Marine Repairs and Training [TC][AP][ALP]

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LordSekmeth
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Post by LordSekmeth » Mon, 7. Nov 16, 22:15

Anyone had any luck adapting this to Litcube's universe? I find it hard to do a game without this mod :( :)
If it ain't broken, fix it anyway

Jonzac
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Post by Jonzac » Tue, 8. Nov 16, 00:35

I just add it without the mod manager and it works just fine with non changes needed

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LordSekmeth
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Post by LordSekmeth » Tue, 8. Nov 16, 01:28

Jonzac wrote:I just add it without the mod manager and it works just fine with non changes needed
Have you used it long term? Still works fine late game?
If it ain't broken, fix it anyway

Jonzac
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Post by Jonzac » Tue, 8. Nov 16, 01:55

Yes in both LUband Mayhem. No issues I e seen

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LordSekmeth
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Post by LordSekmeth » Tue, 8. Nov 16, 01:59

Jonzac wrote:Yes in both LUband Mayhem. No issues I e seen
Thank you :)
If it ain't broken, fix it anyway

Zaknafein
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Post by Zaknafein » Tue, 6. Jun 17, 21:21

Im using the mod with LU and so far liking it. The Spacewalk feature is neat.
Right now I want to collect damaged ships in one of my SaturnComplexHubs and repair them all there slowly before selling.

I have a TP full of marines docked at that hub but the ships dont get repaired.

I used https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php ... inerepairs a few years ago (with X-Rebalance mod) and remember docking a TP full of marines on a station to repair the other ships working.
Does that feature doesnt work with v2 or am I doing sth wrong?


Sadly i cant reuse the old version since I only have .spk version and the .zip link is down.


PS: This needs to be quoted somewhere out of context:
DrBullwinkle wrote:
I never really thought of slaves as being illegal, although you are certainly correct that they are.
Ofc ***modified***, modders doing what Egosoft cant.

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DrBullwinkle
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Post by DrBullwinkle » Tue, 6. Jun 17, 21:46

LOL. Are you practicing for a career in the news media? ;)

The repair-station feature is intended to be in Marine Repairs and Training, although I think that it is currently bugged. It is on my list of things to test/fix in the next version. No clue when that might be.

Glad you are liking the script.

MisterHalt
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Post by MisterHalt » Sat, 17. Jun 17, 13:43

Just found and downloaded this mod today. I love the idea of putting those lazy jarheads to work when they're not stealing things for me. I've been using them to quickly repair ships in the 'go get my abandoned X' missions, but I've noticed the messages show 'null' in place of repair costs and my current balance.

Also just now I had to reload because my marines somehow turned into slaves. Probably something I did wrong while trying to recall them due to half of them not doing anything.

Is there a way to check if the passive training is actually working without checking my jarhead's stats every few minutes?

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DrBullwinkle
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Post by DrBullwinkle » Sat, 17. Jun 17, 18:35

Thanks. MRT solves multiple issues with several aspects of the game. Glad you like it.
MisterHalt wrote:I've noticed the messages show 'null' in place of repair costs and my current balance.
You will have to give me the steps to reproduce that. I need to be able to reproduce the error before I can fix it.

MisterHalt wrote:my marines somehow turned into slaves.
Offhand, I cannot think of a way that could happen. I believe you... I just don't know what might cause that. :)

Are you sure that you didn't just pick up some astronauts? If you board a civilian ship (such as a casino or hospital, for example), some of the passengers may escape as astronauts. If you collect them, then they will become slaves in your cargo hold.

Oh, wait... did you notice the slaves WHILE your marines were out doing a repair initiated with the hotkey? That's a trick that MRT does to ensure that you maintain enough cargo space so that you can collect your marines after the op. If things work correctly, the slaves should disappear when you collect your marines.


MisterHalt wrote:Is there a way to check if the passive training is actually working without checking my jarhead's stats every few minutes?
Well, that is the way to do it. You will want a bio-scanner to see the details.

Checking every few minutes may be overkill, because marines train slowly. If you tried to train them at an Equipment Dock, it would take something like three days, if I recall correctly.

It is probably sufficient to check their stats after a repair job. They get training credit pretty quickly after doing a repair (within a minute or two).

Also, MRT won't do any training at all if you don't have plenty of credits. Marines are expensive. You are going to want to maintain at least 10 million credits in your account most of the time. MRT stops training completely if you have less than two million credits.

