I never noticed them doing much, either, so I sold them and used the slot for something else.

For what it's worth, you can drop your repair costs a whole lot by using the, umm, military bases I think it is. If it's not that one, then it's one of the other special bases that cuts your repair costs by half or better. I think it has something to do with your rank. Going off memory so I'm a bit fuzzy on the details...

The Nanitoids are fantastic. I had the same reaction you did when I first got them. They did repair the ship just like the description says, however, they only repair equipment up to 60% (I may be getting that number wrong). Just stop repairing your ship and eventually you'll see all the equipment will all end up around 60% repaired. After flying around a bit after a fight they will again get up to 60%.

Yeah if you want to repair equipment fully you will need to pay for some of the damage to be fully restored. The ships hull and armor is full repaired by the nanitoids which is deprived from nanites btw :)

Nanitoids are amazing, but yeah they don't repair the ship fully.

That's not too bad though, you don't always have to repair everything, and if something breaks, the nanitoids will get it running again.

The big knock down drag outs you'll have against Dominators late game will be one place this will be incredibly helpful, allowing you to stay in the fight for far longer before being forced to withdraw.

I've been somewhat confused at to their behavior. The only up to 60% might explain a lot of that confusion. As of now I'm not sure what to think of them or if "amazing," the right word. I will have to give them another try and see what happens.

Part of the problem is you just don't get see what items are doing a lot of the time. You just sort of have to take the description's word for it and hope you are making good use of an item.

Nanitoids only kick in once a component is at 45% or lower, then they can repair 1 piece of equipment by 10% each turn. This means under normal use conditions the bulk of your equipment will hover right around 50%, but won't drop any lower. However, if your equipment is taking a lot of damage the nanitoids can be overwhelmed and things can start breaking. Enemies armed with Electronic Cutters will destroy your equipment in no time if you don't take them out, and constantly using the afterburner with lower quality equipment will also often overwhelm the nanitoids. Something to also keep in mind is that equipment from different races degrades at different rates (Gaalian < Faeyan < Human < Maloq < Peleng), so if most of your equipment is Gaalian or Faeyan the nanitoids can usually keep everything running indefinitely, while if your equipment is mostly Peleng then stuff will probably start breaking down even with the nanitoids.

I have a possible issue with my engine.
I landed on a distant system and tried to solo Blazeroids on average equipment and rather low skills. Given enough time one could probably do it, however my engine kept giving up.

It's the upgraded engine series, most of the other equipment seems to be kept nicely repaired, even dominator stuff. However this engine is being repaired only at times, so to say. For instance, once when it failed, nanitoids managed to get it working in just a few turns, even under rather heavy fire. On other occasions, I would keep circling around (normal cruise speed) to allow it to do some repairs so that I may try going in once again, however the engine was simply not repaired.

What I tried:
- removed all but engine, fuel tank and shield generator to storage
- had a combo of three artifacts: antigravitizer, nozzlenator and the nanitoids
- circled for good fifteen turns

No significant gains on the engine (while NOT being under fire) could have been seen, even if from its current state at about 10% it should have gotten up to speed in three or four turns max.

Any insight would be welcome.