Phantom Marines: Holograms or Doppelgangers?

[Nanook]

Currently I have two marines standing on the bridge of my Behemoth that were previously sent to board a Phoenix Sentinnel. The Phoenix was successfully boarded, and I can see these two marines in the list of marines on the boarded ship. But they're also standing on the bridge of my ship. And before anyone asks whether they're really the same marines, the answer is YES. Same name, same stats, and I can't reassign the ones on my bridge although I can talk to them.

Anyone else seen this? I've noticed this kind of thing in the past but didn't pay much attention to it at the time.

I'm voting for holograms.

[Alan Phipps]

Obviously something is wrong there. Did you by any chance have all your marines initially as service crew on your Behemoth to gain morale and help repairs before converting them to marines for the operation?

If that was the case then I suspect the 'holograms' represent the service crew previously manning those bridge stations at the time they were converted to marines. There might not be an immediately effective clean up script for that eventuality.

It's maybe similar to occasionally finding 'phantom' enemy crew manning the bridge stations of captured capitals for a period after capture.

[A5PECT]

I've had this occur when switching service crew to marines right before sending them out. The ex-crewman that happened to be in the bridge never left the navigation console, and even gave the "mission control" dialogue lines to his doppelganger out on the boarding op.

[Raptor34]

I remember something similar, but not really when I used to remotely promote another crew to captain, the old captain iirc turned into a marine and then I switched them back using the sliders.
When I then teleported in immediately after to give seminars to the new captain, the old captain/marine thing was iirc stuck in the marine position thing. Like you know how marines just stand there like a guard? That.
Who knows why they keep track of where they are standing, I would be fine with them loading on entering IS. Dunno which method performs better.

[Scoob]

This happens constantly for me. I send ALL Marines to a target ship, yet there will often still be one or two Marines still on the deck of the ship. Same happens on the return trip. I assign a Captain to the new ship and transfer ALL Marines back to the source ship. I then teleport to the new ship and there are several Marines wandering around the deck, that are actually back at the original ship.

This literally happens all the time. Basically a NAMED Marine will be clearly visible on the Deck of a ship, while also listed as being elsewhere. Game's done this for ages.

[Nanook]

Obviously something is wrong there. Did you by any chance have all your marines initially as service crew on your Behemoth to gain morale and help repairs before converting them to marines for the operation?...

Nope. They've been marines since the last boarding op, quite a while back. What I'm now thinking, and I didn't notice it at the time, is that they were on the bridge when I issued the boarding command, and their images stayed on the bridge while their bodies boarded the ship.

Ok, it gets weirder. I just transferred all the marines, including the two marines, back to my ship, and the two phantoms on the bridge briefly disappeared and then reappeared on the bridge. But now I can no longer interact with them, although they still occasionally say 'hello' to each other. So I teleported to the Phoenix and back again, and my two marines are still on the bridge, but now I can talk to them again and even reassign them, meaning they're back 'in the flesh', so to speak.

[Edit] One further oddity. So I transferred my troops back to my ship as Service Crew, but the two 'phantoms' don't show as Service Crew. They still show as marines although they are listed as SC and respond as if they were.

So it appears as if some graphical cleanup is needed in instances where marines on the bridge with the player get sent on a boarding op. So far, it doesn't appear to result in any gameplay issues, though.