Is there anything that prevents you from simply 'declaring' the entire terrain of the map to be passable ground terrain and then set the capital ships to be ground instead of air units? Or doesn't the Galaxy editor provide the necessary tools for that?
I agree that there's definately a lot of potential in the way you upgrade you battle ship in this map. Sorry for refraining from providing detailed feedback right now, but I think a lot of good points have already been made by other people.
There's two major things that confuse me right now:
1) Why do my turrets sometimes just transfer over to an ally's battle ship? There's no command that I could see that would do that, yet several times now, my initial 2 turrets served me greatly for a couple of minutes until I surprisedly realized that they'd somehow moved over to my ally's chassis, leaving me with no weaponry.
2) Is there any way to target an enemy's weapons? I've tried getting a mass fighter build to work, but I always seem to get obliterated since turrets and siege cannons simply outdamage me by a large margin. If there was a possibility to focus and eliminate their weapons, that'd open up new strategic possibilities. But from what I can tell after playing 5 or 6 games so far, the only way to (somewhat) reliably take them out is via siege cannon splash damage.
the blue team spawning in the red base? maybe it got fixed between the days i did not play. then i am sorry
That, and the deployable production buildings consuming minerals instead of energy come to my mind. Also, no win/lose trigger after one team's fortress has been destroyed, but that doesn't really affect gameplay so it can be ignored for now. It's true that I haven't played the map in 2 days or so, so if you went ahead and cleaned that up already, my apologies.
Okay, here's some more feedback from my end. I've played 3 matches against other players so far. Focused on playing Tank, so that's where I'm going to suggest some ability changes as well.
I think the major bugs (blue players spawning in red base, some production buildings costing minerals to deploy, no win/lose trigger) are well known right now and probably already on the way to getting fixed. There's some minor things, though mostly balance-related, which I'd like to mention instead.
- Just a small reminder: Not being able to use Juggernaut or Mules while in siege mode seems kind of arbitrary to me considering that all other abilities are still usable.
- The sensor tower (in deck view) doesn't have a recycle option.
- The main attack of the tier 1 tank displays a range of 6; the Gauss Turret says it has a range of 6 as well. However, when I click to attack an enemy, my vehicle starts attacking with its main gun only. I still need to approach the target a little further for the Gauss Turret to kick in. This might be related to the turret attacking from the 'center' of your vehicle instead of the front.
- I find the Assisted Thrust ability to be nigh useless without self-target. I suggest letting players use it on their own vehicle. Even then, I think I'd still prefer Battering Ram.
- Entomb has got to be even more worthless though. Or maybe I'm just not creative enough, but from what I've seen, it does you more harm than good in any given situation (bar the rare scenario where you are ambushed and waiting for 1 or 2 teammates to come to your rescue). I suggest to 1) remove or severely shorten the preparation time for the spell and 2) add a beneficial effect for the player using it, such as all enemies inside the ice block either receiving damage or being slowed for a couple of seconds after the ability finishes.
- And finally, Mules. The more I play, the more I dislike the entire concept. With the way things are now, there's pretty much no reason not to call down your Mule as soon as the cooldown is through. It creates (in my opinion) an unnecessary need for micromanagement, plus it lets you heal in combat as long as there's no AoE damage (which infantry, for instance, doesn't have).
What I suggest is replacing the Mule system with a simple out-of-combat heal, similar to Healing Salves in DOTA. Make it an instant ability that
- repairs 100% of your hit points over 10/15/20 seconds (whichever you feel is most balanced),
- is interrupted if you are attacked,
- is limited by either a cooldown of 30/45/60 seconds or a short preparation time before the repairing actually starts,
- prevents you from attacking during the repair process and
- (optionally) prevents you from moving and/or using abilities during the process.
Lastly, if the 'replacement' method for placable turrets (Sentry Gun etc.) does not work or is too complex to implement just like that, could you at least give the main vehicle a command that destroys all of the player's placed turrets on the battlefield? Having to select my turrets to recycle them sadly kills the entire archetype for me, just like it did in Cityscape.
Well, I'm certainly looking forward to a cooperative beat-the-Kerrigan mode. Anyway, just played another test round with the Tank class. Here's some cents:
- Add the duration of the Juggernaut ability to the description. At first, I assumed it was toggleable. Grave mistake; got ran over by infantry while I was too slow to move away.
