Matrix Games Forums

Yes, it is a chore finding the ships in need of repair. I use the window in the lower left corner of the screen, and click thru the ships. The image will show a wreck image if the ship is bad off. And, when the civ is first damaged, a message comes up, "ship needs repair, yada..."

*** It would be nice if the ship / base menu screens (top of monitor) had more filters. *** Havn't tried it, but, perhaps, the set of buttons along the left middle of the screen might allow user to cycle thru the ships quicker?

I don't use the auto update on ship design - is this where you are wishing the AI did a better job?

no, putting the ship on auto once it's out there is the setting in question
the auto upgrade is another story [:)]

ORIGINAL: Data
i just checked the pedia on the assumption that they indeed repair only internal systems and not armor (like in MOO2 for example) but have not found a definitive answer in there....it should be easy to test, since you don't see them repairing the armor I suspect that they don't

They definitely repair armor.

Repair bots have always worked fine for me, not sure why it's going wrong for Abraxis.

thanks, unclean, good to know that for sure

Weird, were you using the special Ikkuro repair bots? I let both these ships sit around for months and the repair bots definitely weren't damaged. I can't think of any other factor other then maybe the Ikkuro bots are bugged, unless you were using them too... I'll have to play around with them a bit more. If they weren't working at all maybe I need to re-do the experiment.

Edit: Okay, apparently I am on crack or something. I just loaded the file again, thinking maybe it wasn't working cause they were low on fuel (in the red). I refueled them and they started repairing. Then I got mad and reloaded again because that didn't make sense (they still had energy and some fuel after all).
I sent one ship into deep space (where I'd watched them last time [months before this] when nothing happened) and left the other in the star system. Both started repairing. So I don't even know what to say, I wrote that comment above well before I made this save and the number of damaged components is the same up there as upon loading it. Yet right after loading they begin to repair.

Perhaps I've angered a higher power or I've gone mad...

I any case, the rate at which they repair still seems too slow to be useful in combat

Unless it has been changed in the expansion, armor do soak some of the damage it receive before getting damaged. At higher tech levels, armor can soak a lot of damage and makes the lower tech weapons unable to dent it, and reduce incoming fire by a lot. For armor to be viable as the main defense though, it needs to be of a pretty high level, low level armor will just allow your ships to take a few more hits before internals takes damage. Not sure, but i think damage control does make armor more effective as damage received gets reduced.

afaik damage control applies to internal systems only, not armor