Crew Slots AUTO SEEK Repair Work

[WingalingDragon 219]

Two things to establish quickly:

 

1) With automatic repair turned off, destroyed and damaged vehicles will remain in that state until whatever repair work needs to occur has had enough time to pass.  

 

2) All vehicles repair for free already, even when not assigned to crews.  Crews who are trained on that vehicle can enhance the speed of this process IF (and only if) that vehicle is currently assigned to the crew.  

 

This is the already existing alternative to automatic repair of vehicles.  It is a pretty amazing system overall.  The system, however, is not perfect.  There are several pitfalls which would, otherwise, make this a brilliant and mutually beneficial system for everyone (including Gaijin).

 

***TL;DR

 

My proposition is that any idle crew would seek to contribute their repair skill to any vehicle that they are trained on.  This includes stacking crew skills into one vehicle.***

 

The priority of the crew would ALWAYS be to its assigned vehicle first and foremost. This gives players ultimate control over where the crews perform their work. However, once the assigned vehicle is in a state of readiness... the idle crew would automatically search for the next vehicle they are trained on and begin to work on that vehicle (even if it is just sitting in the tech tree not assigned to any crew).  This prevents the player from *having* to micromanage the process (which can occur over the course of several days).

 

If the vehicle they are trained on is already being worked upon by another crew... the new crew would simply join them and begin to enhance the repair speed with diminishing return values (similar to using several RP boosters at once makes each booster slightly less effective).

 

This creates a MAJOR incentive for players to train their vehicles to several crews and, in turn, creates a massive new sink to the SL economy (which incentives Gaijin to do it by creating massive demand for SL influxes).  It essentially becomes an investment that players can decide upon for each vehicle.  Put a bunch of SL into training crews to a vehicle you plan to play a lot in order to save SL in the long run?  Or... leave the vehicle trained on only one crew and endure the extra repair time because you don't play it all that often?  The choice would be yours.  

 

It, furthermore, creates HUGE demand for extra crew slots... which, again, would be a major win for Gaijin to be able to sell them.  

 

This also alleviates a MAJOR headache for a large portion of the userbase... the economy and repair cost in general.  Free repair is a wonderful feature... but it is incredibly inefficient with some vehicles, especially in higher tiers.  This can create a sense of futility and frustration.  

 

Oftentimes you'll spend a day playing warthunder, damaging a ton of vehicles... and moving on to play other vehicles (a desirable playstyle that Gaijin encourages to help spread the playerbase over a wider area of BR).  But each time you swap vehicles off your crew... it only repairs at the default values.  If you leave three vehicles on a destroyed state, the crew that is trained on them can only repair the one vehicle they are currently assigned to.

 

Imagine... as a hypothetical example, that you run a car repair shop.  As the manager of this shop, you tell your employees which car to fix based upon customer priority.   While your staff works on the vehicle you told them to... the other customer's cars are sitting just outside the shop, awaiting repairs.  You go to leave for the day, after working the morning shift... leaving your staff to finish out their evening shift.  While you are gone, your staff finishes working on the car in the shop, the one you assigned to them.  You would think, since they still have hours left in their working day... they would go to fetch one of the other cars awaiting repairs, right?  But nope... they just stand around staring at each other because you aren't there to physically micromanage the process.  This would be non-sensical, but it is how it currently works in WarThunder.  

 

Your crew KNOWS that the vehicle is dead... your crew KNOWS how to fix it... your crew is not doing ANYTHING else... but they just stand around staring at each other...because you are not there to physically micromanage them by swapping the crew into the dead vehicle.  This is what I want to change.  

 

Players knowing that their account is repairing things in a semi-efficient manner can help to assuage their frustrations and encourage them to develop more variety in their playstyles (again, a good thing for Gaijin by spreading out players through the MatchMaker)

 

I believe this would be a win-win scenario for the playerbase and Gaijin alike.  

 

I'd love to hear your thoughts and concerns!  Thanks for reading.  

 

o7

 

Edited July 24 by WingalingDragon
Spelling/grammar errors

[Headnaught 159]

Approved and open for discussion.

[The_Tea_Rex 669]

On 24/07/2022 at 07:49, WingalingDragon said:

My proposition is that any idle crew would seek to contribute their repair skill to any vehicle that they are trained on.  This includes stacking crew skills into one vehicle

 

Absolutely, 100% this. As you mentioned the free repair mechanic is heavily underutilized, which is really just a sign of its age. When the system was first put into its current state there were waaaaay less vehicles in the game, so it wasn't as much of an issue. Now on the other hand it is in desperate need of a re-vamp.

 

This is a very, very good suggestion.

[TitaniumWorm 1]

YES!

 

We all have had an issue where we have accidentally left a repaired vehicle in the line up instead of a damaged one. An even WORSE example is when you have a damaged vehicle in a line up but accidentally log off with a different line up selected (that DOSEN’T have the damaged vehicle in it).

