Repair Laser, give them some use in AP?

Midnightknight · Post by **Midnightknight** » Tue, 3. Dec 13, 01:03

Hi everyone,

It's sometime now i've been playing all X3 games and something keep bugging me a little, it is the complete lack of using this important feature.

I perfectly know it's not possible to get them ingame except from your spacesuit (i mean without modding or cheating) but new ships keep popping up with capacity to equip them again and again, so at somepoint egosoft still have in mind it could be usefull.

On AP since hull is much more strong than in previous games repairing a ship with your space suit take years (Who said like anything in X3 lol) and even putting 8 of them on the main gun of a Vali isn't really useful to repair anything bigger than a M3 ...

And things went worse when i flight a bit around in AP with the constant war, i found so many ships and stations with only 3% hull left i felt sad for them, unable to repair anything.

So i tryed a few things. First like i said i have a "nurse" vali equiped with them in main gun and battery put in defense missile, wich make of him a nice little battle field medic, but it don't want to heal allies even if i ask him to attack. On the other hand it attack pretty well ennemies with the repair laser and heal them (Yeah silly Vali!) and it made me thought it's almost working, but simply need some tweaking.

So this stated i was asking myself if it couldn't be possible to make 2 things.

First a combat command for ship and turrets "Heal dammaged ships" wich would check if you are equiped with repair laser and shoot at friendly dammaged ships/stations (Yeah cause you can't bring your stations to the neares shipyard)

Second put some missions asking you to repair dammaged stations

Saying this i'm aware of 2 big issues, when your fire at someone with repair lasers it turn hostile. So expect healing your own assets it's an issue.
Secondly if you make that repair laser don't put ships in hostile moods, caping aran would become quite harder.

So i was at somepoint checking how scripts work in X3 AP and change a few things to try and test but since there are many good people improving turret commands i was more likely to have their thoughs about that and if someone already tryied and stoped cause of things i'm not spoting so far.

(And if this thing work, why not try to make some use of tractor beam after that lol)

Kadatherion · Post by **Kadatherion** » Tue, 3. Dec 13, 01:23

Most of what you're talking about has already been done.

In XRM, for instance (plus it adds a new much more effective repair laser that consumes quantum tubes, and a dedicated repair pod/ship).

Another script you might want to look at is this: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=324170 , as it also adds a way to get repair lasers and Graxster's scripts to use them.

As for missions and a way to repair neutral ships/stations without them turning hostile, I seriously doubt it's feasible. Even if reaction routines concerning being fired upon aren't hardcoded (and I believe a good bunch is), it would need a major rewrite of some fight logic scripts: quite the effort (and compatibility nightmare) for such a niche feature.

P.S. There are several scripts making good use of the tractor beam too. For instance: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=229597

Midnightknight · Post by **Midnightknight** » Tue, 3. Dec 13, 02:21

Well i ve looked a bit to the mod you pointed and used it, the repair in sector is fun but you still don't have commands for turrets mounted with this that allow a little more startegy and fun like mounting on ship of your fleet with some on turrets and let it repair things on its own. But maybe with some tweak it can work.

And for the rep drop when firing with a repair laser, i don't know how it's done but i guess it should be possible to undo the rep drop if you do 0 dammage or less. But again, don't really know.

Kadatherion · Post by **Kadatherion** » Tue, 3. Dec 13, 03:25

Any rep drop could be easily addressed, but you can't really avoid the targeted ship from turning hostile. And you don't want a full PPC broadside in your face from someone you are supposed to be helping.
You could make it so the script continuously calls for a relation fix on the target, but that'd need to be on a VERY fast cycle and would probably still cause issues, as you'd keep breaking the scripted tasks supposed to be running on it.

This in... a universe where everything respawns anyway?

As for repairing turrets... what's the difference? The repair laser has a very short range, if you are implying you'd want a BIG ship to go around repairing the others with its turrets you'd need to increase the laser range A LOT to let it somewhat reliably work with the autopilot. At which point you'd have a ship magically repairing things 8 km away... which kills the point of using repair lasers instead of other much simpler solutions like marine repairs, ADS/CODEA mechanics etc.
You can simply order a dedicated small ship to repair all ships in sector and she will do it on its own while your fleet is otherwise engaged.

DrBullwinkle · Post by **DrBullwinkle** » Tue, 3. Dec 13, 04:11

Repair Ships Command

Post by **Cycrow** » Tue, 3. Dec 13, 17:16

the reason many ships can equip them is simply because they share a weapon slot with other types of weapons, like the tractor beam