MisterHalt
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Post by MisterHalt » Sun, 18. Jun 17, 03:42

DrBullwinkle wrote:You will have to give me the steps to reproduce that. I need to be able to reproduce the error before I can fix it.
I pressed the Marines Repair button when near a damaged ship, the message down the bottom told me the cost and how much money I have, both 'null', then when the repair is done, almost the same message again with 'null' for cost and account.

http://i.imgur.com/sMM8hHs.jpg
DrBullwinkle wrote:Offhand, I cannot think of a way that could happen. I believe you... I just don't know what might cause that. :)

Are you sure that you didn't just pick up some astronauts? If you board a civilian ship (such as a casino or hospital, for example), some of the passengers may escape as astronauts. If you collect them, then they will become slaves in your cargo hold.

Oh, wait... did you notice the slaves WHILE your marines were out doing a repair initiated with the hotkey? That's a trick that MRT does to ensure that you maintain enough cargo space so that you can collect your marines after the op. If things work correctly, the slaves should disappear when you collect your marines.
I think what happened here was me just being too fast for the script. I was trying to restart the repairs to get some of the lazy jarheads to AIM at the ship, by pressing the repair button a couple more times than was probably necessary. I only realised the marines had disappeared when a scanner told me I had illegal goods on my ship. Fortunately only a minute after it happened, so I could reload an autosave to deal with the ship again.

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DrBullwinkle
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Post by DrBullwinkle » Sun, 18. Jun 17, 04:23

MisterHalt wrote:I was trying to restart the repairs to get some of the lazy jarheads to AIM at the ship, by pressing the repair button a couple more times than was probably necessary.
Yeah, that could confuse the script. Pressing the hotkey a second time cancels the repair and orders the marines to return to the ship.

It takes a few seconds for the marines to go and perform the repairs, and it takes time for them to return home. The marines are not 100% about lining up perfectly, but they will get the job done if you are patient. All of the marines in the squad will get training credit.

Pressing the key several times over a few seconds... um... not sure what havoc that might create. My advice: Don't do that. ;)


Don't worry about the null prices. They aren't really mission critical, and I have plans to rewrite the fee calculation module anyway. I will watch for your reported problem when I do that.

Thanks for the reports, MisterHalt

MisterHalt
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Post by MisterHalt » Sun, 18. Jun 17, 04:38

DrBullwinkle wrote:Don't worry about the null prices. They aren't really mission critical, and I have plans to rewrite the fee calculation module anyway. I will watch for your reported problem when I do that.

Thanks for the reports, MisterHalt
It seems that it's just the message itself having problems. I repaired another ship and kept an eye on my account. Money was deducted when the repair was complete, so that bit is functioning fine.

I hate that my first step into this forum is 'hey this thing isn't working'. Makes me feel skeezy.

Also why the heck is there a digitised Wilhelm Scream as one of the random repair noises?!

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DrBullwinkle
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Post by DrBullwinkle » Sun, 18. Jun 17, 05:48

The first thing that you said was how much you liked the script. So you're all good. :)

My first question on the forum was, "How do I make combat more challenging so that the game will be more fun?". That led to Combat Tricks, which led to the rest of my scripts. We all have to start somewhere. :)


MisterHalt wrote:Also why the heck is there a digitised Wilhelm Scream as one of the random repair noises?!
Probably for the same reason that it appears in so many movies and other works over the years: It's free.

There were not a lot of built-in sounds for me to choose from, and the scream was just part of the other racket. I could add sounds, but implementation is troublesome and they can interfere with other mods, so the built-in sounds seemed like the best choice.

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soulmata
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Post by soulmata » Wed, 21. Jun 17, 07:02

As I've said before, I consider this a critical must-have for any X3 experience. I've been using it for years now and won't look back. Really fantastic work.

I am starting a new X3 game soon, and some things I noticed from last time I wonder if you are aware of:

* My marines seem to always train up to full 5 stars. They must be really bored, because I will get newbie marines, they stay parked somewhere for a few game days, I come back and they are all 5-stars. What a bargain.

* Does this script explicitly check for the marines being on ships owned by the player? I also have a mod that puts marines on NPC ships to make them harder to board - and those marines always seem to have 4 or 5 star everything. I would hate to think I am also paying for their training and repairs too! That could just be the other mod though.

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Post by DrBullwinkle » Wed, 21. Jun 17, 15:24

Thanks for the kind words, Soulmata.

"Five stars" is not the same as 4x100. Mount a bio scanner on your ship to see the exact stats.

Here is how it SHOULD work:

MRT should fully train the marines in the normally trainable skills, so 3x100 is expected. That is the same as an Equipment Dock.

Unless you specifically enabled Fight Training in your text file (it is "off" by default), Boot Camp will max out fight training at 40%, or two stars. To get full fight training, your marines should have to do some boarding ops.

So... are you reporting a different experience than the above?


Yes, MRT trains only player-owned marines. Cycrow's script to add marines to NPC ships already trains those marines pretty well (as you have experienced). That is probably by design; in order to make NPC boarding parties more of a challenge.
Last edited by DrBullwinkle on Wed, 21. Jun 17, 22:37, edited 1 time in total.

