Please tell me campaign damage is not repaired instantly!

[dougsmithuk]

Love the demo and looking forward to the game.  But two issues are putting me off it so far.  Could someone confirm if its possible to get this fixed for the retail release?

 

1. At the moment, if you win a battle (even barely) you win and all your ships are fully repaired and ready to move straight onto the next planet. Imagine how this will work if you have a HUGE fleet of capital ships. You could simply barely win each battle, get fully repaired instantly and move onto the next system whilst the defender has to replace the units.

 

Is this the same in the full release or have they fixed it. I reckon it would be much better if your ships had to visit a system with a space station to get repaired. Much like in the Rome Total War campaign. Any damage taken to your armies is carried forward to the next battle meaning you cant conquer the whole place with just one army as sooner or later you need to take a breather and get troops back.

 

I hope in the full game your ships dont get repaired straight away. Or if they do repair themselves automatically, it takes a while do so and not just one turn. This will at least give the defender a chance to counter attack and reclaim the planet as they know the enemy is damaged. Just seems to make sense to me!!

 

2. Also, why dont fighters class as combat units? I lost all my ships and had one corvette left. It was almost dead and the enemy had a load of fighters left pounding me. Only a few seconds left and I would have lost, but I killed the last main unit and WON!! The fighters magically disappeared!! It should at least have been a draw - but preferably once the fighters are launched at least let the battle finish properly!!!

[Mistrider]

1. I don't really have any opinion, good and bad to it being set this way.

 

2. For the rebels, fighters do count. They are stronger than the Imp fighters, and cost pop points. The imperial fighters don't count, as they are weaker and mass produced(the Empire is all about quantity over quality). Also, the imperial fighters have no hyperdrive, so their only choice once all the caps ships are gone is surrender or die.

[dougsmithuk]

1. You should worry about this point.  If all ships are automatically repaired INSTANTLY - im not worried about over a few days or whatever - then people could attack you, get really damaged and warp out.  Then instantly warp back again to attack as they would be fully repaired!  Would be a bit tedious im sure you'd agree.

 

2. Point taken

[rogueace127]

1. That would really suck. When you win a battle, you should have the option to repair your units in the galactic map, and have to spend credits and time on it. This would allow the other side to mount a counter-attack while your forces are weak and would add another layer of strategic depth to the gameplay. Hope they change it in the actual game.

 

2. Maybe it was a heavy frigate, and you had it on full weapons power. I dunno.

[SirNuke]

A couple of things:

 

There is time limit to retreat.  If you have really low health units, it is very likely that they will still be wiped out.  And your ships aren't all going to take damange evenly.  A good player concentrates his fire on specific ships.

 

The defending player's fleets also heals instantly.

 

Movement (between planets) is a lot slower than in the demo.

 

While your uberfleet is taking planet after planet (space wise), you are probably leaving gapping holes in your defense.

[Gen.Vader]

2. you were fighting in the asteroids map no? had you destroyed the space station? you prolly have, the thing is is that with the starting fleet (Victory,bombers axccalamators) one you beat them you win the engagement along with destruction of stations. But the station pops out fighters/bombvbers constantly, so you were prolly fighting alll/most of the "freebie" fighters.

[shadowsfm]

dont need to kill ties or bombers to win

[Darth Tyrant]

 

I hope in the full game your ships dont get repaired straight away. Or if they do repair themselves automatically, it takes a while do so and not just one turn. This will at least give the defender a chance to counter attack and reclaim the planet as they know the enemy is damaged. Just seems to make sense to me!!

 

 

I agree with this, ships should have a time period to repair themselves in order to attack another planet.

[Relentless]

You have to remember that if you put together one grand invasion army, you'll have to leave less units to your other planets. The number of units you can build is determined by how much infastructure you have. So if you decide to try to conquer the galaxy with just one fleet, the tactic will backfire on you. Remember that the Galactic level is real-time, so the enemy can go for your weaker planets in no time. The mass-army-tactic is very easily countered.