- Is it intended that you can't use Mules or the Juggernaut ability while in Siege mode? Seems a little inconsistent to me since all my other abilities remained usable.
- I've had a weird situation where I tried a warp jump but landed about 2 screens away from where I had clicked. I believe I tried to call down a Mule as soon as the option became available, when my vehicle was supposedly still in mid air (if that's even how warp jump works).
- Overall, I'm quite sceptical in regard to the Mules. It feels to me like they are just too readily available. At the very least, I suggest cutting down their life span to equal the cooldown of their calldown so you can't have 2 at the same time. Personally, I'd go even further than that and say make them only last 10-20 seconds.
- This one is pure personal preference, but I'd sort of prefer to have my main vehicle bound to F1 and the SCV to F2. I'd like to hear other people's opinions, though.
I'm sure I forgot at least one or two points that came to my mind when playing, but oh well. I'll play another round now.
- Is it intended that Mules are unable to repair turrets? If so, at least mention that in their repair ability's description since it's clearly misleading (turrets are buildings, after all).
Okay, I shortly tested the map this morning. Major bug: I died once and didn't respawn. I was in construction mode and just got myself a Fighter's Bay (the fighter drone building) when my tank got killed by infantry. I didn't get any kind of respawn timer and waited for 5 real-time minutes. No dice.
Apart from that, gameplay itself felt really fluent and intuitive though. I love the new capture system. Also the building options appear well organized, good tooltips as well.
I have to agree with Kueken though that infantry mobs are now more dangerous than ever. This might be intended and subject to personal preference, but I don't really like it all that much. Perhaps start out small and simply increase infantry spawns gradually over time, i.e. initiate additional Marine and Marauder spawns every 5 / 7.5 / 10 minutes.
Also, I feel like I've already made myself known for being extremely demanding in regard to turret support. Making turrets placable is a huge step forward in my opinion, but what I absolutely dislike about the new implementation is that now, there's no way at all to get rid of a misplaced tower. I really would've wished for a system that lets you build a turret at any time and simply destroys your 'oldest' turret on the field in case you exceed your maximum count. But now, instead, you cannot even manually detonate a placed turret nor destroy it with your own weapons due to friendly fire restrictions. I hope this will undergo some change in the near future.
Other than that, I can't really contribute much so far since my game barely lasted 10 minutes due to the aforementioned bug. I'll be sure to check it out again, though, but that'll probably have to wait until this evening.
Personally, I think you should postpone the consumable item implementation until after uploading the first beta version. The way I see (or rather read) it, it's pretty much an "icing on the cake" thing that isn't in any way critical to the way the map plays. Rather it seems like a perfect candidate for an 'additional feature/content' to be introduced in a later version of the map.
Another advantage of leaving consumables out for the first release would be not flooding players with too many things to learn about right from the start. Let players (especially those who maybe have never played the old version of Catalyst) concentrate on building their vehicle first, and then, after they get a grip on what's going on, open up more possibilities to them. I know this is very theoretical and won't apply to every player out there (depending on learning curve and other factors), but I believe that for the most part, this would be the best course of action.
For the record though, I'm not especially fond of constructing a shop inside you vehicle, although I hear where you're coming from with the "no need to return to base"-concept. I'd rather suggest that maybe you could set up those shops in both teams' bases as well as additional ones out on the battefield (maybe in the two remaining corners).
Okay, I just took about 15 minutes writing a crapload of text and my browser decides to not want to post it when I hit "reply". I'm sorry, I really went into quite a bit of detail about the ability ideas I had, but I don't have the endurance to write the whole thing again :/. So I'll just sketch them real quick.
1. Increase armor (alternatively reduce incoming damage) OR even grant invincibility for x seconds, but damage your vehicle for x% of its total HP after it runs out. Could kill you if not careful.
2. Mirror image - known and widely used. Create 1 or 2 copies of yourself to fake an attack or create confusion to retreat. Copies deal no damage, die considerably faster than the actual vehicle and disappear after x seconds.
3. A channelled aura-like ability slowing down and possibly (x% chance) stopping incoming projectiles. Your vehicle is either unable to move or unable to shoot while channelling (perhaps even both).
4. EMP projectile / wave (either single target or small AoE) that temporarily disables a number of the target's weapons / items in general. Could scale up so as to disable more items if hitting a higher tier vehicle (since they obviously have more items available).