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soulmata
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Post by soulmata » Wed, 21. Jun 17, 22:35

DrBullwinkle wrote:MRT should fully train the marines in the normally trainable skills, so 3x100 is expected. That is the same as an Engineering Dock.

Unless you specifically enabled Fight Training in your text file (it is "off" by default), Boot Camp will max out fight training at 40%, or two stars. To get full fight training, your marines should have to do some boarding ops.

So... are you reporting a different experience than the above?
Ah, OK, that makes sense. In that case, that is exactly what I am experiencing, and in that case is WAD. Thank you for clearing that up. Personally, I really like that, because individually training piles of marines at 10 outposts at a time is dreadfully tedious.

On a side note... repair cost can currently be offset by local resources like hull plating.

Would it be feasible to /also/ use resources in local stockpiles that you are docked to? For instance, if you are docked to a player ED that has hull plating, might the script take those resources?

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DrBullwinkle
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Post by DrBullwinkle » Tue, 27. Jun 17, 13:54

Well, it is certainly possible that we could consume resources from a dock, but there is no precedent for that in the X 'verse. I suspect that what you gain in convenience might be overshadowed by what you would sacrifice in control.

A more direct way is to use a CLS2 transport (Bonus Pack) to collect resources and deliver it to your marines.

A way to streamline that effort would be to use UT's to hunt and buy resources throughout the 'verse and sell them to your mining complex (by setting the price at your complex slightly above average). Then your CLS2 pilot will have a single location from which to collect all repair resources.

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soulmata
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Post by soulmata » Sun, 2. Jul 17, 22:41

Cool. Thank you for the info.

I have another question, regarding "resource only mode" - what do the values for the given resources signify? For instance, hull plating receives a value of 20kish, which in the t file is listed as coming from 4k * 5. Does that number represent hull points repaired, the equivalent credit worth, something else?

And, if I'm in resource-only mode, how that does affect marines repairing stations?

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Post by DrBullwinkle » Mon, 3. Jul 17, 00:03

soulmata wrote:regarding "resource only mode" - what do the values for the given resources signify?
It is an adjustment used by the script to attempt to make resource usage practical by balancing the value of the ware with it's cargo space (volume). You can quickly fill a ship's cargo with Hull Plating, but it won't have much value in credits, so we try to find a more "fair" value to our marines by multiplying the cost times the volume.

This is obviously a simple approach and is easy to exploit, so you may want to fine-tune the adjustments.

For example, Hull Plating costs a maximum of 268 credits, with a volume of 10. So 268*10 = 2680 (The document file, 8501-L089, erroneously says "26800" here, but the REAL file, 8501-L044.xml, has the correct value of 2680.)

Similarly, Microchips have a high value close to 15200, with a volume of 2, so our adjustment value is 15200*2.

If you wanted to exploit this system, then you could send CLS2 pilots to buy all the Hull Plating that they can find, and use that for your repairs. You would then get repairs done for approximately one-tenth of the cost of repairing at an Equipment Dock.

On the other hand, Hull Plating is relatively rare, so you could think of the multiplier as a bonus for making the effort of collecting Hull Plating.

If you are serious about making a resource-based game, then you may want to adjust the values in the t file to make them more "fair" by your own standards. You might, for example, want to consider rarity of the resource as part of your adjustment.



Regarding repairing stations, you would have to test it, but my guess is that resources or credits would make no difference to the known bug that you reported earlier.

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soulmata
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Post by soulmata » Mon, 3. Jul 17, 00:16

Interesting. Thanks for the details.

Since in AP I can build hull plating factories (might be from the TRP), I was considering the feasibility of having all repairs be resource-only, and reflect the "relative" ease of acquiring the resources vs having them repaired at a shipyard. I like the flavor of a ship, once damaged, has to be taken out of combat for repairs for a lengthy period, particularly capital ships.

Now once a complex is self-sustaining, that obviously means you're getting endless "free repairs", where the actual cost is the time a ship spends out of service and the infrastructure needed to support the factories. Hmm, pay 10,000,000 credits for an instant repair when I have 300M in the bank, or my very expensive M2 doing nothing for a while? I think the latter hurts more in the long run, since a ship in dock for repair is a ship not killing things for you!

Toward the midgame, the cost of repairs at a shipyard never bothered me, but the fact a ship went from 20% hull to 100% instantly seemed a little weird. With MRT, I noticed an Osaka that had something like 70% hull took quite a while to repair, so while it was repairing I had it docked elsewhere. That seemed a lot more "realistic" for a game in which spaceships barely travel faster than passenger cars, but also gave me a reason to own multiple M2s and try not to get them damaged in the first place.

Perhaps I can tweak MRT to require both resources /and/ regular wages for the marines.

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