[dougsmithuk]

If ships are instantly repaired you reckon anyone will get a chance to move on the galactic map?  It will just be instant battle after instant battle after instant battle as the one with the biggest fleet moves across loads of planets wiping out ships.  You wont have much chance to do anything on the galacitic map before he moves the fleet on again and another battle starts pausing the map!  If damage was present at least you could take a break from the fighting to get stuff sorted whilst they repair.... Or if instant repairs cost money then they would eventually have to stop to earn more before continuing...  Either way repairs shouldnt be free and instant

[Naja]

If ships are instantly repaired you reckon anyone will get a chance to move on the galactic map?  It will just be instant battle after instant battle after instant battle as the one with the biggest fleet moves across loads of planets wiping out ships.  You wont have much chance to do anything on the galacitic map before he moves the fleet on again and another battle starts pausing the map!  If damage was present at least you could take a break from the fighting to get stuff sorted whilst they repair.... Or if instant repairs cost money then they would eventually have to stop to earn more before continuing...  Either way repairs shouldnt be free and instant

 

I absolutely agree. Having damage remain after battles would be a chief way in which the Rebels could harass the Empire by persistant (though weak and irritating) battles fought on their terms. Think of a cloud of mosquitos biting someone so frequently that he succumbs to anemia. 

[dougsmithuk]

Been doing a search of the forum and discovered that ships DO get repaired automatically after each battle.  "Delphi-PG" confirmed this in the post, but dodged the question about if they repair instantly or over time.  Everyone seemed to think the instant repair feature was a bad idea, so im guessing that he dodged the question because repairs ARE instant.  There goes the strategy element of the game.  Not pre-ordering as originally planned now until I see if this is moddable into the final game.  Seems its made for kids or a console with such a simplistic campaign. 

 

http://pff.swrebellion.com/index.php?topic=1217.0

 

Plus when chewie captures a unit, it regains FULL health during a battle!!  Take the AT-AT down to near zero health, capture it and VOILA its back to full health!!

 

These are all small things that should be easily fixed, but they mean a lot to me as I'm not a console player

Edited January 21, 2006 by dougsmithuk

[Grand Admiral Thrawn 889]

the game is made for everyone and the Demo was made for quick easy play they speed the build time up for us and the AT-AT regaining health is a glitch i suspect but in reply to the orginal post. 2. If you don't like the fact that they can spawn TIE's i was suprised by that but i found it's simple to counter you just take out the Shield Generator and then the Hanger Bay ignore the Ships and take the Station First then take the Acclamator then the Victory use Corellian Corvettes to take the TIE's out and use the bombers to hit the prestated hard points.

[Darthscharnhorst2]

I bet the decision had a lot to do with AI coding.  In strategy games like Hearts of Iron II there are parameters set up which require the AI to leave damaged ships in port long enough to repair in stead of seeking death.  I have a feeling that the devs decided their time could be best spent elsewhere over developing this feature.  I am hoping that enough people complain, clamor for its inclusion to warrent its addition in a future patch *yeah right* or expansion *bigger possibility*.  The people behind Rome Total War added a lot of *game* features to their expansion, some specifically, like scripting, to aid the modding community.  Heres hoping that Petro can do the same.

[rogueace127]

Been doing a search of the forum and discovered that ships DO get repaired automatically after each battle.  "Delphi-PG" confirmed this in the post, but dodged the question about if they repair instantly or over time.  Everyone seemed to think the instant repair feature was a bad idea, so im guessing that he dodged the question because repairs ARE instant.  There goes the strategy element of the game.  Not pre-ordering as originally planned now until I see if this is moddable into the final game.  Seems its made for kids or a console with such a simplistic campaign. 

 

http://pff.swrebellion.com/index.php?topic=1217.0

 

Plus when chewie captures a unit, it regains FULL health during a battle!!  Take the AT-AT down to near zero health, capture it and VOILA its back to full health!!

 

These are all small things that should be easily fixed, but they mean a lot to me as I'm not a console player

 

Well, Delphi's reaction pretty much confirmed the instant repair thing.

 

Its a really bad idea for ships to instantly repair after a battle, since that's the only way the Rebellion is able to hurt the Empire, by executing hit-and-runs and forcing them to waste time and resources to repair their units. But since that's out the window, I guess the only way to balance it is for the Rebels to be stronger, as the threads saying "Rebel troops are stronger than stormtroopers!!!" seem to believe.

 

But thanks for doing the research anyways.

[Guest JediIgor]

It's kind of sad you know. Men have to go through rigorous training on the planet of Carida before they are able to enlist the ranks of the Emperor's Finest (aka stormtroopers). Whereas the rebel "army" is a bunch of rag-tag criminals and smugglers. The only reason they were such "bad" shots in the movie because Luke+Leia were strong in the Force .

[Teradyn_pff]

The situation with the stormtroopers' bad shots on the Death Star is because they were letting the rebels go.  They didn't seem to miss that much on the Tantive IV, you know?