I'm amazed by the pace at which this map is evolving. Hats off, Eiviyn :). I'm especially excited to see turret and land mine placing reworked.
Just played the beta version, albeit only on 3vs3 so the map felt a little 'empty'. Anyway, I can confirm that the top right corner repair tower isn't working - the one in the bottom left seems to work just fine.
One other thing that I'd like to comment on is the 'healing' weapons; would it be possible to 1) only let them target 'wounded' units, 2) only your burn energy when a beam actually heals someone, and 3) let them target yourself as well? I consider these minor tweaks which would encourage specializing as a healer.
And about the suggestions by the TheAlmaity: Deployable repair towers and point defense drones sound outright awesome. I'd love to see these make it into the map.
Sounds great; I hope I can get a bunch of friends together to check out the beta map. Just wondering, will the old Catalyst still be updated? There's a couple of things that me and my friend (who's an awesome player) agreed upon could use some tweaking.
For instance, Afterburner requiring no energy whatsoever really puzzles me. I'd say a small energy cost of 5-10 would be appropriate; the way it's implemented now, Afterburner is pretty much my no-brainer first ability in any build. Just a small energy cost would at least make you think twice about using mass civilian repair, thus removing all of your energy.
Second, the building-structures-in-your-enemy's-base thing really needs to go. As far as I understood from what I've read so far, it wasn't really intended at first. The way I see it, you should only be able to rebuild stuff in your own base. Unfortunately I have no insight regarding how the editor works, so I won't pretend I know how to make something like this happen, but it'd definitely make the game more enjoyable. If it's not possible, I think even removing the repairing part entirely again would be a better solution.
Finally - and I'm sorry if I sound annoyingly persistent here since I've asked this before - is there any chance that in a future update, placing new turrets / land mines will automatically remove the older ones if you surpass your maximum count? To me, it's really an issue that makes or breaks certain builds. Facilitating the ease of use of these two vastly underused items would, in my opinion, make them more on par the rest of the drones which require no micromanagement whatsoever. I really like the ability to place down stationary defenses, but scrolling away from my Raven to destroy the ones I have placed at another position screws over my game and even gets me killed every now and then. If you're staying with the current system, I can accept that and won't bother you again. I that case though, I'll probably discard all build ideas involving turrets, or rather demote them to pure fun builds.
Catalyst isn't locked at 0 popularity anymore you say?
That's right, it's currently on page 2 of the custom maps list. And I have talked to a couple of other players who were just as happy to be able to play the map again, so they're trying to get as many matches done as possible to push it onto page 1.
If you insist on the repair abilities being useful, I might have to give them another try. Unfortunately so far I've had pretty much zero success with them, but you never know... Maybe my strategy was just flawed.
It's great to see that Catalyst has finally arisen from the 0 popularity cemetery :). I just played a bunch of matches and I was excited to see that there have been further changes since I last played.
These changes entail the Dusk Wing having 6 weapon slots, and also the drone shield and armor items which the poster above me most likely is referring to. And I have to second his (not exactly precise) criticism: At least for the Drone Shield, it does not only cause your drone to gain additional shields (which is absolutely fine), but makes them regenerate at an insane rate so they are almost indestructable. I really hope that this was not intended; In my humble opinion, reducing the regeneration bonus to 30-50% of what it currently is would balance things out much better.
One other thing though that's really been bugging me about the map is the need to manually 'detonate' your own turrets (and land mines) in order to place new ones. I could sort of understand the purpose of demanding more micromanagement from the player, but to me it really feels like that 'feature' is more of a nuisance than anything else. I would love to see things changed in such a way that whenever you place an additional turret (or land mine) which exceeds your turret count limit, it automatically destroys the turret (or land mine) on the map which you placed first.
Oh, and the fact that you can now set up more than one turret in the first place is amazing, but in one of my matches, I had 4 turrets equipped and everything seemed to work just fine (apart from the above-mentioned unnecessary micro intensity), but at one point in the game I was suddenly unable to throw down more than one. I unequipped and reequipped all 4 items, but to no avail. After spamming the turret button for like 30 seconds, I could - for whatever reason - place a second one, but that was all I could make happen. Hope this bug will get figured out sometime.
On a final note, I sort of deem the repair abilities useless since their benefit is far too little to even merit their use. I would think something like "heals 5% instantly and 10% over time" more feasible. Regardless, what should be done no matter what is make it so the autocast doesn't kick in if you're at full health (or shields).
