Mechanic on duty?

[South Buffalo Buzz]

Let's say I have two ships. One is an Eagle, and one is the beginner Antonov. The Antonov carries a crew of 4. The Eagle carries 6. So I hire an extra mechanic for the Eagle.

Now, let's say I've taken the Eagle out on a dive and banged it up. So I dock it, repair it, and it has a number of days for the repairs to finish. Rather than sit around the hotel myself, I take the Antonov out on a dive while the Eagle gets patched up. Keeping up the income stream.

The question is - since that extra mechanic is sitting around in Enchilada enjoying wine, women, song on my dime - does he assist in the repairs to the Eagle while I'm out on the dive? In other words, is he a dead-weight salary sucker, or is he actually useful while the Eagle is in the repair bay?

[ImHelping]

As a guy who trained up only one mechanic from nothing to master, and recently started training up a second mechanic from nothing for giggles.

Dockside, it still takes double digit hours per repair on a mere beam mining laser, and still multiple hours per RCS thruster repair tick. (Which I mostly only spam to train my ♥♥♥♥♥♥ 2nd mechanic faster...)

So at a glance it appears multiple mechanics are worthless for any time saving whatsoever. Best guess for use would be two ♥♥♥♥♥♥ mechanics could stack to 100% repair capability while you work them up to able to solo that job.

Also, leaving them at home has done nothing that I can tell. But I generally try to repair ships before switching between my collection instead of leaving them in progress due to glitchy "The repair counter says 23 hours for the last five days I have tried staying at a hotel... wait can I just leave-mother ♥♥♥♥♥♥!" stuff on occasions that I could swear was a bug I never saw until I got a second mechanic.

The potential main use seems to be if the jury rig efficiency stacking DURING a trip. But I am suspecting there are hard caps in place to stop that from being better than a single master mechanic anyways.

*was a lot of words that amounted to "Hey wait a minute. if I disable the expert understudy I don't lose stats, if I disable the master I lose stats... for EVERY job. oh my god, is there a deliberately low ceiling to make crew stacking literally worthless" *


So yeah. Multiple mechanics seem worthless on the station unless you wanted to stack two ♥♥♥♥♥♥ mechanics/two overpriced mid tier mechanics together to reach 100% repairs early.

Mechanic at least has the benefit of being the only crew type that does not have every stat shredded if you leave them at home. The dock repair value remains, even if jury rig is shredded if you leave with no mechanic.

Maybe the whole point of extra crew is praying for Wacky Traits and "oops sending them out to recover a ship got them maimed how realistic." backups, in which case you are losing more time and money than not bothering with sending crew to salvage in person anyways.

Because the whole reason I started buying spares was hoping to save TIME. But looks like wasting your time is mandatory. No faster repair times. No longer destination memory. Seems a safe bet no faster ore identification either, if Master+expert isn't any better for distance than just the master. (Pilots are so useless that I keep my single master on staff out of pity, and turn off the adrenaline device when we leave. "Wow great job we sure would not have evaded that or known we might have hit it without you." )

[Solanix]

Not really. A non-active mechanic still provides his repair skill to you (so you don't need to swap to your repair mech whenever you return home), but repair skill only determines the maximum condition that you can repair at. It has no impact on repair speed or costs.

Skills don't stack either, it uses whoever is best at whatever skill. So if you want to have access to both maxed out skill eventually, then you'll need, for example, one mechanic focused on repair and another one focused on jury-rigging.

I find that there's very little reason to repair most things beyond 90% integrity, heck, with a decent jury-jigger I only repair enough to pass the pre-flight check with very few exceptions.

There's one good thing about a 100% repair mechanic though. Since gear with 5% damage loose something like half of their value, it can be profitable to fully repair *certain* parts before selling or swapping. If you're willing to do a little math, you can often buy used damaged ships, fix the good parts, then sell it back at a profit (doubly so if you happen to have a surplus of insurance).

[ImHelping]

The "Well, maybe with salvage you can flip ships for slightly more?" idea is great on PAPER.

In practice I am just reminded of learning after the Nth time my master grade crew said "Derelict, honest" was pirates that had not spawned so far from a lifepod I can't find it...

That the rescue type TNTRL's "it is a sidegrade, not bad on purpose!" cargo hold can only exactly fit one life pod, barely. RNG upon RNG for an actual derelict + "Can't even rescue more than two lifepods at once, one in the hold, one in the hand" *Big wolf docking makes you lose grip on rescued pod in hand* ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Also even cheap parts have ruinous repair times. I went back to beam mining lasers for sevral reasons. and even dirt heap repairs (like, two hundred credits or something?) are still sixteen hours per click! And the closer to 100 you get, the less it wants to finish the job. per click with a master mechanic. "From 80s to 94, nice...96... 98... 99... still 99 are you serious."

So to try and repair a banged up "actually brought home a derelict" before selling it will shred your calendar time compared to just offloading it. Not even getting into parts that cost more to repair a single click worth than replace because "realism".

"Wow how come all of these stations are down to 30 days or less before IgForget they exist I thought my timer was 119 days and some hours...oh right."

Overall crew chat also makes me wonder if the fact a titan has TWELVE crew slots is just a scam hoping you waste money on duplicate crew. Or a desperate bandaid on "Aw ♥♥♥♥ half this content isn't even allowed unless you have the right hidden trait on crew. Quick, let them bring a dozen people hoping they get lucky with plot triggers!"

