The Advent Iconus Guardian's ability "Mend" will not autocast during combat, even with obvious high-priority damaged targets in range, unless the ship simultaneously casts "Shield Projection". It does seem to be able to autocast Mend outside of combat without issue.
In combat, there seems to be some sort of restriction on these cruisers that is preventing them from casting their second-slot ability unless it is also casting the ability in the first slot at the same time. Almost as if it is looking for a target for Shield Projection, not finding anything eligible (all nearby targets already have the buff), and then giving up its "turn" in the ai behavior queue without considering that it has a second ability available... or something along those lines.
When modded to swap the mend/renewal ability to the first position and shield projection behind it, both abilities can fire without issue and the guardian behaves as expected.
Hello!
Thank you for the report on this, would you also be able to share a replay file or save to see this clearer by chance?
Hi Ramma,
Would love to upload a save file, but I am not seeing an obvious way to do so on this forum. I see an option to upload an "image"... tried using that route to upload the file as if I were pretending it was an image, and it spun for 10 minutes and doesn't seem to be accepting it. Do you have any preferred way to accept 17.6 MB save file uploads? Like an email or a google drive link or something? Or am I just not seeing the option in this interface?
You'd be correct in this regard, the best way to share a file would be to send it via DM or sitrep channel on Discord, or share a google drive link for me to download from
I've sent you a Google Drive link with the save file via direct message. Upon loading, you should find my fleet (cyan) in combat with a vasari fleet (blue). The battle is already somewhat in progress, so we have multiple capital ships with armor damage within range of mend's autocast conditions, and shortly after loading, at least one will take severe hull damage. Without manual intervention, the 25 guardian cruisers will happily allow that "high-priority target" to drop to near death without attempting to intervene. In the few cases where a cruiser does autocast mend, you'll notice that it can only do so while shield projection is on cooldown.
I've also noticed (a few patches ago) that Hoshikos try to ignore repairing crippled capital ships in battle, focusing on repairing other ships. While it is a tactically right approach to, instead of trying to save a ship which can no longer impact the battle, keep the rest of the fleet alive, strategically I don't want to completely lose the capital ship, even if its preservation comes at a cost of slightly decreased combat effectiveness. So, to my mind, it would be better if repair ships tried to save crippled capital ships.
[quote who="DM|Hachbubuch3507" reply="5" id="3947811"]I've also noticed (a few patches ago) that Hoshikos try to ignore repairing crippled capital ships in battle, focusing on repairing other ships. While it is a tactically right approach to, instead of trying to save a ship which can no longer impact the battle, keep the rest of the fleet alive, strategically I don't want to completely lose the capital ship, even if its preservation comes at a cost of slightly decreased combat effectiveness. So, to my mind, it would be better if repair ships tried to save crippled capital ships.[/quote]
I think that may be more down to the fact that the Hoshiko's repair ability is a heal over time, and therefore can't stack more than once on a target. Unfortunately that means it's not that useful for keeping up a ship against focus-fire, and I wouldn't mind seeing the stacking limit raised a bit, but that's more like a design/balance decision than a bug, to me. You're probably not seeing any new casts on that ship when it caught your attention because it already had the buff active from when it started taking damage, so it would be pointless to re-cast it.
In the case of the advent's mend it's a little different - it is just a small burst heal with no stacking restrictions, so they should still be pumping those casts into a ship as rapidly as they can to keep it up, as long as they've got antimatter remaining. They can do this if the positions of the abilities on the ship definition are swapped, but it points to an underlying issue of an ability in the #2 slot being locked behind the other one. (there's a possibility that this issue might also affect the hoshiko's antimatter restore ability and others, but I haven't observed those that carefully yet to see)
[quote who="DM|Hachbubuch3507" reply="7" id="3947823"]I know it does not stack, but as soon as it expires, Hoshikos do not renew it if the ship is crippled.[/quote]
Interesting, I haven't noticed that one with any of the healer-type ships. I'll have to keep an eye out myself.
The Vasari Carrier also does not seem to auto cast its repair cloud ability even when in range of one or more ships with hull damage. It casts its nanite armour ability which is a burst restore low cool down and stackable, or at least refreshable buff which its first ability in the icon grid.
Might this be down to where in the ability grid it is rather than the ability having a dependency?
Yeah I never meant it to be interpreted as a specific dependency, it is almost certainly due to the ability being in the second slot, behind another one that the ship wants to cast but finds no valid targets.
I also have to make a report that is similar but with a different unit. The Advent's Lesser Factory structure which has an innate ability called "Repair" which repairs other ships and structures nearby does not most of the time auto-cast repair. I have to manually select on each factor and manually activate repair on a damaged unit. It will auto-cast sometimes but that's random and also doesn't necessarily choose to repair the most damaged unit but could be another unit that has it's hull points almost full. And I find that the dying capital ship that needs healing the most ends up dying because it didn't get the repair it needed when defending a planet from an invasion force.
Thank you for the additional report, would you be able to share a save file or replay file so I can better demonstrate this to the team as needed?
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