0
Is there anything that prevents you from simply 'declaring' the entire terrain of the map to be passable ground terrain and then set the capital ships to be ground instead of air units? Or doesn't the Galaxy editor provide the necessary tools for that?
0
I agree that there's definately a lot of potential in the way you upgrade you battle ship in this map. Sorry for refraining from providing detailed feedback right now, but I think a lot of good points have already been made by other people.
There's two major things that confuse me right now:
1) Why do my turrets sometimes just transfer over to an ally's battle ship? There's no command that I could see that would do that, yet several times now, my initial 2 turrets served me greatly for a couple of minutes until I surprisedly realized that they'd somehow moved over to my ally's chassis, leaving me with no weaponry.
2) Is there any way to target an enemy's weapons? I've tried getting a mass fighter build to work, but I always seem to get obliterated since turrets and siege cannons simply outdamage me by a large margin. If there was a possibility to focus and eliminate their weapons, that'd open up new strategic possibilities. But from what I can tell after playing 5 or 6 games so far, the only way to (somewhat) reliably take them out is via siege cannon splash damage.
0
That, and the deployable production buildings consuming minerals instead of energy come to my mind. Also, no win/lose trigger after one team's fortress has been destroyed, but that doesn't really affect gameplay so it can be ignored for now. It's true that I haven't played the map in 2 days or so, so if you went ahead and cleaned that up already, my apologies.
0
Okay, here's some more feedback from my end. I've played 3 matches against other players so far. Focused on playing Tank, so that's where I'm going to suggest some ability changes as well.
I think the major bugs (blue players spawning in red base, some production buildings costing minerals to deploy, no win/lose trigger) are well known right now and probably already on the way to getting fixed. There's some minor things, though mostly balance-related, which I'd like to mention instead.
- Just a small reminder: Not being able to use Juggernaut or Mules while in siege mode seems kind of arbitrary to me considering that all other abilities are still usable.
- The sensor tower (in deck view) doesn't have a recycle option.
- The main attack of the tier 1 tank displays a range of 6; the Gauss Turret says it has a range of 6 as well. However, when I click to attack an enemy, my vehicle starts attacking with its main gun only. I still need to approach the target a little further for the Gauss Turret to kick in. This might be related to the turret attacking from the 'center' of your vehicle instead of the front.
- I find the Assisted Thrust ability to be nigh useless without self-target. I suggest letting players use it on their own vehicle. Even then, I think I'd still prefer Battering Ram.
- Entomb has got to be even more worthless though. Or maybe I'm just not creative enough, but from what I've seen, it does you more harm than good in any given situation (bar the rare scenario where you are ambushed and waiting for 1 or 2 teammates to come to your rescue). I suggest to 1) remove or severely shorten the preparation time for the spell and 2) add a beneficial effect for the player using it, such as all enemies inside the ice block either receiving damage or being slowed for a couple of seconds after the ability finishes.
- And finally, Mules. The more I play, the more I dislike the entire concept. With the way things are now, there's pretty much no reason not to call down your Mule as soon as the cooldown is through. It creates (in my opinion) an unnecessary need for micromanagement, plus it lets you heal in combat as long as there's no AoE damage (which infantry, for instance, doesn't have).
What I suggest is replacing the Mule system with a simple out-of-combat heal, similar to Healing Salves in DOTA. Make it an instant ability that
- repairs 100% of your hit points over 10/15/20 seconds (whichever you feel is most balanced),
- is interrupted if you are attacked,
- is limited by either a cooldown of 30/45/60 seconds or a short preparation time before the repairing actually starts,
- prevents you from attacking during the repair process and
- (optionally) prevents you from moving and/or using abilities during the process.
Lastly, if the 'replacement' method for placable turrets (Sentry Gun etc.) does not work or is too complex to implement just like that, could you at least give the main vehicle a command that destroys all of the player's placed turrets on the battlefield? Having to select my turrets to recycle them sadly kills the entire archetype for me, just like it did in Cityscape.
0
Well, I'm certainly looking forward to a cooperative beat-the-Kerrigan mode. Anyway, just played another test round with the Tank class. Here's some cents:
- Add the duration of the Juggernaut ability to the description. At first, I assumed it was toggleable. Grave mistake; got ran over by infantry while I was too slow to move away.
