Mechanics Useless?

[song of goose]

just got this game today and played for about 4 hours. Pretty fun so far.

The biggest issue I'm running into is that once your factory starts to get even medium sized, the insane rate of the durability decay on your machines takes a ton of fun out of playing this game. At a certain point it seems to me that the game stops being a manufacturing simulator and just turns into a big boring game of "whack-a-mole" where you are just panning back and forth between your different production lines and click-repairing machinery as fast as you can.

Also I have 6 mechanics and about 8 tool benches but they seem to be largely useless, I have only seen them repair something once or twice, but they seem to do it at complete random and mostly prefer to just wander around for their entire shift instead. Also, they never do any preventative maintenance, only repairing something when it has gone below 50% durability. Another thing is that having more mechanics doesn't seem to affect repair speed or magnitude, for example, it seems like having 6 mechanics isn't at all more effective than having 1 mechanic. They don't really do anything or repair equipment any faster.

Obviously I'm not posting this just to complain, for an early access game this is actually a lot of fun. Just wanted to provide my thoughts on what I found to be one of the weakest points of gameplay so far. I think the entire repair system needs to be reworked, with equipment decaying a lot slower mechanics being more important and perhaps eventually removing the "click-repair" feature entirely since it's just not engaging at all and detracts from immersion.

"What's that? Halfway through setting up your first ammunition assembly line? Looks like half your power generators just broke, better go click mindlessly for 3 minutes and then come back and forget what stage of a complicated assembly line you were just building!"

Early game is fun, mid-game is fun but starts to get tedious, and I don't even think I'll make it to late game because just the thought of all the time I'm going to have to spend "repair-clicking" my way to get there makes my head hurt. I'm almost 5 hours into a game called "Gun Smith" and I'm still nowhere close to even making my first gun.

New title Glove Smith?

[Shinzo - Ed]

The next update will have a much slower decay rate for machines, around 40-50%.

The mechanics do work properly but it really depends on the design of your factory, if they can't reach the machines or utilities they wont be able to fix them.

And also, you can setup patrols for mechanics so you can condense them where they would definitely be needed, the repair tool is only for emergency situations where you definitely don't want machine X to break.

Thanks for the suggestions, hopefully you'll continue to enjoy the game and reach items like TNT and pistols, and other guns. That is where the big $$$ is.

Have fun mate.

[song of goose]

Thanks for the response! Glad to hear about changes to durability decay.

Just as an experiment I made a save and spent all my money on recruiting mechanics. I have about 70 mechanics now and 30 or 40 tool benches, which should be overkill for a medium sized factory.

Still don't see much improvement and currently have about 20 machines below 50% (I stopped click repairing them just to see if the mechanics will actually do anything).

Maybe my factory design could be better, but everything is still easily accessible to repair and I have walkways built across most of the lines.

But I'm still seeing a dozen mechanics walk right past a badly damaged piece of equipment without doing anything (and yes they have tools). A mechanic will walk straight across the factory, crossing several walkways, right up to a damaged piece of equipment, only to cross his arms and walk all the way back to sit down and watch TV.

Maybe setting patrols will help with it, I haven't tried that feature yet.

[Three-Nuts Squirrel]

Setting patrols is mandatory. Also, think about mecanics resting, if you need two mecanics for one patrol line, you need one or two more to compensate the time spent while resting.

[song of goose]

Update for anyone new playing the game like me or anyone reading these forums thinking about buying the game.

The new update combined with using mechanic patrols solved my problem entirely. I'm having a lot of fun in the game now and the decay system acts much better. Machine durability is now something I'm always keeping an eye on, but no longer having to completely micromanage. With proper patrols and the new durability decay rate it is much more manageable.

Thanks to the Devs and to the more experienced players who took the time to respond to my post. Loving the game now.

[Shinzo - Ed]

Glad to hear it buddy :) Feedback is always welcome!

[Sweet Eagle Sweat of Democracy]

Hey! In my factories (occupied all almost all space) I used less than 10 benches. Set up patrols mate, it will help