Do a stations repair drones NOT repair the station?

[Midnitewolf]

I have a defense platform with 70 Repair drones assigned to it and its hull health isn't even budging upward between attacks. In fact it is slowly being whittled down even though I have massive firepower between it and the huge fleet guarding it. They are only sending small stuff through, nothing lasts longer than a few seconds. Surely 70 repair drones should be able to keep up with that.

Edit: I looked it up on the Loadout and it says I have 90 repair drones but none are active. How the hell do you activation repair drones on your station?

[dtpsprt]

As far as I know it takes money for the repair drones to work(!!!) try giving some to the station's Manager. And yes... the world will be a better place when the last Manager is hanged by the intestines of the last incompetent ship captain!!!

[MHDriver]

Repair drones are Union workers so there are far too many exceptions to actually doing work to list.

[Midnitewolf]

It might be one bugged station to be honest because I have seen drones active at other stations, however I can't even be sure about that because I have another station I have seen drones active at, listing no active drones when it is down to 95% hull. You would think anytime the station lost HP, it would trigger the drones to active to repair the damage. Maybe there is a threshold or something but then again, you would think a station down to 64% health would be prioritizing having as many repair drones active at once.

Here is a curious question. Could it be that stations won't send out repair drones if it is actively under attack and that there is some sort of time limit on how long it has been since the last attack before it will trigger the repair drones?

I only ask because the only station I am having issues with is the one under nearly a constant stream of attacks by the Xenon. They keep sending 1 or 2 fighter at it every 10 seconds or so. They last long enough to get off a shot or two at the station and are what is slowly whittling it down.

Thinking about it, I could honestly see Egosoft intentionally designing it this way because lets face it, you could build a Death Star at a gate that no amount of ships can get through, which if I have to be honest, is kind of what I am attempting. Maybe it is designed like this so that no matter how large and powerful a station, eventually the AI can wear it down by throwing a couple fighters at it every few seconds, to prevent being able to completely lock down a gate.

Honestly it makes sense that it would work like this however the problem is, we have no insight into if this is the case or not and without knowing it would just appear to be another frustrating bug, one that almost had me delete the game last night.

[Midnitewolf]

Whelp I think my guess about what was going on is actually on the money.

The Xenon finally ran out of ships to throw at my station and guess what? Yep my drone finally came out to repair and it seems to be working correctly now.

Really somewhere there should be easy to find documentation noting this characteristic because I thought it was a bug and I spent hours trying to figure out why the hell my drone wouldn't repair my station. If I had know there apparently is some kind of enforced delay on repair due to an attack rather then them just immediately repairing, I wouldn't have been so frustrated with the game I almost quit last night <sigh>.


Anyway, I guess I have to look at the positive side of things. I learned a a lot about building a defensive station like how you need to have multiple docks on them and that they should be hidden and protected as possible. My station design has the Terran 4m10s dock in the center as a hub and the Xenon always target that section first and despite the dock only having a capacity of 20 for drones, when they manage to take out that module, I lose vast amount of drones. First time, I lost 97 defense drones and about 20 Repair drones. Next attack took out 40+ more repair drones. The last destruction of my dock has left me only 37 drones out of 90 to start with.

So my new defense platform has 6 docks and it isn't that easy to target them from any one given angle.

[Wraith_Magus]

I'm not sure it's about timing or not being under attack.

I see repair drones come out all the time when I'm attacking someone else. Attacking a SCA plunderer Phoenix? Repair drones come out when I've shot out the engines and turrets. Attacking a Xenon solar power plant? Repair drones come out as I shoot it up. If my own destroyer takes hull damage? Repair drones pop out and start flying directly into my windshield or directly in front of my guns without doing anything right alongside the cargo drones doing the same thing until I just destroy them in frustration. (Thanks for that, Egosoft!)

I think all drones besides maybe combat drones are just really glitchy if you aren't OOS.

[Midnitewolf]

I'm not sure it's about timing or not being under attack.

