A Pet Peeve with Armor Repair and Other Thoughts

[FiveDisgruntledMonkeysWit]

This peeve doesn't apply to just Armageddon, but all video games where there's been an armor repair-type skill.
The armor repair helpfile wrote:

Only the most skilled artisans can repair an item to its original
quality.

WHY!?
I realize there are realism issues to it, but if you can only repair an item to a fraction of it's original quality, then the armor repair skill becomes useless. Why spend twenty 'sid on materials and risk failing and having to start over in order to get the item half-repaired, when you can just take it an NPC armorer, spend five 'sid, and getting it patched up perfectly 100% of the time?
If the NPC can do a better job, with no risk, for less cost, then what the hell is the skill for?
The only possible reason I could think of why anyone would want this skill would be if they were playing a tribal character or nomad who didn't have access to the superhuman repairers that you find in each and every marketplace.
Of course, it wouldn't quite make sense for a novice armorer to do the same job as a House-trained veteran repariman, but something has to be done for playability's sake. Right now, repair armor just seems like a useless skill on my skill list, quite possibly the most useless one I can imagine.
I think a good way to fix this is if there were increments of success. So a newb repairman might have a 60% chance of failing, a 30% chance of fixing it partially, and a 10% chance of fixing it perfectly. Or perhaps a highly skilled repairman has a chance of making the item better, reinforcing it somehow?
I think in general Arm's skills are a bit too black and white. Either you succeed or you fail. I'd like to see more "critical" fails, more "critical" successes (yes, I know there are already some in place). Instead of just failing a theft and not getting caught, failing a theft and getting caught, or successfully stealing, why not have some one get caught -AND- get the item, like a purse-snatcher?
Anyways, you get my point. My biggest beef is with the armor repair skill, which is something I think could be fixed by adding more skill effects in general.
Any thoughts?

[Koala]

I fully agree with FiveDisgruntledMonkeysWit and think that something needs to be done to the skill armor repair. Right now, it is the most useless skill I've ever had in the past.

Besides to the perfectly repairing story stated in the above post, I think one of the drawbacks of the skill armor repair is the lack of coded repairing raw materials. For example, if you want to fix a bone shield then the code says that you need the exact bone (and the code doesn't tell you what type of bone is this). Even if the code tells you the type of the materail needed to fix the shield, you are not going to find it because most of the time it doesn't exist at all, codedly (or not commonly available).

What I wish to see is a few general repairing materials, like a couple of types of bone, a few types of shell, and one type of wood should work on all kind of shields (both craftable and noncraftable). Otherwise, eventhough you have the coded armor repairing skill, you could never fix that dented shield because of the lack of the raw material. I believe, such an addition may bring the skill armor repair back to the life.

[Revelations]

Or rather, instead of failing completely and having all the materials go to waste, just have certain degrees of success depending on your skills level. I mean, if I wanted to repair something, and had the necessary materials, shouldn't I be able to -something- useful with the items that I have? Even if I havn' undergone any major sewing, from what little experience of watching and whatnot, I'm sure I could at least patch up a hole if I needed to, just not very great. So instead of failing completely, at least for those that have the skill, you have the chance to patch it slightly, or alot.

I agree that only the master armorers should be able to bring armor up to the original quality, in look and fashion without any signs of work done on the armor. Even a veteran armorer might have a few parts of the armor not appear apart of the whole.

[ashyom]

You bring up some points.  Could you please email the mud with what you've said above, and outline your proposed changes?
-Ashyom