Ship repairs

[Lokasenna]

At this point, I'm sure I've found something, so here we go. Unfortunately, this is a complex situation with many factors.

Situation:
-Size 7 port
-ARD present
-AR present
-Many ships in need of repairs

These 2 CVs haven't accumulated any repair points in 5 days:


My suspicion is that they are trying to use the ARD (or AR) to repair since they are in the port, when the port would work just fine to repair all of their damage. However, since the ARD is in use by a ship with a higher priority setting, they are hitting a dead-end and not repairing at all. That's just my suspicion.

I also want to note that a Size 7 port can repair this Floatation/Engine damage on its own, however frequently the UI will display the X for Engine damage until a few points of it have been repaired - as if the ship is unable to completely repair at the port in question. This has always seemed like a UI error, but now I think it might be related. I will try to find an example in another port that does not also have an ARD working there and post it in this thread as well.

[Lokasenna]

Here is a picture of the CVs to demonstrate the "X" for them, and to show that this damage is supposed to be able to be repaired by a level 7 port.

The changes in the settings are what I am going to try on the turn moving forward to see if they accumulate any points. Note that I changed the LST back to High priority as well.

[Lokasenna]

Here is the view from Tracker on the LST. I changed the settings in the turn before loading into Tracker for turn 945, so that is why it appears as if no repairs happened to her on the previous turn...

But the ARD did work on her this turn, repairing 5 points of major floatation damage. So having the LST on Repair Ship and setting its priority above all other ships in the port does in fact work in making it use the ARD to repair the damage. If I have it on High, along with the 2 CVs on High, the repair estimate for the LST changes to 1 day which tells me that the ARD is not going to work on any ships this turn because more than 1 will be trying to use it.

[Lokasenna]

Here are the 2 CVs. In the history here, you can see that I was putting them in Repair Ship at times (and setting to High priority, while all other ships in port were on Normal) so that I could get their Major Floatation down to 5 or less so that the Port would do the rest of the work.

Once they were both down to that damage threshold, I changed them to Pier Side and I want them out of repairs ASAP so I changed priority to High. Knowing that whatever ship I wanted to use the ARD needed to be a higher repair priority, I changed the LST to Critical. Since then, no repairs have been done. There have been no changes in port level (no damage, no loss of naval support, etc.) during this time. They should have repaired a few more points of damage in the intervening 5 turns.

[Lokasenna]

Here is the save file from which all of these screens have been taken.

I really think this is related to the ARD being available to all ships in the port regardless of whether ships are set to Repair Ship (and the priority settings that seem to be necessary to force the ARD to repair a particular ship because of that).

[Lokasenna]

In the meantime, sub O19 has continued repairing as she should, presumably because she is set to Normal while the CVs are on High (and therefore seem to be trying to use the ARD that has already worked on the Critical-setting LST).

[Lokasenna]

Great! To confuse matters, I was looking for another ship repair bug I've found but haven't documented yet, and stumbled across this:



A while back, I had these 2 CVs repairing in the same port (still). One of them was set to High priority at Pier Side, and the other at Critical and Repair Ship. Both of them repaired, albeit System damage (so the "ARD" hadn't repaired any Floatation damage yet that turn).

I noticed that my "ARD" was repairing System - I have the quote marks there because I'm not confident that it was in fact the ARD doing the repairing despite having the ship(s) set to Repair Ship - so I put them back at Pier Side until the System was lower and the ARD would repair the floatation damage to 5 or less.

[Lokasenna]

The other bug which I've found and am searching for in-game documentation on is this:

When using an ARD, at times a ship seems to become "stuck" in terms of repair points. You can switch her to Pier Side to continue repairing damage that is not Floatation damage, but she won't receive any repairs and the Repair Estimate will jump to an absurd number of days: I remember seeing 727#, 768#, etc., for SMALL ships - subs, DDs, and CVEs. I "fixed" it by setting the ship to Readiness - she would begin accumulating repair points from being in Readiness mode (!), and then I would set back to Pier Side after the 3 day time period and get a more reasonable estimate in the 20s, 50s, or 80s for days.

Unlike the ARD/priority stuff I've documented above, I really have NFI what's going on with this one, which is part of why I haven't tried to document it yet.

Thus far today I've only been looking in one of my games. I think this bug may have been occurring in the other one more frequently, so I will look there shortly.

[BBfanboy]

I don't have Alfred's Repair Primer available right now, but I thought only smaller ships could repair the 1-5 major floatation damage at pierside (in a large port) or using an AR? A CV should need a drydock to repair any major floatation damage, but could repair minor float without a drydock.

[Lokasenna]

Next turn on the CVs:



They repaired nothing. No more points were accumulated on either CV. I think they are in Stuck Mode, like I described above, although with realistic days listed for the repair estimates.

