems there's a baseline cost and it builds from there...

Space paint is expensive.

Your scrap metal idea is just what is needed.

We're adjusting repair costs this evening. There was an unusually high "duty" amount (of 5000c), where duty * hopcount is used to determine baseline cost, over and above the actual percentage cost of your ship repair. Now it'll be a function of duty, hopcount and baseline repair cost, but only as the given damage percentage. That'll be much more.. normal, for lightly damaged ships, but will still scale to relatively large repair charges for heavily damaged ships that are far from the nearest source of replacement parts. It should still never, ever be more expensive than the cost of the actual ship itself, if sold at the local station.. prices only scale if the ship is not available locally.

Scaling repair cost based on the value of scrap would be interesting. At present though, I don't plan to tie it to any outside factors until the dynamic economy is present, and I can start to attach things to more relevant, real-world supplies (like, say, the cost of component parts which are actually used to "create" the ship in the universe).

In the meantime, I'll make sure Newbies are taken care of and double-check their economic situation. A rescaling of the base ship costs has also been planned for a long time, and should probably be done sometime soon.

could we add in a factor based on the station's faction?

aka, if your hated, then it costs you in the realm of what it did before the tweak (sorry i came in late this discussion). as you head towards pillar of society (aka, "nerd"), then you get major discount (probably never free but damn cheap anyhow).

when i joined about 2 years ago, you would pay some amount to get your ship repaired, unless you were admired with faction (i believe that's how it worked back then).

it would be nice to have something close to that. never free, but damn cheap.

and if you're repairing in your nation (uit, serco or itani) where you have admired then perhaps it could be free.

thus, bs and bp in deneb is still not a loss operation (if you do things right and win) given both the serco and itani, given appropriate faction rating, can repair at little cost on their side of the border.

Let guilds purchase discounted/free repairs for fellow guild members.

This culd entail buying X number of repair points at a set cost at a station. Guild members could dock and repair for free until the repair points are all used up in a 1st come, 1st served fashion.

When you buy the points it would be like buying in bulk so you can get a discount and it gives something for guilds to spend money on.

Or guilds could contract a station to avoid the "ship not sold here" multiplier for a week/month. Again guild would have something to spend money on and a reason to be in a guild.

Repair costs only seem unrealistic (to me) when repairing small damage far away, like 3% costing 30200, yet one station closer 80% damage can cost only 27000. How about having small %age damage yielding small costs everywhere (everyone knows how to paint!) and making the diference greater if the damage is high, so components need actual replacement instead of just some paintwork and hammering out a dent in the armour.

and while your at it, consider making certain special ships more expensive and ones that are expesnive better usuable.

spend a couple 100k yesterday looking for a setup for the raptor, but everything i found another ship type did way better. ergo dual energy, take a rev c, dual flare take a zornet or even a vult, 1 energy 1 flare take a vult, popcorn gun take a rev c, rails (take a vult), etc etc etc. An inability to be knocked around from flares or a damagereduction from flarefire would be great seeing as the raptor is flarefodder just as the zornet. But lacks all the other things that a hornet has going for it.

not to mention the insane low cost it was for a rev c to repair... costed me 10k+ while it costed the rev c only 100... even my missiles costed more... me grmbls. addition of repaircosts has shifted the balance in favor of the smaller ships again...

same problem with the special vult

Anyone think that perhaps it would be nice if you could buy discounted repair materials when you buy the ship and have them on hand for later when you repair?

Perhaps in preperation for a long fight, you could stock up on repair materials for the ships you'll be using at the station, and then pay virtually nothing to have the (already purchased) materials used to repair your ship. Or you could maybe fill that 4u of cargo space on the hog with the only thing it's good for - repairs.

EDIT: would also make scavanging interesting for pirates and the like, who could pick up the "Warthog TD Plating Modules" or whatever and either use them or sell them. (this would be great with a dynamic economy)

It could also be a good first step toward offering armor modifications (different grades and materials in plating) that would give more or less protection at the cost of more or less money and/or weight additions.

EDIT2:

Incarnate, as it currently stands, is the repair cost linear with respect to damage percentage?

Why not have a bank space at each station( or maybe the bank should be done nationally) that you can store ores, used for repairing, and the station who repairs you ship just charges for labor.