Repair Station is really useful at times. Are you half naked? Get refit. Is your cool item about to go down? Repair it. Got a broken sensor array from scanning? No problem.
Despite all these cool advantages, I wondered why I haven't made much use of it. I rarely even touch this machine. In fact, I might have used Recycling Units even more than Repair Stations, partly because there's a chance of getting some cool items from it, and partly because there are more useful unauthorized hacks for Recycling machines.
One of the problems with Repair Station is its higher cost for failure. What's the worst thing that can happen for a failed fabrication? Wasting time, getting system feedbacks, and having investigation squad coming at you. But what's the worst thing that can happen for a failed repair? Losing your precious item! At least you can still scan after a failed scanalyzer, but it's possible to insert and lose your entire item from a destroyed Repair Station. You can't get it back!
The other problem is the long repair time which is comparable to its fabrication time. When you obtain a schematic of something, you can make several copies of that item. Meanwhile, repairing only works for one or a few damaged item. After that, there's little replay value. So when given a choice to repair or to fabricate, usually you'll pick fabricating. I'd rather have an almost dead sword and a healthy sword (possibly several healthy swords) than a single repaired sword alone.
And what happen when you have a half-damaged item? Is it worth the waiting time to repair it? Should you skip it and move on? Because repairing it at 20% integrity is no different than repairing it at 80% integrity, what incentive is there to repair the latter kind?
For stealth hacker build, fabricator is your best friend at creating whatever number of copies you want, creating backups in case your sensor array falls apart. Also, you can easily obtain any schematic you want from terminals and create something that you don't already have. Non-hackers like combat builds can make use of pre-installed schematic so they can immediately fabricate something that's interesting, sometimes out-of-depth items or robots.
Repair Station, on the other hand, has only a niche use. Its usefulness is limited to having a badly damaged item that you already own, or if you need a refit. And......that's pretty much it.
It's true that the Recycling Unit is even more of a niche from a strategic point-of-view, but I believe it's mostly there for fluff than for actual use. Repair Station doesn't seem to be this way.
Here are some ideas for buffing Repair Station:
1) Increase success chance for installing and repairing items.
2) Decrease repair time, perhaps proportional to the amount of integrity % loss. (So repairing a half-damaged sword would decrease the repair time by half)
3) Add a chance to have pre-installed damaged items, similar to how fabricator may have pre-installed schematic.
4) Add an eject button in case you need to pull out the item ASAP. Works well with idea #3.
5) Having an ally machinist will further decrease the repair time by a pinch.
6) More Repair Station unauthorized hacks.
7) If an item is already loaded into the Repair Station, destroying the machine may spit out the loaded item. (Similar to how Recycling Unit works)