- Is it intended that you can't use Mules or the Juggernaut ability while in Siege mode? Seems a little inconsistent to me since all my other abilities remained usable.
- I've had a weird situation where I tried a warp jump but landed about 2 screens away from where I had clicked. I believe I tried to call down a Mule as soon as the option became available, when my vehicle was supposedly still in mid air (if that's even how warp jump works).
- Overall, I'm quite sceptical in regard to the Mules. It feels to me like they are just too readily available. At the very least, I suggest cutting down their life span to equal the cooldown of their calldown so you can't have 2 at the same time. Personally, I'd go even further than that and say make them only last 10-20 seconds.
- This one is pure personal preference, but I'd sort of prefer to have my main vehicle bound to F1 and the SCV to F2. I'd like to hear other people's opinions, though.
I'm sure I forgot at least one or two points that came to my mind when playing, but oh well. I'll play another round now.
- Is it intended that Mules are unable to repair turrets? If so, at least mention that in their repair ability's description since it's clearly misleading (turrets are buildings, after all).
0
Okay, I shortly tested the map this morning. Major bug: I died once and didn't respawn. I was in construction mode and just got myself a Fighter's Bay (the fighter drone building) when my tank got killed by infantry. I didn't get any kind of respawn timer and waited for 5 real-time minutes. No dice.
Apart from that, gameplay itself felt really fluent and intuitive though. I love the new capture system. Also the building options appear well organized, good tooltips as well.
I have to agree with Kueken though that infantry mobs are now more dangerous than ever. This might be intended and subject to personal preference, but I don't really like it all that much. Perhaps start out small and simply increase infantry spawns gradually over time, i.e. initiate additional Marine and Marauder spawns every 5 / 7.5 / 10 minutes.
Also, I feel like I've already made myself known for being extremely demanding in regard to turret support. Making turrets placable is a huge step forward in my opinion, but what I absolutely dislike about the new implementation is that now, there's no way at all to get rid of a misplaced tower. I really would've wished for a system that lets you build a turret at any time and simply destroys your 'oldest' turret on the field in case you exceed your maximum count. But now, instead, you cannot even manually detonate a placed turret nor destroy it with your own weapons due to friendly fire restrictions. I hope this will undergo some change in the near future.
Other than that, I can't really contribute much so far since my game barely lasted 10 minutes due to the aforementioned bug. I'll be sure to check it out again, though, but that'll probably have to wait until this evening.
0
Personally, I think you should postpone the consumable item implementation until after uploading the first beta version. The way I see (or rather read) it, it's pretty much an "icing on the cake" thing that isn't in any way critical to the way the map plays. Rather it seems like a perfect candidate for an 'additional feature/content' to be introduced in a later version of the map.
Another advantage of leaving consumables out for the first release would be not flooding players with too many things to learn about right from the start. Let players (especially those who maybe have never played the old version of Catalyst) concentrate on building their vehicle first, and then, after they get a grip on what's going on, open up more possibilities to them. I know this is very theoretical and won't apply to every player out there (depending on learning curve and other factors), but I believe that for the most part, this would be the best course of action.
For the record though, I'm not especially fond of constructing a shop inside you vehicle, although I hear where you're coming from with the "no need to return to base"-concept. I'd rather suggest that maybe you could set up those shops in both teams' bases as well as additional ones out on the battefield (maybe in the two remaining corners).
0
Okay, I just took about 15 minutes writing a crapload of text and my browser decides to not want to post it when I hit "reply". I'm sorry, I really went into quite a bit of detail about the ability ideas I had, but I don't have the endurance to write the whole thing again :/. So I'll just sketch them real quick.
1. Increase armor (alternatively reduce incoming damage) OR even grant invincibility for x seconds, but damage your vehicle for x% of its total HP after it runs out. Could kill you if not careful.
2. Mirror image - known and widely used. Create 1 or 2 copies of yourself to fake an attack or create confusion to retreat. Copies deal no damage, die considerably faster than the actual vehicle and disappear after x seconds.
3. A channelled aura-like ability slowing down and possibly (x% chance) stopping incoming projectiles. Your vehicle is either unable to move or unable to shoot while channelling (perhaps even both).
4. EMP projectile / wave (either single target or small AoE) that temporarily disables a number of the target's weapons / items in general. Could scale up so as to disable more items if hitting a higher tier vehicle (since they obviously have more items available).
