I’ve been working on the future expansion/extra/dlc thing for GSB which will introduce mini campaigns, and have a slight design dilemma.
One of the main new elements of the campaign is that between battles, you can carry out drydock repairs to your surviving ships. So if a ship loses a beam laser entirely, you can entirely repair it for the next battle. Lost ships are lost, but ships at 1% can be repaired entirely, IF you have the cash/honor to do it.
So far, so good, I’ve been working on the UI for all this. However, it interferes with the way repair modules work. The idea of drydock is that you resupply everything, so repair modules are getting re-filled, and shields go back to maximum strength (assuming the shield modules survive).
The problem is, what happens to modules that were damaged slightly during battle, and the repair modules were fixing? If I let the battle run until the repair module runs out of supplies, any surviving ships will repair all of their vaguely intact modules. I can’t have a penalty for players who don’t want to sit and watch a progress bar rise after they won…
So that means that effectively, having a single repair module on a ship means all partial module damage is undone at the end of the battle, thus making repair modules more valuable than they currently are. This also gives the tribe a slight advantage, as they have frigate repair modules, and better ones anyway.
Possible solutions:
1) Deal with it. Repair modules are now more of a tactical option. Thats cool. The tribe have a bit of an advantage there, but that’s life.
2) Add supply limits to the campaign meaning supply modules aren’t available. This nerfs the tribe a bit.
3) Add some complex system, where in-battle repairs are jury-rigged temps that need to be re-done anyway at the drydock. This actually restores repair modules to be the ‘in-battle’ bonus they already are. However, they will then start doing those repairs of any un-repaired modules at the start of the next battle, which would seem very weird.
4) Add new code that automatically repairs all half-damaged modules anyway, regardless of repair modules. The lasting effect of battles is now just those modules that got totally destroyed, or ships that went bang.
Luckily I have a huge list of stuff to worry about before I need to make my mind up on this one :D