[Relentless]

If ships are instantly repaired you reckon anyone will get a chance to move on the galactic map?  It will just be instant battle after instant battle after instant battle as the one with the biggest fleet moves across loads of planets wiping out ships.  You wont have much chance to do anything on the galacitic map before he moves the fleet on again and another battle starts pausing the map!  If damage was present at least you could take a break from the fighting to get stuff sorted whilst they repair.... Or if instant repairs cost money then they would eventually have to stop to earn more before continuing...  Either way repairs shouldnt be free and instant

 

Seriously, how long do you expect to be able to play like that? Since you can't amass an indestructable army, because of the reason I already stated in my earlier comment, you can't use that tactic for long. You'll just lose most of your ships in the battles and lose most of the planets you own when the enemy decides to go for the weaker planets. To say that instant repairing removes the strategy of the game is foolish.

[jedi mike]

well it does remove a little stragety in the demo i would go up agenst my enemy and the ships that were about one shot away from being destroyed i moved them away form combat destroyed my enemy then 2 seconds later i attacked another planet bam those ships that were crippled were brand new so i think its a small problem but being able to bring reinforcements balances it out i think alot of people will try to do this because it seems people like the blitzkrieg attack

[Delphi-PG]

Everyone seemed to think the instant repair feature was a bad idea, so im guessing that he dodged the question because repairs ARE instant.  There goes the strategy element of the game.  Not pre-ordering as originally planned now until I see if this is moddable into the final game.

 

 

Ehh, now I could see if the game was simply push a button and watch battles, but ehh? the system works really well in the final game, and I stand by the creative director and lead on this one. Honestly, it's not that bad.

 

???

[rogueace127]

Delphi, could you tell us why you guys decided to make repairs free and instant? I'm not complaining or criticizing or anything, but I would like to know Petroglyph's reasoning behind it. 

[Delphi-PG]

Focus tests. Most of the feedback pointed out that waiting to repair ships just drug the game on and on.  I do agree, it was not very fun. 

 

If you would rather we penalize you and pull out large chunks of cash from your resource pool and decomission ships temporarily, than it is something we might revisit.

[Telstarin]

Personally, I like the system the way it is, but I think people would calm down more if you were to inform them that this can be modded into the game.

 

I would not know if something such as repairs would be hardcoded into the game or accessible through data files, though.

[Ghostly_Substance]

Seeing how heroes get healed and how vehicles get healed is perfect the way it is  ;D Boba Fett didn't die in 10 seconds but flew away and got himself healed and then started attacking me again and flew away.

 

Han Solo somehow got himself badly injured, sent him to the bacta and got healed in 3 seconds. What a way to make heroes annoying  ;D Fun fun. I can imagine Obi-Wan getting near death then get healed and be annoying again AT-AT healing within a minute or 2 sure is also realistic. I agree it does drag the battle but its the suspense that brings fear into people at "What the heck is he/she up to"

[rogueace127]

Ah, thanks for clearing that up.

 

However, I dont' believe having to manually repair units is "penalizing" the player. It seems that we would have to repair our ships after a major battle, as it is an essential part of a galactic commander's strategy. It forces them to carefully consider how they spend their credits, as they ask themselves, "Should I repair my fleet before attacking my next target, or should I save the resources to build new ships, using my damaged ships as the 'clean-up' fleet?"

 

Let's say the winner chooses to repair his ships. This would give the loser a fighting chance. While the winner repairs his fleet, it would buy time for the loser to rebuild his ships, as his fleet would undoubtedly be in shambles at the end of the battle. However, if the repairs are instant, then the winner would immediately set out to conquer the next planet, while the loser won't have any time to rebuild his fleets. As the war between the two progresses, it would become increasingly one-sided, as the initial winner's armies become more and more powerful, while the initial loser becomes weaker and weaker.

 

Also, hit and run tactics is the main form of warfare for the Rebellion. Any rebel player has to jump in unexpectedly, strike hard and fast, and then hit the retreat button before the Imperials can retaliate. The goal of these guerrilla tactics is not to destroy the enemy, but to hurt the enemy. It forces the Imperials to waste valuable time and money to repair ships (once again, the Imperial player must decide if he should repair the fleet or not). But if the Imperials get free and instant repairs, it defeats the whole purpose of hit-and-runs.

 

It's true that manually rebuilding the fleets would take longer, but it would help balance the power between the two sides. Also, if you use the Rebellion system of having ships at a space station repair much faster, it could speed up the game.

 

I hope you would take my thoughts into account and maybe revisit the repair system. And thanks again for all your efforts into creating this game.