Mech Repairs - Thoughts

[Coheed]

As I was outfitting a newly salvaged Mech at my local Industrial Hub, setting the work order and beginning my travels to the nearest conflict zone with the completion time slowly reducing, it struck me (not for the first time), that it's strange that work orders are completed all or nothing.

I.e. My current work order was scheduled to take 54 days, however if I cancel the work order with 1 day left the Mech will revert back to whatever state of ruin it was when i started the order. Rather than a 98% completed Mech with some minor armour repairs to complete.

Think it would have been a more dynamic system (potentially more realistic, but that's by-the-by), if each action was completed sequentially as time progressed (or in a specified order, though that might be a bit too granular). So if I really had to I could cancel a half or near complete work order to use the Mech at whatever state of partial repair it had achieved.

I realise this type of repair can be partially mimicked by generating a work order that only partially repairs a Mech, but it's a clunky way of doing this, and hard to estimate the actual repair time due to the conflict zone penalties without resorting to trial and error, plus often tricky to determine how long each mission takes if undertaking a multi-mission contract.

Just my thoughts on the topic.


Edit: After knowing I'd seen something like this, suddenly realised I'm thinking of the system in Highfleet, where repairs and modifications are performed sequentially prioritising structural and core systems over weapons with armour last.

[Stalectos]

best not to think too hard about repairs in this game. they break most rules of both logic and lore. for example why are repair costs entirely front loaded? are repair costs just the bill for materials? if so why can't you buy spare parts at an industrial hub and refit whenever you feel like it wherever you feel like it? if repair costs are just based on getting parts in why is there a repair time penalty for conflict zones when the front loaded nature of the actual monetary bill suggests you got the parts immediately? if you are getting parts for the repair over time why doesn't jumping away from that system affect your repair time or costs despite longer distance deliveries being harder and just sourcing stuff from whatever system you are in at the time makes more sense? if repair costs are based on labor why are technicians apparently fine with being removed from their home systems to fix your stuff? why would you need to hire technicians on site (and thus have to pay more in a conflict zone) when you have your own techs on staff?

then when we get to lore questions it all boils down to Fahad. your average tech crew in the battletech universe can last i checked fully repair a battlemech's armor within 24 hours the vast majority of the time which Fahad blatantly cannot do which would seem to make him a sub par tech. on the other hand repairing a mech that has gone critical is typically seen as difficult or impossible but as long as it showed up in the salvage list (or iirc if it was your mech in the first place as i don't think in vanilla you can lose a chassis permanently by getting it shot down) Fahad can get it back in working order given time and money which would suggest he is a god tier mechtech. the more you think about MW5 repairs the less they make sense as literally anything but a gameplay mechanic.

[Coheed]

Had all of these thoughts myself as well 😅 it's a strange system... Favourite example is Mech Markets with Mechs in such ridiculous states where it's basically just a cockpit or a chunk of torso.

Though regarding the armour repairs, this is why I use "Lore Style 1 Day Armor Repair" mod on Nexus, makes thing make a touch more sense at least.

And regarding cored Mechs, similarly the "Salvage V2" system of YAML also helps as you're notionally just collecting chunks of Mech to cobble together a whole Mech.

But that's just my personal preference 😊

[Bovril Brigadier]

Probably could code something in where you can do partial repairs but I wouldn't want to be the one to code it.

[George W. Kush]

i just use the enhanced salvage & repair mod dunno if its lore friendly or not but it does the job :)

[ErikRedbeard]

Originally posted by Strayed:

Probably could code something in where you can do partial repairs but I wouldn't want to be the one to code it.

YAML on it's own allows partial repairs. Just open Loadout and you can repair only specific parts by clicking the yellow wrench. (Might evenbe vanilla, but I don't remember)

Originally posted by Coheed:

...
Though regarding the armour repairs, this is why I use "Lore Style 1 Day Armor Repair" mod on Nexus, makes thing make a touch more sense at least.
...

Oh I didn't know that still worked on DLC4. Hence I ended up making my own mod for it and put it on the workshop.