 

I 100% approve this suggestion.

[Subatomizer 1]

I liked the idea but i don't think Gaijin would add this feature.

[Dodo_Dud 4,558]

Crews should auto pick the vehicle they can fix up in the least time.

 

[WingalingDragon 219]

4 hours ago, Subatomizer said:

I liked the idea but i don't think Gaijin would add this feature.

I address the mutual benefit to both company and player in the post.  

 

It is important that you take time to explain how it is beneficial to Gaijin, if you want to be taken seriously.  

 

In a nutshell... this is good for their bottom line for a very simple reason... people are terrible at planning ahead for the future.  

 

Due to the amazing efficiency available from crews working constantly, players would be encouraged to train their vehicles on multiple crews.  This can get expensive QUICK.  So players must budget themselves and try to decide which vehicles are most worth their investments. 

 

Since people are bad at that, a lot of them will screw it up.  Since it is an investment for the long term... this will immediately create a new SL bottleneck where people over commit to vehicles they actually don't play all that often.  

 

Players who wish to commit heavily toward a specific vehicle, even if it is a wise choice, will feel an innate pressure to purchase SL in order to make their investment as large as possible as soon as possible.  This all plays right into people's natural tendencies toward immediate gratification. 

 

While all of that is going on... the match maker will enjoy a SURGE of variety in different BRs and vehicle types.  Players will feel much more free to bounce around brackets and game modes in order to make best use of whatever investments they've made in crew training.   The ideal way to play becomes playing as many of the vehicles you own within a day, instead of spamming the same one over and over.  

 

Not only does Gaijin get a new SL bottleneck, and increased MM efficiency... but they also assuage a TON of community frustration toward the economy. 

 

Players will feel much better about poor games and bad deaths.  Playing to repair instead of paying to repair is one of the simplest ways to change your mindset toward the game and relieve it of a LOT of toxicity.  When you play to die, so you can move onto the next vehicle... you become more focused on having fun and winning the game instead of playing some conservative meta and farming kills (such as toxic spawn camping despite your team not owning a single objective)

 

This would be a massive win for Gaijin all around... making their money, decreasing wait times for MM, and cleaning up the community... all in one fell swoop.

 

You gotta look at the bigger picture with something like this, and once you evaluate it... it becomes quite clear... it would be fiscally irresponsible for Gaijin NOT to implement this idea. 

4 hours ago, Dodo_Dud said:

Crews should auto pick the vehicle they can fix up in the least time.

 

I would be down for that. 

 

Basically a "bottom - up approach".

 

If you have four dead tanks, the crew would check the time to repair for each of the four.

 

It would start with the one it can fix in 15 minutes 

 

Then it would move onto the tank that takes 15 hours.

 

Then it would start on the tank that takes 15 days, and so on.  

[Dodo_Dud 4,558]

When I had this idea myself, I also thought about distribution algorithms. After a while, I realized that while nice, they hardly matter. The idea is mainly beneficial to lower ranks. With repair times of minutes to hours, crews will be able to fix several low tier vehicles in one night, even if they are not very efficient at managing the loadout. Once you reach several days of repair time, you can manually interfere anyway.

 

So you can burn through your entire T1 arsenal as well as much of lower T2 and still have it all fixed the next time you log in.

Edited Friday at 15:36 by Dodo_Dud

[WingalingDragon 219]

8 hours ago, Dodo_Dud said:

When I had this idea myself, I also thought about distribution algorithms. After a while, I realized that while nice, they hardly matter. The idea is mainly beneficial to lower ranks. With repair times of minutes to hours, crews will be able to fix several low tier vehicles in one night, even if they are not very efficient at managing the loadout. Once you reach several days of repair time, you can manually interfere anyway.

 

So you can burn through your entire T1 arsenal as well as much of lower T2 and still have it all fixed the next time you log in.

Keep in mind, it is not about fully repairing vehicles. 

 

Simply allowing vehicles to repair for any amount of time is beneficial. 

 

It reduces the cost to repair it the rest of the way if you let some progress be made while you are idle.

 

Example:  it cost 10K to fully repair a dead tank.  It also takes four days to repair for free. 

 

If you only let it repair for 1 day, and you have 3 days remaining in repair time... the tank is now 25% cheaper to "top off" and only costs 7500 SL instead of 10K.

 

Being able to do this to a wider array of vehicles will dramatically promote more variety in people's gameplay; which, is good for the match maker and game health in general.  

[Mk_III 1]

+1 love the idea 

[Dodo_Dud 4,558]

4 hours ago, WingalingDragon said:

Keep in mind, it is not about fully repairing vehicles.

For everything under 24 hours repair time, it is.

[BleedingUranium@live 1,382]

Excellent suggestion, I'd love to see this implemented.