Auton Bay not showing devices and other auton bugs/comments

[Transcendi]

• Installed devices don't show up at all when using the auton bay (this applies to the aegis auton as well).
• If you have multiple weapons installed only the most recently installed will show up.
• There is no way to remove devices or weapons.
• You can't install a particle beam weapon on the 1M battle auton due to reactor power even though the auton originally had a particle beam weapon.
• You can install a combination of equipment with total power consumption far exceeding the auton's reactor power.
• It would be nice to be able to see an auton's devices in detail like you can your ship's devices instead of having to try and remember whether or not Blast Plate is better than Advanced Plasteel and how many hp it has.
• You can heal your autons back to 50% damaged if they go over that by swapping some ultra light titanium plate in and out.
• Autons sometimes seem quite reluctant to break off attacks, I presume they start to return then encounter other enemies along the way?
• The balancing fire rate limitation of autons is easily circumvented by using naturally slow fire rate weapons.

[Song]

That armor-swap exploit is a new one (the rest I think have all been reported before. I've ranted about autons often enough that most will have been at least).


Since I'm working on fixing autons with mods until vanilla catches up to it, I'd be very interested in how that one works in order to try a patch. How exactly does it work? Does any armor swap work for healing the auton?

[sun1404]

I guess if you equip a damaged armor on an auton, it'll be 50% damaged. So if you have a 70% damaged auton, swap in a cheap armor and then put the damaged one back, and it'll become 50% damaged again.

On second thought, does this work on player ships as well?

[Song]

I don't think you can install damaged armor on playerships. Not entirely sure.

In any case it should be a pretty simple fix: have removing armor destroy it if it's too badly damaged and/or block installation of damaged armor.

[sun1404]

You can install damaged armors on your ship, and yes, critically damaged armors (when you get the 'Hull breach imminent' message) will be destroyed upon being replaced.

[FourFire]

The "damaged" tag doesn't contain the hitpoints of a piece of armor, so, when a damaged piece of armor is installed on a playership (and presumably other ships) it defaults to 50% damaged.

Critically damaged armor (less than 25% hp, I think) will not be recovered upon displacement.

[sun1404]

I think critical damage is at about 10%. 25% is where my armors are usually at after a fight.

[PM]

Armor is considered irreparable (by shops) when it is damaged to 25% or less. Removing such a heavily damaged segment destroys it automatically. Thus, it is a good idea to use repair kits or armor repair devices to heal armor to above 25% before removing it.

[sun1404]

So Octocarbide would be irreparable at 100 hp?

[PM]

Yes, shops cannot repair octocarbide at 100 hp or less, and replacing the segment will destroy it. Remember, there are ways to repair armor even at 0 hp. Player should be swimming in armor repair kits (which can repair anything, including neutronium armor) looted from the numerous Ranx gunships encountered by the time he sees octocarbide.