Discussion on Ship Repair

[Slamz]

Let's talk about ship hull repairs:

* Number dropped by NPC warships does not seem to scale with size. 5th rates seem to carry the same amount as 7th rates.
* You need to carry a large number of them to repair a warship. I clicked to repair my Indefatigable last night and used 29 kits for what I thought was a fairly modest amount of damage. So to be able to stay out on the seas for 4 fights I should probably bring 120 kits with me? I frown at the amount of cargo space this requires.
* They are expensive. I expect it to cost more to repair at sea than to repair in port but I think the goal should be for it to be 2-3x more expensive. Right now I think it's closer to 10x (more or less depending on if you are making your own kits or buying them at market prices).

I would like to be able to go out on the sea and fight a dozen NPC battles, repairing after each one, and not have to have over half my cargo hold consist of just hull repairs whose total market value is pretty close to the market value of my ship.

It's a risk anyway to carry so many repair kits but I think the current numbers are out of whack and overly pushes people to return to port after every fight.

Returning to port should be cheaper and safer but not by this much.

 

Off-the-cuff suggestion:

Make hull repairs repair 4x the current value per kit. (So in battle repair does the same amount of repair but uses 1/4th as many kits as now.) Leave everything else the same and see how that feels. This would mean that if I put 100 kits in my Indefatigable I could expect to do a good dozen battles before I need to return to port for more.

[Captiva]

I usually carry the same amount of hull repairs as Hodo, however, it takes almost all of the 15 repairs to put your ship into fighting shape after a long battle.

I agree with Slamz in that a player is more likely going to return to port after each battle due to the expense of repairing at sea. It would be nice if you could get at least two battles while at sea out of those 15 or 16 hull repairs. 

[Slamz]

16 minutes ago, Hodo said:

I rarely carry more than 15 hull repairs and 15 rig repairs on my ships.  And I never use them out of battle, because I dont have control over the amount used.

Yeah that's fine for PvP -- really just enough to do an in-battle repair or after-combat fixup without risking too much -- but when it comes to port flipping grinds that's not a useful amount of repair and it's a p.i.t.a. to return to port after every fight.

[Slamz]

4 minutes ago, Hodo said:

I like to setup a temporary outpost near the front, place a 60-100 hull repairs there and go and operate in the target area.

Yeah but that doesn't address the fact that you are returning to port on a regular basis.

That's not very fun if you are trying to flip a port and need to do many, many PvE battles in the area.

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

It is always a matter of planning the cruises once the forward base is setup - be it a conquest platform or a raiding have, doesn't matter much.

Knowing how many repairs per cycle and how many cycles one intends to use in any give cruise - objective well defined - does make a huge difference.

Hostility cruise is full non stop combat in its nature so one expects to do at least 1 repair cycle per NPC battle and keep a reserve of 3 for any chance counter-hostility PvP situation. So a lot of repairs if you don't want to return to port and you make long gaming sessions.

Plus the board is level for both sides in a PvP situation. Both can repair. Both sides holds are relative to their amount of repairs per cycle.

And yes, people are selling them quite expensive.

A smart trader will undercut them all by a fair margin and sell thousands in an instant leaving them all greed gits to dry.

 

[maturin]

There should be some way to access the hold of a store ship sailing with the RvR fleet.

[ajffighter86]

3 minutes ago, maturin said:

There should be some way to access the hold of a store ship sailing with the RvR fleet.

YES.

[ajffighter86]

Quote

* Number dropped by NPC warships does not seem to scale with size. 5th rates seem to carry the same amount as 7th rates.

I would support making hull repairs slightly easier to craft or perhaps your idea of requiring less hull repairs in battle before we go about increasing drop rate from NPCs.

Not really a fan of NPC-farming for needs. I'd focus more on encouraging crafting but you're right, the gains from using hull repairs are not all that great compared to dipping back into port immediately if you plan to do much PVP. Try half as many first, then 4x.

Edited June 5, 2017 by ajffighter86

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

50 is 5 repair cycles for a Endymion if i'm not mistaken.

[ajffighter86]

2 minutes ago, Hodo said:

You can craft 50 at a minimum at a time.  How much easier can you get?

I should have been more elaborate:

If hull repair drops scale with NPC-ship size, you're going to see people farming NPC's for hull repairs rather than crafting them, and if the choice is one or the other, crafting for needs should always take priority over relying on drops. That's the only thing that concerned me about where Slamz was going with this. For the most part I agree and think it would be worth trying (in baby steps, don't want to over-buff things in a hotfix and cause more problems).

 

[ajffighter86]

1 minute ago, The Red Duke said:

50 is 5 repair cycles for a Endymion if i'm not mistaken.

In battle yes.

If you get your ship absolutely wrecked in a battle and try to repair on the OW, 50 will barely be enough. It happened to one of our guys outside Bermuda so that pretty much ended the expedition for him. There's no friendly port to dip back into and repair. "GG", lol

However, we would be willing to load up a gros venture full of hull repairs and send it along with the fleet, *if* there was a way to transfer cargo in battle between friendly ships. As maturin says, it would be nice to see that feature added.

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

Ah yes, think the system always try to repair the maximum on the OW.

[ajffighter86]

4 minutes ago, The Red Duke said:

Ah yes, think the system always try to repair the maximum on the OW.

It does. The guy clicked it and he was done for the day. Took something like 40 hull repairs to get his Indy back to 100%.

Of course we would have shared ours with him if it were possible to trade in battle or in the OW.

Edited June 5, 2017 by ajffighter86

[Slamz]

1 hour ago, ajffighter86 said:

It does. The guy clicked it and he was done for the day. Took something like 40 hull repairs to get his Indy back to 100%.

Yes, this is the #1 problem.

When we're grinding contention we have to hit whatever we can and this will get our ships beat up and we will need literally hundreds of repair kits on-hand (with hundreds more likely stored in the nearest available base).

CLICK-cost is about 488 per unit by our count so a night out on the town grinding for contention may easily run us 150,000 or more each and is taking up a lot of our hold space. Double or triple that cost if you're having to buy them at market prices!

I would just like to see it be more realistic (economically and in terms of hold space) to go out grinding without having to carry such a horde of valuable repairs.

The current numbers don't look at bad for PvP or "one and done" mission running but for sustained open sea grinding it's a pointless hassle.