Hull and Armor Maintenance Bots have seen very little use lately due to the abundance of stations & structures in most areas of space, as well as the superior speed of remote rep modules. I suggest giving them an extra nudge to make them worth always having at least one of by doing the following:
Maintenance bots can now perform maintenance on other drones while both are inside of a drone bay.
Maintenance bots will restore HP to fellow drones inside of drone bays at 1/2 their normal rate, due to the extra effort to navigate around the target to damaged areas while in a drone bay compared to in space.
Maintenance bots will restore HP to the least damaged drone first in order to get them back to 100% and ready for redeployment. They will then make their way down the list from least damaged to most damaged until all drones are fully repaired (with their respective HP maintenance type).
It is still possible to deploy maintenance bots into space to make full use of their repair amounts and to repair other targets that cannot enter your drone bay.
(OPTIONAL DUE TO BALANCE CONCERNS) Once all drones in the drone bay are fully repaired, maintenance bots will begin any needed repairs on the host ship itself, but at 1/10 of normal speed due to the repairs being performed internally without easy access to all areas of the ship. (Yep, we’re looking at our own R2-D2 fixing us up )
Due to the nature of shield energy transfer being simpler than armor and hull repairs, shield maintenance bots can operate at 100% repair value on other drones inside of the drone bay, and at 1/4 value while restoring shields to the host ship (this accounts for shield tanks being arguably weaker than armor tanks, and allows for quick shield restoration for drone users that pull drones at low shields and quickly redeploy them once shields have regenerated)
If this becomes too powerful, it can be changed such that only the “strongest” (repair amount) bot of each HP category (shield, armor, hull) can be active while inside of the drone bay, or alternatively, the amounts themselves can be converted to a regenerative buff with diminishing returns in the same style of module diminishing returns (first does 100% amount, 2nd does 87%, 3rd does 50%, 4th does 20%, etc.)
inside the drone bay ? not … but if you want to repair them then you can launch the damaged drone and the repaid drone and let them do their work !
so you dont need to do anything ? its an automatic repair system ? → no … repair your stuff by checking the HP by yourself an then give a command !
nice then i fill all my drone bays with T2 repair drones and i have another repair bonus ! … → no … stupid idea for obvious reasons still if the repair is only 1/10 !
no … same reason like above … afk repair is bad !
you just want a solution of your lazyness … does not work ! play active and you can repair your drones like you want
you can still deploy them and repair with them to take full advantage of their repair values if you wish
it’s indeed automatic (albeit slower than normal) because repair drones are so rarely used at the moment, due to rarely being worth the bandwidth/bay volume compared to simply bringing extra combat drones and repairing at a nearby station if they take damage
as i said, it’s optional in case it is too powerful, but at 1/10 hull/armor restoration rate on drones, it should be almost negligible even with an entire bay filled with such drones (rep drones are already very slow)
it’s not about lazyness, it’s about the item/drone not being useful enough atm and being mostly neglected by the playerbase. afaik most people only use them as logi pilots or in WH space. this would make them WORTH having with you. the reason they would work automatically in your drone bay is to give them PvE combat viability, since logi drones will get targeted fast by rats (rats hate logi). it’s still a very slow repair rate either way, but it does make sense to be able to perform such repairs while in warp, while fielding a full flight of 5 combat drones, or even while cloaked. this is a reason to actually USE them, not an attempt to be lazy.
I agree about the E-war drones, most of them are pretty worthless. the values on heavy ones are OK at best, but they’re still not worth using over a combat drone in most cases. I’d like to see the E-war drones get the ability to damage for around half the dps of standard combat drones of their size in order to make them somewhat viable, or just increase the numbers on the e-war drones’ abilities to be meaningful.
And you’re just objectively wrong by saying that every automated system is bad. There are plenty of examples in a plethora of games, EVE included, where automated systems have greatly improved the gameplay experience. Lowering risk isn’t even a factor in this case, unless you mean the risk of losing a single repair drone because it’s not out in space… but those are super cheap to replace anyways.
Repairing your own ship through conventional means only doesn’t exist due to the game engine’s inability to target lock yourself, so the passive repair while they’re in the drone bay would be the next best thing. I’m assuming they could make self-locking a thing, but it would likely break many other systems in the process and cause more trouble than it’s worth.
id be happy if they would just keep up with the ship they’re repairing, so i don’t have to repeatedly order them to repair over and over every 10 seconds
)