Automatic abilities don't always trigger.

from Sins Forums

I can't remember off the top of my head if this applies to automatic abilities in general, but I do know it seems to effect the repair structures.

I just started playing a new level and had a pirate invasion on one of my home planets

The only defences I had were a couple of missile platforms, a repair platform and 3 capital ships

I noticed that the repair station didn't automatically start repairing the damaged ships or missile platforms right away after it'd completed the previous repair, infact it seemed to take several seconds to kick off again, despite the fact it had plenty of antimatter and the cooldown had expired.

It wasn't due to the fact there wasn't anything in range, or that the items in range weren't damaged enough, it just didn't seem to kick in fast enough.

Anyone else experience this?

9,544 views 2 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

I might be wrong, I haven't checked on repair bays in a while, but I think they repair a certain amount of hull/second. So if that was still going on, the repair bay wouldn't "restart" the process until the hull/second count on the building or unit was finished. But I could be wrong.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Yes, most repair-like abilities have a hull damage threshold to trigger them.

But in this case, it's more of the CPU prioritising what needs to be done. Because every ship and defensive structure has its own AI, when you get to large numbers of units it can take a few seconds for the AI to update all the automatic orders. This is why sometimes you'll see ships pause before selecting a new target, or repair bays not instantly re-applying the buff.

Essentially, there's a certain interval where it checks if the conditions for autocast are met and it's probably closer to a second or two in order to ration system resources.

Galactic Civilizations IV