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[BobExplains]

There's a rather illogical game mechanic where destroyed ships will drop copious amounts of metal filling up your cargo holds but even if your Onslaught gets all of it's armour blasted down to black and has 10% hull remaining you never need a single piece of metal to repair it.

Instead Supplies, which in my mind are a mix of food, spare parts, raw feedstock for 3d printers, replacement circuit boards, pipes and tubing, space suits, programmable drones etc. are the only thing that gets used to repair a damaged ship. I think it would make the game a lot more fun if we could change this a bit so that readiness continues to consume supplies as normal but repairs consume a mixture of supplies and metals! This will also mean that metals actually become useful rather than cargo-filling vendor trash.

The following is based on the assumption that the existing repair cost = 100% supplies and any figures given are relative to the existing repair cost. For balance since we are adding metals costs we should reduce the supplies costs slightly to match.

Low Tech Ships - 65% Supplies, 65% Metals
Midline Ships - 75% Supplies, 50% Metals
High Tech Ships - 75% Supplies, 35% Metals, 5% Transplutonic Metals

Alternative Option:
Low Tech Ships - 50% Supplies, 65% Metals, 10% Heavy Machinery
Midline Ships - 60% Supplies, 50% Metals, 10% Heavy Machinery
High Tech Ships - 65% Supplies, 35% Metals, 5% Transplutonic Metals, 5% Heavy Machinery

I think in terms of costs it should be reasonably comparable to current repairs costs while making repair costs seem more realistic and also make it so that some of the less often used inventory items become useful again.

[BaBosa]

Spare parts, 3D printer feedstock and such stuff are made of metal so when they’re destroyed you end up with scrap metal but you can’t turn scarp or bulk metal into parts without a lot of infrastructure that can’t fit inside ships (unless that’s the ships role).
That’s why you have to put supplies into ships but get metal out.

As for gameplay. Having to manage storing different resources is just tedious. If you get it just right it’s fine but otherwise you have too little and are *** or you have too much and you waste limited cargo space. There’s no fun element to doing it that way.

A better option is to turn metals into supplies so you have that option to make metals you scavenge useful but you’re not forced too. This has been made and is the supply forging mod. There is also more mods that can convert other commodities.

[Jackundor]

yeah, this just adds having to manage another resource which competes for cargo space and makes everything more complicated. furthermore, as is Metals aren't Stocked at every market so you could go to a colony and just not be able to repair. and all of that gets even worse with the proposals for needing transplutonics and heavy machinery.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

It wouldn't be much of a problem management-wise because you get metals in post-battle salvage anyway. Maybe you'd need some extra Salvage Rigs in a lowtech armor-tanked fleet to keep even but I'd consider that an interesting variation.

That said, I don't think all the different repair ratios and extra materials like transplutonics are necessary - midline and hightech ships will take less armor/hull damage by design so they will also require less metal to repair by design, I think that's fine as is.

As for Heavy Machinery, instead of it being consumed it could affect the repair speed up to a point, like it affects salvaging efficiency up to a point. Overall I like the idea.

[Schwartz]

Interesting thought. If it reduces supplies by 50% and adds the same amount of metal, it will be cheaper overall. If it takes more metal than the # of supplies, it will take more cargo space to repair the same amount. I don't think it would have to account for tech levels - just to use a certain amount of metals over time as dictated by the ship's repair speed. I would prefer the first option out of the two. Just make it 50% / 50% supplies/metal for repairs, and 100% supplies for CR.

This change would give you the ability to plan around your loadouts. How much damage are you expecting? And then bring the proper amounts of each. And if you run out of metal, you can still recover all CR but your hull remains pock-marked.

Yeah, this is a neat idea.

[smithney]

I can see this become an option for the player to take, perhaps as a Skill to be taken in the Industry tree.

[Amazigh]

I can see this become an option for the player to take, perhaps as a Skill to be taken in the Industry tree.

"When available, consumes metals in place of supplies to perform repairs on damaged ships."

Yeah, this would be a neat skill in the industry tree. You'd still need supplies for upkeep, but if you get some metals from combat/salvage, it'd actually be worth it to take some to be able to save some money(supplies) on repairs.

[SafariJohn]

"When available, consumes metals in place of supplies to perform repairs on damaged ships."

Yeah, this would be a neat skill in the industry tree. You'd still need supplies for upkeep, but if you get some metals from combat/salvage, it'd actually be worth it to take some to be able to save some money(supplies) on repairs.

It is like +X% supplies salvaged, but without magicking up supplies from nothing. Nice. Though combat repairs are only a fraction of total supply usage.

[Princess_of_Evil]

Industry tree is full of skills mostly useful in earlygame, one more won't change much about it.

[Sharp]

Just to point out there is this mod Supply Forging

Which uses metal and heavy machinery by default to generate supplies. It can be modified though to use different commodities, but it doesn't change the base result of still needing just supplies to do repairs