[Koder]

Originally posted by ImHelping:

Also even cheap parts have ruinous repair times. I went back to beam mining lasers for sevral reasons. and even dirt heap repairs (like, two hundred credits or something?) are still sixteen hours per click! And the closer to 100 you get, the less it wants to finish the job. per click with a master mechanic. "From 80s to 94, nice...96... 98... 99... still 99 are you serious."

If you buy a ruined vintage car and decide to restore it to its factory condition, it's going to take a lot of time and money. It's usually much cheaper to just buy a new one. Or, perhaps, stop at "this is good enough" somewhere along the way.

[ImHelping]

Originally posted by Koder:

Originally posted by ImHelping:

Also even cheap parts have ruinous repair times. I went back to beam mining lasers for sevral reasons. and even dirt heap repairs (like, two hundred credits or something?) are still sixteen hours per click! And the closer to 100 you get, the less it wants to finish the job. per click with a master mechanic. "From 80s to 94, nice...96... 98... 99... still 99 are you serious."

If you buy a ruined vintage car and decide to restore it to its factory condition, it's going to take a lot of time and money. It's usually much cheaper to just buy a new one. Or, perhaps, stop at "this is good enough" somewhere along the way.

See, this just drives home the fact how even a brand new freshly bought part dropping down to 99% still taking over half a day for a single click worth of repairs is absurd. Even coming home with fresh parts, barely used, no battle damage. 1% wear oh my god, a vintage car of Sisyphus.

And then, to top if all of. A second highly trained mechanic being worth nothing in making that any faster. Yeah, fixing a car with a friend goes faster than doing it alone, unless they just stand there laughing at you about how they are refusing to help.

So the "well you are trying to repair a rusty junker! Or just not being lazy enough to leave it close enough!" comparison is in really bad faith. And just rubs it in how videogamey it is.

Which remind me of my recent realization the Voyager MPU, when it seemed to not be working, also needs a lot of platinum to replace nanos or ammo, which I had not found after 10k iron that time... and most of the nanos I needed to replace, were from having to collect low value iron as a Voyager MPU ingredient.

Scams upon scams. I bought a voyager MPU hoping it might overall save time (after all, the damn thing costs 1.5 million) but turns out it was not my imagination gains over time were worse than just having weaker mineral processing efficiency cheaper MPU alone. Oh my god I was going to try and use it to fuel maintenance drones, that would have sucked.

[Koder]

Originally posted by ImHelping:

See, this just drives home the fact how even a brand new freshly bought part dropping down to 99% still taking over half a day for a single click worth of repairs is absurd.

It seems there might be some misunderstandings in your description or perhaps different perspectives at play. In the game, your mechanic will stop you from repairing a part that is cheaper to replace at that point. Repairing parts, much like in reality, can have diminishing efficiency as they approach optimal condition.

While your desire to restore used parts to mint condition is understandable, choosing to do so through repairs might be not an optimal approach. The choice between repairing your ship or just replacing worn-out parts is there to present a range of strategic choices for players to engage with. If you're encountering challenges, it could be beneficial to explore the alternative approach.

Your MPU tangent seems to not be on-topic for this particular discussion.

[South Buffalo Buzz]

Tangent off topic. That's a fact.

The question was, does a mechanic add any value when I leave him at Enceladus along with a ship, or ships, under repair? Yes or no question. A treatise on car repair isn't getting me that answer. It may be in there somewhere but I can't find it in all the tangents and long-form tax returns. I *think* what I'm reading is that he *doesn't* speed up the repairs *at all* under any conditions. SO WHY am I paying him?

[ImHelping]

Originally posted by South Buffalo Buzz:

Tangent off topic. That's a fact.

The question was, does a mechanic add any value when I leave him at Enceladus along with a ship, or ships, under repair? Yes or no question. A treatise on car repair isn't getting me that answer. It may be in there somewhere but I can't find it in all the tangents and long-form tax returns. I *think* what I'm reading is that he *doesn't* speed up the repairs *at all* under any conditions. SO WHY am I paying him?

So you have a mechanic when your first one suddenly demands to have a vacation.
Or if you are trying your luck sending people to restart reactors on derelicts and of course they explode so you need a spare while they are in the hospital.
Or are praying your second mechanic has a secret trait to allow you to experience content, which you can't if they are at home.

Basically, entirely for "RNG ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ insurance" the 6 crew slots on most eagles or the 12 crew slots on a titan are basically to show off "Look how much salary money I am wasting for no benefit!" otherwise.

It is not the least bit realistic. It isn't even challenging. Just disappointing.

[Solanix]

Originally posted by South Buffalo Buzz:

Tangent off topic. That's a fact.

The question was, does a mechanic add any value when I leave him at Enceladus along with a ship, or ships, under repair? Yes or no question. A treatise on car repair isn't getting me that answer. It may be in there somewhere but I can't find it in all the tangents and long-form tax returns. I *think* what I'm reading is that he *doesn't* speed up the repairs *at all* under any conditions. SO WHY am I paying him?

No.

With no mechanics you can only repair up to 71%.

With a mechanic, this limit is raised depending on the one with the highest skill in repair, doesn't matter if he stays on the station, or joins on your next trip, or fire him after you ordered the repairs.

[South Buffalo Buzz]

Solanix, thanks for a definitive answer. A rare thing these days.

[Setimu]

This one guy (not OP) is rage ranting in every single thread on every single topic, unhappy with seemingly every aspect of the game. It makes me wonder why he doesn't find a different game that fits what he's looking for rather than ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ up every single thread in the forums.

[South Buffalo Buzz]

He doesn't have $$ for other games - this one is only, what, eight bucks on Steam.