I see repair drones come out all the time when I'm attacking someone else. Attacking a SCA plunderer Phoenix? Repair drones come out when I've shot out the engines and turrets. Attacking a Xenon solar power plant? Repair drones come out as I shoot it up. If my own destroyer takes hull damage? Repair drones pop out and start flying directly into my windshield or directly in front of my guns without doing anything right alongside the cargo drones doing the same thing until I just destroy them in frustration. (Thanks for that, Egosoft!)

I think all drones besides maybe combat drones are just really glitchy if you aren't OOS.

I think it has to do with stations specifically and that ships don't have the same behavior. I am not sure about the OOS thing because I didn't even notice that the repair drones weren't working until I came back to the station to see it at only 64% health and falling. I mean it is all guesswork but so far I have only notice the repair drones working on my stations if a significant amount of time has passed since it was last damaged. That being said, now that they are working, I am not watching things like a hawk either so it could be just confirmation bias on my part.

[Wraith_Magus]

I think it has to do with stations specifically and that ships don't have the same behavior. I am not sure about the OOS thing because I didn't even notice that the repair drones weren't working until I came back to the station to see it at only 64% health and falling. I mean it is all guesswork but so far I have only notice the repair drones working on my stations if a significant amount of time has passed since it was last damaged. That being said, now that they are working, I am not watching things like a hawk either so it could be just confirmation bias on my part.

One of the other things I've noticed, however, is that stations have a TON of hull and repair drones are pretty weak. A destroyer left alone with 4 repair drones will wind up repairing half its hull over the course of an hour, if my casual observations were correct. Destroyers have pitifully fragile hulls in this game because destroyer weapons are barely any more powerful than corvette ones, trying to cut down the gameplay differences ships of other sizes had in older games, so it may just be that even 70 drones take several hours to repair 30% station hull, while the sporadic attacks were able to counter those repairs. (There may also be a limit on how many drones can be effective at once, limiting the usefulness of just spamming repair drones.)

[Midnitewolf]

I think it has to do with stations specifically and that ships don't have the same behavior. I am not sure about the OOS thing because I didn't even notice that the repair drones weren't working until I came back to the station to see it at only 64% health and falling. I mean it is all guesswork but so far I have only notice the repair drones working on my stations if a significant amount of time has passed since it was last damaged. That being said, now that they are working, I am not watching things like a hawk either so it could be just confirmation bias on my part.

One of the other things I've noticed, however, is that stations have a TON of hull and repair drones are pretty weak. A destroyer left alone with 4 repair drones will wind up repairing half its hull over the course of an hour, if my casual observations were correct. Destroyers have pitifully fragile hulls in this game because destroyer weapons are barely any more powerful than corvette ones, trying to cut down the gameplay differences ships of other sizes had in older games, so it may just be that even 70 drones take several hours to repair 30% station hull, while the sporadic attacks were able to counter those repairs. (There may also be a limit on how many drones can be effective at once, limiting the usefulness of just spamming repair drones.)

I actually thought about this but if you go to the loadout screen, you can actually see exactly how many of what type of drone is active at any given time. I sat there watching for like 20-30 minutes and not once did a single repair drone activate. I could see cargo and defense drones activating on and off but no repair drones. Go back to another platform under less pressure from attacks and I could always see the repair drones activating on and off.

Also, It doesn't seem that there is a limit because I have platforms with 100 repair drones on them and when it needs a repair, all 100 activate. Now I don't know if there are diminishing returns or if 10 are just as effective as 100 but all 100 do become active.

Finally the only different between the two stations I was observing was one was under a constant stream of attacks with at least a few fighters popping through every 15-20 seconds. The other was taking attacks but it could be 2-3 minutes before anything popped though. Only the one that was under less pressure repaired itself. Also, as soon as the Xenon gave up or ran out of ships and the pace of attack slowed on the station that wasn't repairing itself, it started to repair itself. This is why I think there might be a built in timeout, kind of like how shields only recharge after they haven't be shot at and depleted for a brief time. Again, no clue if this is real or perceived on my part, rather it is just what appears to be happening.

[Malchar]

hi

Have you hull parts, nanobots/claytronic and energy cells remaining in your construction warehaouse ?