[Cyzxxikz]

Originally posted by ErikRedbeard:

YAML on it's own allows partial repairs. Just open Loadout and you can repair only specific parts by clicking the yellow wrench. (Might evenbe vanilla, but I don't remember)

It's that way in vanilla too, but... the OP already addressed this, and why It's not what he's looking for

Originally posted by Coheed:

Think it would have been a more dynamic system (potentially more realistic, but that's by-the-by), if each action was completed sequentially as time progressed (or in a specified order, though that might be a bit too granular). So if I really had to I could cancel a half or near complete work order to use the Mech at whatever state of partial repair it had achieved.

I realise this type of repair can be partially mimicked by generating a work order that only partially repairs a Mech, but it's a clunky way of doing this, and hard to estimate the actual repair time due to the conflict zone penalties without resorting to trial and error, plus often tricky to determine how long each mission takes if undertaking a multi-mission contract.

[Coheed]

Originally posted by ErikRedbeard:

Originally posted by Strayed:

Probably could code something in where you can do partial repairs but I wouldn't want to be the one to code it.

YAML on it's own allows partial repairs. Just open Loadout and you can repair only specific parts by clicking the yellow wrench. (Might evenbe vanilla, but I don't remember)

Originally posted by Coheed:

...
Though regarding the armour repairs, this is why I use "Lore Style 1 Day Armor Repair" mod on Nexus, makes thing make a touch more sense at least.
...

Oh I didn't know that still worked on DLC4. Hence I ended up making my own mod for it and put it on the workshop.

Yup that mod still works, I even combine it with "Field Repairs" with Lore Style Armor overriding to have both increased structure repair time and reduced armour repair time. The glory of mods, such potential for variation 😊

[Frizbee]

Originally posted by Coheed:

As I was outfitting a newly salvaged Mech at my local Industrial Hub, setting the work order and beginning my travels to the nearest conflict zone with the completion time slowly reducing, it struck me (not for the first time), that it's strange that work orders are completed all or nothing.

I.e. My current work order was scheduled to take 54 days, however if I cancel the work order with 1 day left the Mech will revert back to whatever state of ruin it was when i started the order. Rather than a 98% completed Mech with some minor armour repairs to complete.

Think it would have been a more dynamic system (potentially more realistic, but that's by-the-by), if each action was completed sequentially as time progressed (or in a specified order, though that might be a bit too granular). So if I really had to I could cancel a half or near complete work order to use the Mech at whatever state of partial repair it had achieved.

I realise this type of repair can be partially mimicked by generating a work order that only partially repairs a Mech, but it's a clunky way of doing this, and hard to estimate the actual repair time due to the conflict zone penalties without resorting to trial and error, plus often tricky to determine how long each mission takes if undertaking a multi-mission contract.

Just my thoughts on the topic.


Edit: After knowing I'd seen something like this, suddenly realised I'm thinking of the system in Highfleet, where repairs and modifications are performed sequentially prioritising structural and core systems over weapons with armour last.

That was the worst part about some of the DLC campaigns, where you had different timers between missions. Some gave plenty of time to repair, rearm, reequip and heal between missions. But others were like "Here's 7 days between the last massive battle, and the final battle which is twice as hard. Good luck repairing any of your assault mechs that at minimum require 8 days, and at most 90 to repair."


Personally, I'd like to see the repair system work more on the basis of, you can assign the manpower and resources you'd like for each mech. The more you assign, the greater the cost, but the faster it'll be done - at the expense of other mechs. (And dependent upon having the resources to do the repairs, or being in a system to support the repair work.)

So if you have a critical mech you have to have repaired in a few days, you can do so, (providing you're in the right system, or have a huge transport ship) you'll just be left without other repairs done. And you'll have to have the spare parts available, or be in a built-up system with the infrastructure to support getting the parts.


And then also be able to assign the focus of the repairs. Do you want to leave the armour, and just replace the damaged components and weapons? Do you want to repair the armour, but leave the core damaged?

Then, if you cancel repair work early, you could have a stage of those repairs done (ie. "we were only able to replace armour on 60% of the mech, sorry boss.") or even randomly periods where you can't cancel a repair because they come back with "Sorry boss, we're midway through replacing this hip joint. If we give it to you now, she'd shoot, but she wouldn't be moving anywhere."