0
I'm amazed by the pace at which this map is evolving. Hats off, Eiviyn :). I'm especially excited to see turret and land mine placing reworked.
Just played the beta version, albeit only on 3vs3 so the map felt a little 'empty'. Anyway, I can confirm that the top right corner repair tower isn't working - the one in the bottom left seems to work just fine.
One other thing that I'd like to comment on is the 'healing' weapons; would it be possible to 1) only let them target 'wounded' units, 2) only your burn energy when a beam actually heals someone, and 3) let them target yourself as well? I consider these minor tweaks which would encourage specializing as a healer.
And about the suggestions by the TheAlmaity: Deployable repair towers and point defense drones sound outright awesome. I'd love to see these make it into the map.
0
Sounds great; I hope I can get a bunch of friends together to check out the beta map. Just wondering, will the old Catalyst still be updated? There's a couple of things that me and my friend (who's an awesome player) agreed upon could use some tweaking.
For instance, Afterburner requiring no energy whatsoever really puzzles me. I'd say a small energy cost of 5-10 would be appropriate; the way it's implemented now, Afterburner is pretty much my no-brainer first ability in any build. Just a small energy cost would at least make you think twice about using mass civilian repair, thus removing all of your energy.
Second, the building-structures-in-your-enemy's-base thing really needs to go. As far as I understood from what I've read so far, it wasn't really intended at first. The way I see it, you should only be able to rebuild stuff in your own base. Unfortunately I have no insight regarding how the editor works, so I won't pretend I know how to make something like this happen, but it'd definitely make the game more enjoyable. If it's not possible, I think even removing the repairing part entirely again would be a better solution.
Finally - and I'm sorry if I sound annoyingly persistent here since I've asked this before - is there any chance that in a future update, placing new turrets / land mines will automatically remove the older ones if you surpass your maximum count? To me, it's really an issue that makes or breaks certain builds. Facilitating the ease of use of these two vastly underused items would, in my opinion, make them more on par the rest of the drones which require no micromanagement whatsoever. I really like the ability to place down stationary defenses, but scrolling away from my Raven to destroy the ones I have placed at another position screws over my game and even gets me killed every now and then. If you're staying with the current system, I can accept that and won't bother you again. I that case though, I'll probably discard all build ideas involving turrets, or rather demote them to pure fun builds.
0
That's right, it's currently on page 2 of the custom maps list. And I have talked to a couple of other players who were just as happy to be able to play the map again, so they're trying to get as many matches done as possible to push it onto page 1.
If you insist on the repair abilities being useful, I might have to give them another try. Unfortunately so far I've had pretty much zero success with them, but you never know... Maybe my strategy was just flawed.
0
It's great to see that Catalyst has finally arisen from the 0 popularity cemetery :). I just played a bunch of matches and I was excited to see that there have been further changes since I last played.
These changes entail the Dusk Wing having 6 weapon slots, and also the drone shield and armor items which the poster above me most likely is referring to. And I have to second his (not exactly precise) criticism: At least for the Drone Shield, it does not only cause your drone to gain additional shields (which is absolutely fine), but makes them regenerate at an insane rate so they are almost indestructable. I really hope that this was not intended; In my humble opinion, reducing the regeneration bonus to 30-50% of what it currently is would balance things out much better.
One other thing though that's really been bugging me about the map is the need to manually 'detonate' your own turrets (and land mines) in order to place new ones. I could sort of understand the purpose of demanding more micromanagement from the player, but to me it really feels like that 'feature' is more of a nuisance than anything else. I would love to see things changed in such a way that whenever you place an additional turret (or land mine) which exceeds your turret count limit, it automatically destroys the turret (or land mine) on the map which you placed first.
Oh, and the fact that you can now set up more than one turret in the first place is amazing, but in one of my matches, I had 4 turrets equipped and everything seemed to work just fine (apart from the above-mentioned unnecessary micro intensity), but at one point in the game I was suddenly unable to throw down more than one. I unequipped and reequipped all 4 items, but to no avail. After spamming the turret button for like 30 seconds, I could - for whatever reason - place a second one, but that was all I could make happen. Hope this bug will get figured out sometime.
On a final note, I sort of deem the repair abilities useless since their benefit is far too little to even merit their use. I would think something like "heals 5% instantly and 10% over time" more feasible. Regardless, what should be done no matter what is make it so the autocast doesn't kick in if you're at full health (or shields).