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I started a new game as the Ikkuro (Wookies), their special tech got me wondering. Is it a viable strategy to pack armor and robotic repair units on your ships rather than relying much on shields (maybe one unit just to help them get in close)?

If it works it would save a ton on fuel I'd imagine, which means fewer refueling trips (or more weapons ), though at the cost of possibly having to sit around after battles for a bit self-repairing.

Has anyone tried anything like this yet?

yes, and indeed you need to wait after a battle for the ships to self repair
but I also rely on shields as well, don't want to be caught in a stormy gas cloud and have my repair units repair armor before or during the next battle

there is also the classic distinction that shields regenarate while the repair units will never repair the armor as fast as a shield regeneration....not sure if this still aplies here, I take this from MOO2 where you had 4 shields (one on each side of the ship) and you could rotate so that the depleated shield could have time to recharge while another one took the pounding.

Is it only the Ikkuro who can repair components with their damage control unit? Does the "standard" one only mitigate damage that gets past shields/armour?

Everybody can have repair droids. They come after the damage control units in tech-tree. Ikkuros just have special droids like Kiadians have special ECM, Sluken special engines, Zenox special shields etc. etc.

One caution, if I may. i believe only one repair unit can 'be active' on a ship at a time. So multiple repair bots won't increase repair speed. However, multiple repair components wiill, if the ship is badly damaged, increase the possibiblity that at least one of the repair bots will survive...

yes, elanaahova is correct...it's a design feature for this game that many components do not stack and can be stacked only for redundancy and backup
i like this feature for repair units, it prevents you from having the ultimate invulnerable ship....which many other games allow, really a game breaker (even my all time favourite, MOO2, had this)

I know all races have the repair bot, I'm just trying to find a way to leverage the the advantage of the Ikkuro's special bot.

I created two fleets of 3 destroyer and 3 frigates each.  The first I followed my usual shield happy design, the other I went with about 40 units of armor and one shield for environmental hazards mainly. 


What I thought the difference would be:
I figured my armor heavy fleet would work under sort of a damage threshold system, being they would negate/repair damage up to a point, being nigh invincible before that point.  Once they start receiving damage per second in excess of that point however, it would get very grim, very fast.

What the Difference turned out to be:
They were massacred.  And their build/maintenance costs were twice as high as my regular fleet, though, they did use less fuel/energy.


So at the end of the day, I'm starting to think maybe this Ikkuro tech is worthless, under normal shield focused fleets, it only comes into play once shields are down.  When shields are down in a battle, it pretty much means game over for that ship whether they can repair themselves or not, the enemy isn't going to stop shooting, the ship is just slightly delaying the inevitable.

The only time it really has any worth so far as I can tell is in the rare small skirmish where two enemies meet, and your ship just barely beats the other.  Now rather then having to repair him, he can repair himself.

I'm struggling to see any reason for researching and using armor/repair bots over just getting better and more shields.  Which kinda sucks for the Ikkuro as their race advantage, if relied on, really just seems like a disadvantage.

Unless I'm just designing them poorly...[&:]

Edit: And in fact they don't even seem to repair properly, several months after a battle, one destroyer with 19 damaged components and another with 5, no change. Neither repair bot is damaged.

What I thought the difference would be:
I figured my armor heavy fleet would work under sort of a damage threshold system, being they would negate/repair damage up to a point, being nigh invincible before that point. Once they start receiving damage per second in excess of that point however, it would get very grim, very fast.

That threshold does exist, it's just at the fighter/missile level. Like you found out found out anything else tears through it like a bag of leaves.

But I agree, going armor over shields just doesn't work, it's way too expensive and takes way too many resources to work. I have a feeling that that armor isn't even supposed to be viable at all, since ships constantly try to repair themselves at spaceports when their components or armor are damaged (even if they have repair bots) and you have to click on things like a maniac to keep them from retreating.

I'm struggling to see any reason for researching and using armor/repair bots over just getting better and more shields.

As far as I know there really isn't, armor's good against missiles, fighters and those space scorpion things, but that's about it.

IMO this game could use a shield piercing weapon or weapon mod, seems like an interesting way to make armor worth the research. Either that or the reactive rating needs to be doubled so that the damage threshold you were talking about is around blaster level.

i think the latter is better as shield piercing weapons can also lead us to armor piercing ones

it could also use a way to track how much armor you have left

agreed on this to, currently you have to check the components on the ship to see the damaged armor....not very handy in a tight spot

Armor also slows down your ship a whole bunch which means it is easier to hit, etc.
 
On the ships which weren't repaired did they also have their reactors destroyed?  I believe repair bots require energy to work.
 
[font="times new roman"]Repair bots work the best on large ships.  I would however love it if the private sector used repair bots.  It might reduce the huge number of damaged ships floating around. [/font] 

Their reactors are fine, it looks like the only damaged components are armor, maybe the bots just don't repair armor? Kinda lame given how underpowered it is

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

Commandernarrin: I think repair bots CAN be used in the private sector, IF you add them to the design of transport / passenger / mining ships, and obsolete any designs of that class that don't use the bots.

I'm curious, you wrote that you have many civvy wrecks all over the place. I don't experience that in my games, generally. Do you design your civvies with max warp speed, and decent acceleration, and turning? It might be useful to us all to compare our various designs for civ ships?

BTW, armor does have some effectiveness against fighters.

Repair bots can be used by the public sector.  The problem is that as soon as you do a mass upgrade to add new tech the repair bots disappear from the design.

I don't design my civvys as I like to mass upgrade and the edit function doesn't seem to work correctly.  Not that I would do it anyway as I'm more then happy to let them run automatically.  

My damaged civvys are mostly the result of area effect weapons used by other races.   I doubt most players even notice the number as they are buried amongst their other civvy ships and you can not sort by them. 

Simple solutions,
1) Have repair bots added to the civvy design automatically
2) Make civvy repair ships which go around automatically repairing civvy ships/bases
3) Allow you sort and scrap them
4) Add a button to the lower left hand window which allows you to click through them to easily send repair ships

I think 2 is the best solution, with 1 working too after you have researched the tech because both happend automatically.  The currect method of fixing them is very time consuming as you have to look over hundred of civvy ships find one and send repair ship, rinse and repeat for each one.   

if you put constructor ships on auto they will (among other things, indeed) go and repair them automatically....no need for you to identify them

It appears to be a very low priority for them as I'm running a small map with 16 automated construstors, have stations all of the place and still have a bunch of unrepaired civvys.
 
I also tend to leave my construstor side bar open and I've only seen them repair a civvy once.

in the expansion there is a que repair button, so you can be sure they will get there as soon as they are done with whatever they are doing at the time

ya, but you still need to locate the ship that needs repairs and this was one of his initial complaints