The LST, however, continued to repair.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

I don't have Alfred's Repair Primer available right now, but I thought only smaller ships could repair the 1-5 major floatation damage at pierside (in a large port) or using an AR? A CV should need a drydock to repair any major floatation damage, but could repair minor float without a drydock.

A port of size 7 or above can repair up to 5 points of major floatation AND up to 5 points of major engine damage on any size of ship. I do it all the time. Literally all the time.

At smaller ports, you can repair major damage on smaller ships using an AR. I'm not very well-versed in the use of ARs for that purpose - I tend to send them to my size 7 ports to help with the big repairs. Something in my head is whispering that an AR can repair up to 5 points of major floatation damage at any port, as long the ship in question is assigned to Repair Ship? If that sketchy memory of mine is correct, then this part is irrelevant at a size 7 port, but they will still contribute to pierside repairs.

For example, I have used an AR at Midway to repair a couple of points of major damage on submarines as they return. It takes 1-2 days but means I don't have to send them to Pearl to fix the damage.

[BBfanboy]

Thanks for the feedback - you have seen it happen so it is just my memory being foggy again! So many things to remember about this game ....[:)]

[Lokasenna]

To the daily detriment of my war effort, I am going to experiment with those 2 CVs in the upcoming turn. I will turn both to Readiness mode to see if they begin accumulating points again, although at a lower rate than they would in Pier Side mode. If so, I will then move 1 of them back to Pier Side mode in the following turn to see if that "unsticks" the thing.

I still think this is related to that damn ARD code, where it is available to all ships in the port regardless of repair settings on individual ships.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

Thanks for the feedback - you have seen it happen so it is just my memory being foggy again! So many things to remember about this game ....[:)]

At this point, I've done about 2300 turns in PBEM plus about 2000 in AI games. I've looked at and played with ship repair settings tens of thousands of times between all of those turns. Figuring out systems and patterns is what I do, and this particular system has always been a bit off-kilter at times. But it's so complex that I wasn't able to find issues until recently - I had to learn and experience a lot of things in the game first.

[Lokasenna]

Found an example of what I'm calling "Stuck Mode" where there is an estimate of 700+ days:

I changed the ship to Readiness because she wasn't repairing. This is June 27, 1944. I'm going to go back and load up the turns prior to changing her to Readiness and record the repair points for each day.

[Lokasenna]

Here is the June 27, 1944 save from the above screenshot.

[Lokasenna]

Ah, I was incorrect - I noticed this issue far sooner than with this particular example with CVE Suwannee. I saw the 701# and changed her right away to Readiness instead of letting her languish without receiving repair points.

Here she is on July 3, 1944, still at Readiness mode.


I understand that the estimate is just an estimate and has no bearing on whether a ship receives repair points or not. I am looking at it in this case as a symptom of the ship not receiving any repair points.

[Lokasenna]

Then, as if by Uncle Sam's Birthday Magic, on July 4, 1944 I see this (which is finally a "real" repair estimate):



I don't know if this is caused by me having her in the Shipyard and taking her out once she had reached the 5-or-less floatation/engine damage threshold for pier side repairs, but I think maybe? I've only ever seen this happen when a ship has come out of the yard or out of an ARD.

Maybe it's related to that last point of minor engine damage finally being knocked off? The real repair estimate showed up on the day that all remaining engine/floatation damage was major, no minor points left.

Or maybe engine damage itself is just screwing with repair estimates - if there is both minor and major engine damage, it seems to show the white X and add a # symbol to the repair interface even if we as players know that the Port 7+ can repair the damage at Pier Side. Every ship I've seen the ridiculous 700+ days repair estimate on has had engine damage, possibly both minor and major.

[Lokasenna]

Next day on the 2 CVs. They gained no repair points while being set to Readiness, so both will remain there until they're returned to service and then I'll switch them back to Pier Side, where I anticipate they will begin gaining repair points... [8|]

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

Then, as if by Uncle Sam's Birthday Magic, on July 4, 1944 I see this (which is finally a "real" repair estimate):



I don't know if this is caused by me having her in the Shipyard and taking her out once she had reached the 5-or-less floatation/engine damage threshold for pier side repairs, but I think maybe? I've only ever seen this happen when a ship has come out of the yard or out of an ARD.

Maybe it's related to that last point of minor engine damage finally being knocked off? The real repair estimate showed up on the day that all remaining engine/floatation damage was major, no minor points left.

Or maybe engine damage itself is just screwing with repair estimates - if there is both minor and major engine damage, it seems to show the white X and add a # symbol to the repair interface even if we as players know that the Port 7+ can repair the damage at Pier Side. Every ship I've seen the ridiculous 700+ days repair estimate on has had engine damage, possibly both minor and major.

Don't know if it is relevant to this situation, but every time I remove a ship from shipyard repair while it still has some floatation or engine damage, there is a three-day period to get it back in operation. Could that bit of code be clashing with whatever else is going on?