The repair tender, also known as repair barge and repair ship, is an airship (technically a hovercraft) in The Lost Frontier. Belonging to the Aeropans, they were used to repair and protect the shield generators during the mission "Search research rig for Precursor facility" at the Aeropan research rig to prevent intruders from entering the rig.
The tenders would spawn from the bases of the shield generators out of garages, activated via the rig's dispatch system that could be triggered upon the approach of an intruder. These garages would have to be destroyed lest the tenders spawn endlessly. This dispatch system was occasionally exploited by a pirate radio tower operator, endlessly activating repair tenders for Jak to shoot down in side missions. The garages were sometimes guarded by sentry turrets.
Design[]
The repair tender is built upon the base auxiliary ship model shared in common with the two types of Aeropan gunship: a delta wing-shaped platform in the front, connected to a pair of trapezoid-like platforms in the back by a small fuselage that gets bigger toward the back. These platforms don't quite act like wings, and given the tenders' unusual strafing flight patterns, it is presumed they do not share the same aerodynamic qualities with planes, and instead possess their own anti-gravity technology typical of hovercraft or flying saucers.
A rocket bay is affixed to the bottoms of each platform, though they are empty unlike those on the heavy gunships. Unlike either gunship, it possesses no weaponry. Instead, each of the top-most turret slots (of which there is one on each side of each platform) are replaced by electrodes that connect to a cylindrical device in the center via a kind of quad-pod platform.
The tender does however retain the same color scheme as the gunships, having a mostly amethyst surface with silver back-most platforms. The electrode/quad-pod device on top is mostly silver, with red and blue trim.
Performance and combat[]
The tenders, like the gunships, do not fly in the same manner as planes, instead acting like hovercraft, strafing about as opposed to tilting and turning to maneuver. This imparts significant mobility advantages despite having only mediocre speed. Despite their bulk, their armor is also lackluster and are easily destroyed with any highly-upgraded plane weapon.
The repair tenders lack much to speak of in the way of combat strategies, and in fact have no weapons to fire back at Jak. Instead they present a challenge simply in their potentially infinite numbers if their deployment garage is not destroyed, but even so this is not a combative challenge so much as it is a simple gameplay obstacle.