Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Quality repair packs should have higher repair speed, not just higher repair amount

What?

Higher-Quality repair packs have 2/3/4/6 times the base repair amount. This increase doesn't make up for the higher cost, and while it does make the repair packs higher-density they are rarely needed in enough volume for that to be a meaningful advantage.

Repair packs have a "repair speed" stat of 2, independent of Quality. In most cases, the speed isn't an issue, since most damage is small and most repairs are done by bots. However, in Space Age, space platforms can easily take large amounts of damage to high-health buildings, like railgun turrets and the hub, and can only repair one entity at a time. This is a huge limitation, and is presumably intended to force players to focus on asteroid defences rather than just tanking damage. That's fair, but I think it's a little steep that players can't scale repairs at all in the late game, especially on very large platforms.

Why?

I personally prefer to build self-sufficient platforms with good enough asteroid defenses to never need repairs, but there are situations where repair is far more efficient, especially for early Aquilo platforms and promethium collectors. I suggest making Quality repair pack speed also increase to 2/3/4/6 times the base value, letting space platform repair scale by a limited amount while still requiring players to primarily focus on asteroid defence.