[Bug?] Tribe cruiser repairs won't repair each other

Gratuitous Forum Support
1

Regular cruiser repair modules will repair each other (if not themselves). It seems like the new Tribes ones will not repair each other. I had a ship tooling around my back line with Cautious where the only damage remaining was to a repair module, which the other repair module was ignoring.

Not sure about the frigate ones. Frigates die so fast anyway. :-p

2

There is no difference between normal and tribe repair modules on that basis. Something that may add confusion is that they will not bother repairing another repair module if the target module has run out of repair supplies (because doing so is almost useless, apart from the HP boost). That might make it look like they are avoiding them in some cases.
(I know… in theory hey should then repair them if no other module is available, to get those precious HP. I hadn’t realised that until I started typing this…)

3

I’ve seen repair modules repairing each other.

One thing that was a little frustrating, was that I got an impression they were more eager to repair camoflage modules, than repair modules. This may not actually be the case, but just be from the frustration when I saw this happening, and see Tribe ships getting destroyed because they lost their repair modules very early in an engagement. Is there a priority system for which modules to repair? If so, at the moment it’s a pretty whacky order (i.e. sometimes it repairs power plants and crew modules, when weapons are damaged, even though those currently have no use whatsoever once battle is joined.)

I’d suggest priorities something like this:

  1. Shield modules associated with shields that are still up
  2. Armour
  3. Repair modules with supplies available
  4. Weapons
  5. Engines
  6. Other defensive modules (i.e. camoflage, the missile scanner)
  7. Other offensive modules (i.e. targetting computer)
  8. Everything else (crew, power plants, etc.)

The key being those top four - first priority is to keep the ship alive, then for it to be able to fire back, then all the modules with less dramatic effects. It’s quite frustrating seeing a ship with lots of HP lose all it’s repair modules, while busily attempting to repair systems which won’t help it at all.

4

That may have well been it. I can’t remember if the damaged one had any repair juice left.

Maybe “Cautious” just shouldn’t count damage to modules that have become useless (downed shields, empty repair devices) but that might not be very intuitive behavior…